Ashes parade: glorious, tremendous and fabulous

Just the other day I was saying to Jules: "You've never worked in the West End, have you? You don't know what you're missing!" and then today the Ashes parade came right past us down the Strand. We left work with one minute to spare and ran down the street and up the steps to the Strand just in time to see the parade (or should I say two open-top double-decker buses) come past. It was a bit understated at first - there was no music playing and people were just standing around clapping politely. A definite lack of woohoo-ing and thrown undergarments.

But then we all shuffled down into Trafalgar Square, which was jam-packed. I couldn't see the big screens for a lot of the time, let alone the stage, but the sound system cranked up so you knew what was happening.

Good points:

• an effective montage of key moments of bravery from English batsmen, set to the Tom Petty song that goes "You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I won't back down"
• the MC's commentary, along the lines of "It's a glorious day here in London, and English fans are the best in the world, our boys are simply fabulous, hurrah for England, isn't everything tremendous!"
• Andrew (aka Freddie) Flintoff, in dark shades, clearly still drunk as a skunk, slurring his words and apologising for it while the MC said: "Don't worry, Andrew, everyone's just happy to see you!"
• conga lines of people dancing in the fountains
• the red and white confetti

The main bad point was the grudging inclusion of the women's cricket team in the parade, including comments from the MC like "Let's have the whole team on the stage now, that's right, everybody...aaaand the ladies can come as well". His whole tone of voice suggested "aren't we progressive and thoughtful, and isn't it kind of us to include the girls?" You have to wonder if the women, who also won the Ashes this year for the first time since 1963, would have got any sort of parade if the men hadn't won.

We all lost each other in the crowd and came back to the office one by one.

In other news, I discovered a very cute government service - a hedgehog road safety game for kids.