So it’s goodbye to all that, then. Until 2020, anyway. For the next four years we can forget all we’ve learned about the curious technique of canoe sprinting. About the scoring system in taekwondo. About the catalogue of rule changes that have made hockey on blue plastic so unlike the game we dimly remember from the bumpy grass pitches of our youth.

We can forget (probably never to recall) the names of Chinese divers, South American gymnasts, East European heptathletes.

We can allow our anxieties about the ambiguous rules of the keirin to fade. Along, perhaps, with our recently renewed understanding of the complexities of the omnium and the tactics required in its concluding points race.

All this and more we can set aside until Tokyo. While allowing more familiar entertainments like the return of league football to assuage the inevitable withdrawal symptoms. At least we have nightly highlights from the Vuelta a Espana to bring us down gently.

“The Olympics,” one of my friends asserted in his Facebook status, “is stupid.” Deliberately contrarian, perhaps, but no doubt Ben has not been alone in that opinion these past few weeks. It’s a view I once held myself, and I can still partly understand it.

Back in 2005, when London was awarded the 2012 Games, I stood against the grain. I was convinced that hosting them would be a huge cost with little benefit. I was right about the first part. And all the joys and razzmatazz of London and Rio haven’t changed my mind on a few points.

The Olympics is too big. Much too big. For some countries – and we have yet to see the full reality for Brazil – the cost of staging the Games is ruinous.

As with football’s World Cup, its unwieldy size and global profile make it a glorious opportunity for corruption. For commercial exploitation both legal and illegal, moral and immoral. For personal and corporative empire-building.

It can be an irrestible sporting attraction, as so many of us have found again these past weeks. But it’s impossible to keep track of it all, and there are sports that have no business being involved.

They are – and I’m hardly the first to point it out – all those games for which the Games is not the pinnacle. Tennis, in which the Olympics has become an unofficial “fifth Major” is perhaps one, however much Andy Murray may have thrilled himself and us by retaining his crown. Golf, in which it barely counted as a Minor, much more so. And as for football – well, could a mere Olympic final possibly give Brazil real satisfaction?

I can understand the frustration with the BBC, on whose airwaves there has been little else from opening ceremony to closing carnival. Coverage not just wall-to-wall but hedge-to-hedge too.

I have some nostalgia for Olympics past when we got to watch events with no British “medal prospects” involved. When we could just enjoy the skill and spectacle without being cajoled to root for one particular competitor or team. When we could get through the whole thing without having to endure endless playing of the most tedious national anthem in the world.

Or endless repetition of the question: How did we get so good at what we used to be so bad at? A question I can answer in one word. Money.

It’s not that Britons at large are any more sporty than we ever were. Rather the opposite. Just that our elite athletes and coaches, once ill-equipped amateurs, are now well-funded professionals. At least in some sports.

All the jingoism, all the self-congratulatory flag-waving makes me queasy. But some great moments will stay with me, I’m sure.

Like the climactic thrill of the GB women’s hockey triumph. The impish, imperious dominance of omnium queen Laura Trott. The nail-biting farce of the keirin final and the glee of Jason Kenny’s eventual victory. The sparkling brilliance of US gymnasts Simone Biles and Aly Raisman casually performing feats that ought to be humanly impossible.

For all its glamour, all its weekly controversies, the football season will have to go some to match up. The allegedly beautiful game is about to reassert its prominence. But at least for a little while the rowers, runners, swimmers, leapers, tumblers and paddlers got to claim their share of the limelight.

Now they can get back in their boxes as normal service is resumed on BBC1 in the shape of Strictly and Bake Off. While BBC4 can get back to showing science, arts and history programmes worth more than a few medals. And we can all remind ourselves that sport isn’t actually the most important thing in the world.

I didn't see Britain's triumphs in the Olympic rowing eights. I listened to the radio commentary, in the company of hundreds of others, by the side of another rowing lake. Doing my bit as the proud dad of an aspiring - and genuinely promising - young rower.

Attention was understandably divided at the Peterborough Regatta. And there was understandable pleasure there at the nation's successes in Rio. But despite the personal interest, I have a degree of misgiving too.

Rowing is the most heavily funded of all British Olympic sports. That cash isn't the only reason for GB success on the water, but it's a big factor. You only have to see how the overall medal tally has increased at each Games since National Lottery funding began in 1994 to realise that.

The money follows success - more medals means more cash. And success follows the money - more cash, more medals. 

Which is great for rowing. But how about other sports - those which start out less privileged? 

Basketball and table tennis, games ordinary kids can take up at school, lost all their funding after 2012. Badminton had its share of the cake cut while equestrianism was awarded a bigger helping. Sailing is among the best-funded sports.

Not all young rowers, sailors or show-jumpers start out loaded. We're not rich. But we're not poor either - though we must be among the poorest of the rowing crowd. I'd estimate the private-school proportion is about the same (50 per cent) as it is at Oxbridge, if not a little higher.

There was some sniping in 2012 about the Olympics just being posh games for posh people. That wasn't entirely justified. But there was a sliver of truth there. A sliver that becomes a wedge when charity goes to the haves, not the have-nots.



Labour's best hope lies with Corbyn's successor


I received an appreciative email from an unexpected quarter after I wrote here and in the Eastern Daily Press about Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour pains. It came from John McDonnell, Corbyn's closest ally and the man I suspect is the real brains at the head of the party. And it was no automated round-robin message, either. It began: "My brother lives in Norfolk and sent me a copy of your article." 

Writing at 1.30am,  the Shadow Chancellor applauded me for what he called "one of the more thoughtful and thought provoking pieces written in recent weeks about the plight of the Labour Party".

Which was very kind of him. But it also says something rather sad that he took that time and trouble.

Of course I'm glad that people in the corridors of powers - or at least in the side-corridors - read my work and take it seriously. Of course I'm flattered by McDonnell's approval. But it's a shocking thought that my piece should have stood out from the crowd simply by being unbiased.

The supposedly friendly fire directed Corbyn's way has hardly lessened, and the tabloid vitriol remains as acid as ever in the three weeks since I wrote it. No doubt we can expect plenty more of the same all the way to the close of the party's leadership election on September 21.

And no doubt, as I said before, Corbyn will win that election. Not simply despite all the unjustified insults thrown his way, but partly because of them. 

The attacks on him have been so intense and so unpleasant, so manifestly unfair, they will have made his supporters in the party dig their heels in. Not all of them, but surely enough to put the outcome beyond reasonable doubt.

And here, where the ironies really begin, I must say something John McDonnell will not like. 

Jeremy Corbyn really isn't a great leader. Not as terrible as so many say, but not terribly good either. Not as good, I'd venture, as McDonnell himself might have been.

I admire Corbyn's politics - in the sense of policies, not his playing of the politics game. He wouldn't be in the hole he's in today if he was any good at playing that discreditable game. There is a reason he has spent almost all his career in back-bench obscurity.

He rarely says anything I fundamentally disagree with. I dearly wish the country was led by someone with his integrity, his principles, his humanity, his concern for people rather than corporations, for ordinary people ahead of rich ones. 

But to lead effectively, that someone would have to be someone tougher, quicker on their feet, and a much better manager of people than Corbyn has so far shown himself to be. Probably it would be someone younger.

Labour's best hope - and the country's - is that by the time the next General Election comes round, Corbyn will quietly and with due dignity have handed the baton on to that person, whoever it might be.

One big irony is that it might have been Owen Smith. If he hadn't effectively ruled himself out by standing against Corbyn now.

The past, they say, is another country. But why must so much written history have national boundaries imposed upon it?

A glance along my bookshelves reveals such titles as The English, Elizabeth’s England, The Black Death in England, Gothic England, English Social History, The English Abbey, A History of English Architecture, The Earliest English, England in the Age of Thomas More, various volumes from a series called simply English History, and another entitled History of England.

Then there’s Britain BC, Blood of the British, British Prehistory, Britain in the Middle Ages, The Isles (you needn’t guess which isles are referred to) and, by way of slight variation, India Britannica.

That’s a selective sample, of course, but I think you’ll see a pattern emerging. And I’m no little-Englander.

If it’s true (and of course it is) that history is written by the winners, what do such titles tell you?

Not that it’s England, or Britain, that’s victorious in the world. I have other books bearing the names of Ireland, Russia, France, the USA, the Jews, the Roman Empire.

The real winner is simply the idea of the nation.

Not just this nation, but any nation. Any people associated with a particular piece of territory.

It’s a concept so deeply ingrained that most of us, nearly all the time, take it for granted. An idea we almost never question. But it is only an idea.

History doesn’t have to be defined along geographical or tribal lines. It just nearly always is.

The world hasn’t always been divided entirely into countries, with borders and frontier security. It just looks that way to us now.

It may be relatively easy for us in Britain, surrounded as we are by sea, to imagine our territory, and our nation, as fixed. But look at all those book titles with the words “England” or “English”. What place do the Scots, or the Welsh, have in that history? And what of Ireland, divided as it is between independence and subservience to its neighbour?

What about all those people who live in these islands but retain a strong link with a heritage elsewhere? Or those – vastly more numerous – who live in other lands but have British heritage? All those many millions Winston Churchill tried to scoop up in his History of the English Speaking Peoples.

On the mainland, of Europe or any other continent, the picture gets rapidly more blurred.

Consider that territory which over the past century has been Russian, German, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian again, German again, Soviet Russian and is now independent Lithuania. Today it’s a small country, but once it ruled part of what is now Poland, a large slab of what’s now Russia, and all of present-day Belarus and Ukraine.

Should any written history of Lithuania consider all the lands it once contained, or only the shrunken area it denotes now? Or should its focus keep widening and narrowing as it moves through the centuries?

Some of my ancestors grew up in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, considering themselves Russian, speaking Russian. The Nobel Prize-winning writer Czeslaw Milosz was raised there as a Pole, speaking Polish. Yet somehow the Lithuanian language survived and now flourishes, within its much reduced borders, along with a strong sense of Lithuanian identity.

The question is: Why?

The answers are many and complex. Some are no doubt beyond my understanding. But the question is still worth asking. Not just about Lithuania, or England, or Britain.

Why, when throughout history it has caused more wars, death and suffering than any other idea except maybe religion, do we cling to the idea of the nation? 

It’s a particularly pertinent question now when Europe, where the idea first took hold, is reverting to old nationalisms.

If the grand experiment of European union ends up collapsing in nationalist fragments, I shall take no pride in belonging to the nation that started the process.

Not that I ever thought national pride had much point to it. It’s not my fault that I was born in the country whose rulers once sold thousands of poor Irish into slavery. (Don’t believe it? Look it up.) And if I can’t accept blame for the sorriest episodes in my island’s history, I can hardly take credit for its various glories either.

What exactly is this nation of mine, anyway? My passport says (below the fated words “European Union”): “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. It doesn’t specifically mention England, where I have lived all my life. Or Scotland, which I may choose to emigrate to should it sever its union with England to preserve its union with Europe.

The words on the inside cover are interesting too. It “requires” all other nations to let me “pass freely without let or hindrance” and give me “such assistance and protection as may be necessary”. 
​
I wonder if those good words will have to be repealed when Britain puts all its eggs in one Brexit.

“I’m tough, aren’t I?” It was almost the first wholly intelligible thing she’d said for about a week, and there was really only one possible answer. “Yes, Mum, you are.”

At the start of that week I’d had the kindly professional chat from the senior consultant. The one about “last days care”. Now it seemed those last days had got longer.

The antibiotics intended to ease the pain of her passing had apparently forestalled it. Against all odds, the sepsis everyone had expected to take her had been cured.

It was not entirely a matter for rejoicing. It was certainly not what she wanted.

The day after she went into hospital she spoke to me at length, and in detail, about what I would have to do after she died. She had thought about it, and we had talked about it, a great deal over a number of years. Now she approached it cheerfully.

Her attitude had always been logical, and consistent. As long as she was able to enjoy life, and to contribute something to others, she was glad to be alive. Once that was no longer the case, she wanted a quick and easy exit.

Which of us, in our right minds, would not want that?

We all need to face death eventually. It would do us all good – individually and as a society – if we faced it more openly before our final curtain falls. And with more of the calm, rational approach my mother showed.

She was not alone in that. A study carried out by researchers at Cambridge University shows what anyone who has spent much time among the very old already knew – that most people in their nineties are not afraid of death.

Indeed, while they might care a great deal about the manner of their dying, the idea of being dead is something many positively look forward to. And not necessarily because life has ceased to be worth living.

Until the last few unwanted, unexpected weeks, my mother generally had a good life. Yet at 94 she still looked forward to its end.

Dr Jane Fleming, who led the Cambridge study, said: “Despite the dramatic rise in the number of people living into very old age, there is far too little discussion about what the oldest old feel about the end of their lives.

“Death is clearly a part of life for people who have lived to such an old age, so the older people we interviewed were usually willing to discuss dying, a topic often avoided.”

Nearly half of all deaths in the UK are of people 85 or older – up from one in five only 25 years ago. The number of people topping 90 has tripled in 30 years. The Cambridge interviewees were all 95 or older.

One told her son, after visiting a friend with dementia: “Gordon, if I ever get like that, for goodness sake put a pillow over my head, will you?”

Which is exactly what our laws and common morals won’t let us do. Yet would the abuses really outnumber and outweigh the benefits?

I'm not sure. And I know some elderly folk who definitely think being allowed – even assisted – to die when they want would be infinitely preferable to being kept alive against their will.

Another of the Cambridge interviewees remembered her parents’ deaths. “They were alive, then they were dead, but it all went off as usual,” she said. “Nothing really dramatic or anything. Why should it be any different for me?”

One 97-year-old said: “I just say I’m the lady-in-waiting, waiting to go.”

Nearly all said that if faced with a life-threatening illness they would rather be made comfortable than simply kept alive. And most said they would rather not go into hospital. In both those respects, my mother was typical.

“Now so many more people have reached a great age before they die, it’s important we know about their views and their concerns, particularly in relation to end-of-life care,” said the study’s other author, Dr Morag Farquhar. “Having these conversations before it is too late can help ensure that an individual’s wishes, rather than going unspoken, can be heard.”

Time, perhaps, to have that conversation now. To let your doctor know the outcome. And, perhaps, to put your wishes clearly in writing, signed by independent witnesses, as my mother very sensibly did a few years ago.
​
Though she recovered from sepsis, she had a stroke while in hospital. It took away most of her ability to form intelligible words, though she went on trying. It also severely affected her ability to understand what was said to her. As far as one could tell, it did not impair her ability to think. She died at home eight weeks later, quite comfortable and clearly aware who was around her to very nearly the last.