Over

 Well, the Jubilee celebrations are over. I caught a good deal of the goings-on on television, including that poignant last balcony appearance, and happily excluding most of the music and the worthier elements of the Mall pageant. All in all, I found it very heartening to see so much evidence of what this country is actually like – good-humoured, easy-going, mildly eccentric, open and inclusive, deeply patriotic in the most benign way, and genuinely fond (and admiring) of its Queen. No doubt this ample evidence of the reality will do nothing to dent the certainty of those who believe this to be a cheerless, divided, inward-looking, fundamentally racist nation, and no doubt the BBC will resume its standard woke anti-British shtick without missing a beat. And we'll all have to put away the flags and bunting until the next occasion when we're permitted to show ourselves proud to be British – or even, perish the thought, English (that'll be a football match).