"Bloody Olympics lanes, it's bad enough without the extra million, it's going to be a total abortion, the whole thing, and the weather's shit," I said a few weeks ago.
The sky was bleeding, the winds were howling through the most horrendous summer in history, the taxi drivers were livid, the tubes didn't work, G4S spazzed up their operation, Beckham didn't get selected, I got thrush.
Then it happened.
The Olympic Games in London happened. And they're still happening. And it's like a dream.
Team GB have inspired not just the next generation of British sportsmen and women but the existing generations of runners, cyclists, judokas, showjumpers, drinkers, smokers, architects, comedians, midwives etc. Never have I seen excitement, happiness and pleasant-spiritedness pervade an entire city, and what a city in which to see that occur.
London has forever been extraordinary. The vastly sprawling former head of Empire with it's 600 square miles of magic, violence, history and the Thames artery - shit filled in Victorian times and now resplendent, London was always something to behold, to be amazed by, but it was missing something essential, missing something human. And now it seems we have it. Whether we keep it or not remains to be seen but London has, in 2012, done something it has never done before. It has discovered how to love itself, to be proud of itself, and it is tangible. I can feel it everywhere I go. I screamed in Hyde Park yesterday as I saw super-Olympian Sir Chris Hoy, swimmer Rebecca Adlington and Triathlon siblings Alistair and Jonny Brownlee - everyone else screamed too and the athletes were overwhelmed, at that made us all cry a bit.
There's been a lot of crying. And crying at the sort of thing you would have hitherto thought highly unlikely. I cried as Gemma Gibbons won her Judo semi-final, when Peter Wilson sank to his knees winning the shooting, when Victoria Pendleton retired - and all of those things were connected to relief. And I think I've cried partly because I'm sharing in their feelings and am moved by them but also because I'm relieved that it's okay to be British. I was geeing on the dressage team earlier because, for the first time in living memory, the Olympics have become a team sport. If Charlotte Dujardin wins the dressage it'll mean one more gold for Great Britain, plus the commentator on the BBC (another thing we can be proud of) was on the verge of tears during Charlotte's ride as the Britishness of the music took him to an emotional place he did not expect to be. It's where many of us are, and it feels wonderful.
London 2012 has been, in the British popular consciousness anyway, the opposite of the outpouring of grief that many of us experienced as a nation in 1997, upon the death of Princess Diana. These Olympics have been an outpouring of joy. And as Charlotte DuJardin romps towards the 23rd Team GB gold medal as I write this I can feel another little tear coming on. I think I might go to the pub.