The Spirit of London

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Boris Johnson. The Spirit of London

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Dedication

For Marina

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The crowds were still vast on both sides of the river – about a million people, the largest single collection of human beings I have ever seen with my own eyes – but by 5 pm they were getting pretty cold and soggy. When the flotilla reached Tower Bridge the rain was coming down towards us almost at 45 degrees, like biting silver darts. The band played on, and the choirs continued to sing with water running down their noses, but the cloud was so low that the fly-past had to be cancelled and the next day the headline in the Guardian (admittedly not the most fervently monarchist paper) was brutal. ‘It’s a Royal Wash Out’, the liberal-left organ declared, and the next day it was announced that the Duke – who had stood bolt upright, at the age of 90, throughout much of the proceedings – had been taken to hospital for observation.

I thought we could take just about anything on the night of the opening ceremony: a Tube failure, some traffic snarl-up, perhaps even some difficulties getting the VIPs to their seats. What I didn’t think we could shrug off – not easily – was a cold and continuous downpour.

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