Today, I saw the Olympic flame.

As I walked away from the hospital, I followed children from the secondary school nearby, released from their classrooms so that they might see a sight that even their teachers cannot have seen before, for the last time the Games were held in the UK was in 1948, and then there was no country-long and -wide Torch Relay.   They lined the railings put up on the roundabout at the top of the town and waited.  Soon they were joined by younger children from another, junior school, who streamed across the zebra crossings, guarded by their teachers.

They were here to see an exciting sight and their excitement was infectious.  And we needed excitement for this was not a day we might expect in June.  It was wet and windy, not just raining and blowing, adults wrestled with umbrellas that blew in and out and in again, and were no protection from the rain that fell, harder and harder, until the roads ran with water and the gutters overflowed.    The wind blew leaves and even small branches off the trees. And the children cheered and cheered.

They cheered the appearance of a car in Olympic livery that passed by and disappeared down the road.  They cheered a Council van that happened to go by with yellow hazard lights flashing.   They cheered a police car that turned up, with no purpose as far as we could tell, as it too went off down the road.   By this time the children were convinced that anyone who looked at all official had to be Olympic, and workers in yellow HiViz vests were applauded.  Ordinary drivers were infected with their enthusiasm, and they honked and waved as if they were part of the Torch procession that we were all waiting for.

But it took a long time to arrive.   First, three police bikers, blue lights flashing, drove slowly by, followed by a police car – and here they come!  Another Olympic car, an Olympic bus, another police biker, this time sounding his siren and waving at the children, who raise their noisy cheering to another peak. But they are disappointed, as nothing follows but a vehicle looking like a council wheelie bin lorry, painted a piercing blue with an enormous TV screen on the side – it’s one of the Olympic sponsors’ vehicles.  Then another wait, another sponsor’s bus, more police bikers, yet another Olympic bus and a whole phalanx of police motorbikes, eight of them if that makes a phalanx, a lorry shaped like a familiar soft drink, a miniature London double-decker bus, and….and….and, nothing!

Minutes passed.  Still nothing until another Olympic vehicle came into sight, a horsebox.  A horsebox?   But don’t worry about that, for just behind, unheralded save for three runners in dark clothes, ran the white clad figure of the Torch Bearer!  I don’t know her name, the Olympic website only lists the names of the Torch Bearers of the day, so this blonde-haired woman represented them all.   As she ran by, she held out the hand not holding the Torch, so that the children could touch her, and through her the Torch and the Flame, that flared in the wind and the rain. They could not make this any less than an emotional moment that the children will remember all their lives.  And I will too.