As the Beijing Games ended this afternoon and the London handover began there was a free party for 30,000 in the Mall in London.
We saw British Olympians past and present and future hopefuls, bands like Scouting for Girls, Will Young, The Feeling and McFly and the Red Arrows.
And you know what, it was great.
A lively,confident, happy afternoon.
With no aggression, no arrogance, just thousands of people dancing and singing - celebrating and looking forward to 2012.
A multi-generational, multi-cultural gathering that somehow seemed to sum up a lot of what's good about this country.
I just don't think that we're very good at being patriotic in this country (there's a great Orwell essay on just this BTW), sometimes we seem to either confuse it for racism, or we can get rather snobby and class-conscious about flag-waving, in fact even the term "flag-waving" has negative connotations. So it was lovely to see that finally we as a nation seem to be more at ease with being proud of our country. That doesn't mean being blind to our faults, but it does mean celebrating our achievements.
This is the London 2012 Flickr group and the YouTube channel.
So go on, celebrate. It feels pretty good.
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