RETIRED accountant Mary Davis suddenly found herself number crunching’ again when she was picked from the crowd to start East London’s mammoth dominoes trail. But that was a push-over for the 67-year-old who shoved a sculpture over which fell onto the first of 8,000 breeze block dominoes lined up in Mile End Park

By Ben Miller

RETIRED accountant Mary Davis suddenly found herself number crunching’ again when she was picked from the crowd to start East London’s mammoth dominoes trail.

But that was a push-over for the 67-year-old who shoved a sculpture over which fell onto the first of 8,000 breeze block dominoes lined up in Mile End Park on Sunday.

It was the domino’ effect of the open weekend’ to mark the start of the three-year count down to the 2012 Olympics when the 10-mile trail began to tumble from Mile End all the way to Greenwich on the other side of the Thames.

KNOCK-OUT

Marketing manager Sam Scottwood, 31, was one of the organisers who helped set it up.

“It was windy when we set them up,” she said. “A gust of wind did blow over some blocks, but volunteers quickly stopped more tumbling.”

The dominoes went through Matt’s Gallery, then fell onto a boat on Regent’s Canal which took the dominoes down through Limehouse and out onto the Thames to Poplar Rowing on the Isle of Dogs, to reappear in Islands Gardens.

It then tumbled down the 70ft spiral staircase into the Thames foot tunnel under the river to emerge at the old Greenwich Royal Naval college by 8.45pm, five-a-half hours after the dominoes began tumbling in Mile End when Mary Davis turned push to shove.