Closure

Having absorbed as much of the Games as possible, and absolutely loved the entire thing, I was fortunate enough to be at the closing ceremony on Sunday thanks to my girlfriend getting tickets in the first draw, way back when.

She's been volunteering throughout the Games, and has had experiences she'll remember forever; indeed she attended the closing ceremony in her uniform, having come straight from the men's marathon earlier that day. The goodwill and thanks to her and all the volunteers from organisers and public alike where heartfelt and fulsome. I'll add mine - what an incredible job they all did. My missus came home exhausted from long days on her feet, but when I met some of her colleagues they, like her, expressed nothing but admiration for each other and enjoyment of their experiences. Hats off to all of them. My g/f most of all, of course - no doubt she was the best of the lot.

The closing ceremony itself was another exhibition of extreme Britishness, just as the opener had been. I occasionally felt like I was there under slightly fraudulent pretences, given my indifference to music and its pivotal role in the whole thing. But I enjoyed it immensely, as much, I hope, as a proper music fan would have done, and came away from it regarding it as an all round good thing. Spectacular, amusing again, and smoothly done.

Slight criticisms? It could have done with being about 45 minutes shorter - I got into bed at around 2.45am as a result of its finishing time, and bits of it were slightly flabby. George Michael should never have been indulged to perform that second one, a new song that nobody knew, from an album which came out the next day. Absolutely bare-faced, and the audience sat largely still and pretty mute as he performed it. An odd, incongruous few minutes which jarred with the tone of the rest of the show.

Good bits? Everything else. Stomp and Fat Boy Slim being there, both being from Brighton like me, was a particular joy. And I got as close as I'll ever get to addressing one of my enduring regrets - I never saw Queen live while Freddie M was alive. Amazing light shows from the seat-mounted LEDs all over the stadium. Cracking fireworks and some top set building. The beauty of the flame itself unfurling and dying slowly.

It wasn't for everybody, I suspect - I don't know what the vision of a modern Britain was of the older couple from just in front of us who left, no more than a third of the way through, during one of the show's noisier sections, never to return. But for me, yet again, it somehow succeeded in capturing Britain, exemplifying our modernity, diversity, our willingness to poke fun at ourselves.

It was, like so much of these Games was, an absolute joy to behold, and a great privilege to be there. The stadium is absolutely wonderful, and though I strongly suspect I'll be disappointed, it'll be a crying shame if it's handed over to a football club. (This from a die-hard footy fan, by the way - we made a legacy commitment to athletics during the bid process, and should be held to account for that commitment.)

I shall miss the Olympics terribly and look forward with great enthusiasm to seeing some of the Paralympics live. Evidently I'm not alone - more tickets have been sold for the Paralympics than ever have in the event's history, with those Games on course for a sell-out.

Truly, the British have shown, and are showing, the best of us to the world these past weeks. Can we take that best to heart for ourselves, I wonder?

Even the police are in on it

I realise that everyone notices different things in the same images. Not the big stuff, the main story, as it were, I'm sure that's pretty much the same for everybody in the main, but the smaller details. Watching the images from George Michael's sentencing today, an odd thing occured as he was driven off to begin his few weeks in prison. I'm not going to comment on his imprisonment itself, largely because I just don't care, I don't proffer comment on anybody else who's committed to jail for a few weeks so I don't see why he should be any different.

However, as you'd expect, large numbers of people had turned up to see him. As the prison van moved away from the court after he'd been sentenced, there was the usual scrum of photographers, police, public etc. The photographers persist in trying to take photos through those darkened windows even though I've yet to see the results of their efforts ever published, and suspect they're wasting their time.

Anyway, as at least a dozen photographers raced along the road alongside the van, trying to get shots through said windows on all sides, a couple of fans ran down alongside it aswell. The police chased them down and stopped the fans. Just the fans - two or three of them. They made no attempt whatsoever to stop the photographers, who ran on much further, in the road, at a higher speed, at presumably greater risk than the public as they were also trying to get close to the van and take their photos.

Does a camera somehow grant the paperazzi immunity from the same attention of the police that the rest of us get? If one of the fans had armed themselves with a camera, a posh one, mind you, with the sticky-up flash thingy and the big fuck-off lens, would they have been able to sprint by the police and get near to their hero? Are even the police involved in some great collusion with the fourth estate to get us all obsessed with celebrity culture? I think we should be told.