The Commonwealth Games has shown the best of Glasgow

It’s the last day of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow today and I’m watching cyclists pelt round Glasgow’s city centre and West End in the pissing rain/bright sunshine. It’s fun for someone born in Glasgow who now lives in Bristol to see my home city laid out in this way and I’m glad it’s got the coverage it deserved. Even if the whole idea of the Games is a wee bit naff there’s something nice about seeing people waving Isle of Man flags along with the more familiar flags.

It’s an anachronism but it’s still an elite competition of athletes from all around the bits of the world the British Empire conquered  that still want to have something to do with the UK. It’s also capped off what seems like a ridiculously long summer of sport that started with the World Cup and ends just as the football season starts in England, and a few weeks after it started in Scotland.

I’m mainly overjoyed by how Glasgow has come across and conducted itself during the games. There’s been no booing of English athletes as predicted by papers like the Daily Mail, Guardian and Telegraph, and in fact St. George’s Cross flags wave freely with Saltires somewhat disproving the position of certain establishment figures that the Scots hate the English. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But it’s nearly over and before it lumbers out of people’s memories for four years, there’s a closing ceremony with Kylie Minogue and Lulu, who seems to bathe in the blood of virgins to remain looking as she does. Sadly there won’t be a place for the astonishing Sydney Devine who played a festival celebrating the Games at Glasgow Green yesterday. It’s impossible to explain the full, unmitigated horror of Sydney so here’s a video to close which should explain it all….