The opening scene will be called "Green and Pleasant", artistic director Danny Boyle revealed.

Rural places make up 86% of England. Nearly one-fifth of our population live and work there

The set will feature meadows, fields and rivers, with families taking picnics, people playing sports on the village green and farmers tilling the soil.

Real farmyard animals will be grazing in the "countryside", with a menagerie of 30 sheep, 12 horses, three cows, two goats, 10 chickens, 10 ducks, nine geese and three sheepdogs.

One billion people worldwide are expected to watch the opening ceremony.

[...]

Among the other features will be two mosh-pits - one representing the Glastonbury festival and another the Last Night of the Proms - filled with members of the public.

Tickets for these positions are yet to be allocated, with organisers still to decide how to distribute them.

The set will feature real grass, an oak tree and "clouds" suspended from wires above the stadium - one of which will produce rain, provided the British weather does not provide its own on the night.

Meanwhile, the home nations will be represented by Maypoles topped with a thistle, a leek, a rose and flax.

I have nothing to add.

What about the rest of Middle-earth? Westminster shuold be transformed into Minas Tirith and the east End into Mordor and Hyde park into Fangorn.

Ents! I want Ents!

Well, a boy can dream.

Green and pleasant, just like in bygone days.

Also, that blind sheikh with the hook for a hand.

Unfair, of course, but I'd watch that.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Per Boyle's request, here's what I have worked out: England has somehow perfected raincloud-manipulation technology and is using it to bring more rainclouds to England.

In addition to the rain, the ceremony will also feature "real grass," "real soil," and "real plows." (DO THEY REALLY NEED REAL PLOWS?)

...The paper also reports that there will be animals. Not awesome animals, like lions and hippogriffs and friendly dogs, but boring and surprisingly mean animals like geese.

Specifically: nine geese.

...Perhaps the most British element of all will be four giant maypoles decorated to resemble the flower symbols of the four nations that comprise the United Kingdom (a rose for England, a thistle for Scotland, a daffodil for Wales, and flax for Northern Ireland), around which children will dance and consecrate their souls to pagan gods.

There will also reportedly be an undercurrent of "British humour," most likely manifesting itself as brief periods of awkward silence.