Let the Games begin - Nick Baines's blog - Musings of a restless bishop

There is something uniquely British about moaning. We are sceptics. As George Orwell once suggested, the reason no one ever goose-stepped down English streets is simply that everybody would laugh. There is a sense of distance that you don't see in the 'we-are-the-greatest-nation-on-earth-and-can-do-anything' USA.

Perhaps we are temperamentally 'glass half empty' nations rather than natural 'can do' optimists.

And maybe that has something to do with our climate, it's changeability engendering an innate caution that whatever we an might get stuffed by the weather.

Or, maybe it has to do with a mature recognition from our history that any glimpse of greatness is always temporary – that empires come and go and that they often appear in retrospect to be less great than our rhetoric or transient glory seduced us into believing.

Anyway, we can only hope that for the next couple of weeks the media might be sidetracked from looking for all the holes (of which there will be many – but when did the commentariat last organise anything for which they would be held eternally accountable?) and celebrate the once-in-a-lifetime communal party of pride that will be the 30th Olympiad.

Jonathan Freedland hits the right buttons in this morning's Guardian. I might not get to see huge amounts of sport during the next couple of weeks, but I feel proud of what has been achieved in even getting to this point.

Yes, seconds after the closing ceremony the commentariat will start to question everything – and the 'legacy' questions will need to be asked – but I hope we might first celebrate before we criticise.