It's over

The Olympics and Paralympics are over.

The final celebratory procession arrived in Trafalgar Square where Boris, sporting yellow mop and grin the size of the Olympic stadium, whooped the crowd up into a jovial frenzy – drawing them close to confide that 'as spectators you produced such a paroxysm of tears and joy on the sofas of Britain you probably not only inspired a generation, you probably helped to create one as well'.

A new baby boom? I doubt it, but these games have been transformative. They have sharpened our willingness to embrace patriotism and indeed our own flag, without conceding too much to that oft-lingering sense that patriotic loyalty carries with it the stiff caustic whiff of the far right.

The games might also have fundamentally changed the way we view disability. For the Paralympics have achieved everything that the Olympics achieved, the stars, the audiences, the excitement.

But they achieved something more. They surprised us. They surprised us because we embraced them to an unexpected degree, elevated them to the level of the rest of the games and came to take them just as seriously.

And didn't we also fall in love with winning? We loosened the upper lip and savored victory.

We celebrated diversity too — we screamed just as hard for Mo Farah, a refugee from Somalia, as we did for any other athlete. All these notions are imposters of course. It may be that they will evaporate as swiftly as did the new-found gentleness that settled over us following Diana's death.

But for now let's just savour it all and be proud. Proud not only of what we achieved in the stadium, on the track and along the river but proud also for what, during these most special of games, we have said about ourselves.