So, it's two days after the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony. We've had time to get over the emotion of the night and consider how we did. Why is this four-yearly sporting event imbued with such importance anyway? Well, of course, it's so much more than sport. The right to stage the Olympics is savagely fought for. The winning country always, but always is subjected to derision, scepticism and abuse. The Opening Ceremony is seen as a window into the collective psyche of the host nation. Getting the tone right is therefore seen as essential.
Inevitably comparisons were drawn with the 2008 Beijing games. We must not try to compete with that. Then there was the fact the 2012 Oympics were being staged in austerity times, just as they were in 1948 when they last took place in London. We must keep the costs down. For months rumours were rife of what was going to be included in this Opening Ceremony. There's a "socialist agenda", it will be "mawkish" or "naff", we'll look "ridiculous". We Brits began to think we would be watching the Opening Ceremony from behind the sofa, squirming in embarrassment.
Then it started. The sheer number of cultural references Danny Boyle managed to include was astounding. Not even the Brits caught every one of them. God knows how the rest of the world was getting on. There was cricket and football, sheep and geese, galloping horses and flying pigs, green countryside and industrial smoke, Suffragettes and Jarrow Marchers, Harry Potter and Mary Poppins, Peter Pan and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Shakespeare and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Chelsea Pensioners and Windrush immigrants, Milton and Mr Bean, Kenneth Branagh and Tim Berners-Lee . Heads were already spinning by the time James Bond 'dropped in' with the Queen. Heart-strings were pulled by children, hospital beds and NHS nurses. Our sense of the ridiculous was tweaked by the sight and sound of Dizzee Rascal singing "Bonkers" and The Sex Pistols with "Pretty Vacant". Personally I have no idea what order all this came in but by the time the cauldron was lit it all seemed to make perfect sense. The radical act of choosing seven young athletes to carry out this last act was a look to the future, rather than the past, and it was a masterstroke.
UK Social media was alive with comment throughout. At first the remarks were hesitant. The word "bonkers" featured heavily. Fifteen minutes in there was a tidal wave of relief and pride sweeping through the country's Twitterati. What we were watching was still bonkers but it was fantastically bonkers. There was the odd exception, of course, inevitably there was a Member of Parliament who felt faint at the sheer multi-culturalism of it all, and there was the US based British journalist who felt he had to take a poke at the old country. A word about the volunteer performers is in order. Ordinary British workers doing a fantastic job at a difficult time for everyone, you were amazing.
As the evening wore on one tweeter suggested we take a look at #limeys and #poms to see what other countries thought of us. By that time we frankly didn't give a fig. Danny Boyle had done us proud. We were a little dazed and confused by this reminder of all that is good about the UK. There is plenty that isn't, of course. We know that, but that's for another day.
So how was it for the rest of the World, and should we care?