Damp spirits

How was it for you? Have you had time to ponder, analyse and conclude? No, not that, although down here we were worried as soon as Sven started stroking his hair. No, we mean the jubilee and, more specifically, the mood.

How was it for you? Have you had time to ponder, analyse and conclude? No, not that, although down here we were worried as soon as Sven started stroking his hair. No, we mean the jubilee and, more specifically, the mood.

All very well, the crowds and the jollity and the sausage rolls; we're sure, too, that someone at a street party near you wondered why people can't always get along like this. But, honestly, would you really like it? All that smiling, for example. And the dancing police. A bit of a strain.

Besides, our gift to the world has been a courteous reserve, a presumption of privacy that can choose to admit intimacy, a polite distance that is often mistaken for grumpiness because it often is. A mostly good-humoured, challenging grumpiness, though. And while we're being grumpy, can anyone tell us what "a nation at ease with itself" ever achieved? And there's more rain coming.