A moment of unabashed Boris-fuelled pride, patriotism, and typically British hope.

A truly maginficent Boris masterpiece, encapsulating everything that makes Boris, well.. Boris. Blunt, hilarious, often painful, yet written in such a way as to demonstrate à la fois his unrivalled mastery of the English language, and something of the cultivated carefree “throw everything P.C out the window with gay abandon” attitude he has used to his advantage throughout his career, life, etc. Some tantalising snippets, illustrating the aforementioned… glorious approach to writing:

.. In any case, the Queen has made her first cinematic appearance – in the Bond movie segment – and deepened the admiration in which she is held in Britain and around the world. James Bond and the Monarchy – not to mention The Eton Boating Song… How can anyone call that Lefty propaganda?

We certainly didn’t spend the Beijing-style sums on fireworks – since the Chinese blew roughly the same amount as the British defence budget – but we unquestionably had the same global éclat.

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, made a truly excellent speech, in which he paid tribute to the role of Britain in either inventing or codifying the sports we celebrate at the Olympics. Only a small proportion of his speech was in French.

As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers. The whole thing is magnificent and bonkers.

This is the blatant hurrah! Brits! Olympics! No real disasters, flag confusion, stadium key losing, lack of gold aside, patriotic glorious pride type moment. Raising my glass of Pimmm’s wistfully, from Bordeaux airport, soon to fly over aforementioned festivities on the way to SF! Go Team GB!

(source: Boris Johnson, Mayor of London (that still seems surreal over four years later), in his weekly Daily Telegraph column: London Olympics 2012: here’s 20 jolly good reasons to feel cheerful about the Games – Telegraph.)