Ladies and gentlemen, I come today before you a changed man. Just two weeks ago I was your average, bog-standard prematurely-jaded middle-class layabout literature student. The ensuing fortnight has seen me utterly transformed; broken down beyond all recognition and built up again, piece by piece, into the unfathomable. As I sit, naked save for a Union flag draped around my shoulders, Mo Farah's name carved into my chest with a dirty biro, typing with one hand and spanking myself off over a photo-shopped image of Churchill fucking a double-decker bus with the other, I can proudly declare myself as that which I have hitherto always denounced. I am a British patriot.
Speaking of wankers who dress in the Union flag, Morrissey was kind enough to offer his ever-trenchant views on all the trumpeting that has taken place during the games. Accusing the flag wavers of "blustering jingoism" and asserting that "the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain", he further cemented his likely candidacy for the country's worst theoretical party guest ever. At once a shrill cod-revolutionary and a shuddering racist, the only possible people who'd endure him in an intimate setting would be hardcore Morrissey fans, meaning that you'd have to invite an extra quotient of insufferable people just so things would proceed smoothly. Plus he'd complain about the cocktail sausages. The dick.
But it did get me thinking. Whilst I hope I've never voiced anything nearly as insensitive or idiotic, i've certainly felt versions of it. There isn't anything inherently wrong with love for one's country, but it has always seemed to me to have something 'off' about it, a whiff of curdled something hidden under the guise of zeal and passion. Obviously it's been used for centuries to make people to horrible things, or to justify sending them to pointless deaths, but even low-level affection has previously seemed a little untenable. Patriotism seemed like owning a pair of incontinency pants; you might justify having them, but you'll always go around giving off a faint whiff of urine.
I've written before about how the British don't do patriotism very well. That was during the Royal Wedding, when we banded together as a nation to sort-of celebrate the union of two well-meaning but rather bland privileged people. Around a year later we had a jubilee, about which I felt much the same. This was the greatness of our nation personified; a sour-faced old pensioner being leisurely pursued by bunch of 'zany' monarchists in boats. Even the BBC couldn't seem to muster much enthusiasm; placing responsibility for presenting this moment to the country in the hands of Fearne Cotton, who always puts me in mind of a victim of child sex abuse desperately corroding the memories from her brain by chanting happy, meaningless phrases like 'Wicked!' and 'Mental!'
From here on in, we only had less to crow about. We crashed out of the Euro's on penalties, and reduced a man to tears through our own misguided expectations of him at Wimbledon. Elsewhere, little was changing; we were still ruled over by uncaring toffs, whose only chance of defeat lay with an overgrown sixth-former who looks like he's never touched a breast in his life. Our banks were run by shits. Our newspapers were run by shits. And all of them went to shit parties and came up with ways to spray more shit on everything. Britain was a diseased shambling mess, suited only to quietly committing suicide by shooting itself in the Scotland.
And then the Olympics came. And suddenly we were celebrating things we could actually be proud of. Not a genetically-deficient dynasty but actual people from proper places who'd actually done real tangible things to get them where they were. And who could do things better than anyone else on the planet. And the music was great, and the experts and spectators were great, and this time the BBC wheeled out Clare Balding, who's so robust she probably eats child sex offenders for breakfast. And in just two weeks, a nation found its feet, and its reason to be.
So I'll hope you'll join me in performing a final act of mental celebration as you sink down into your beery, post closing-ceremony slumbers this evening. Lie back and think of England.
