Welcome lessons from the Paralympic Games

Many welcome words have been written about the huge success of the Paralympic Games but I hope you'll forgive me for adding a few more. Since the week before last, I have been living in a Paralympic euphoria bubble, getting up early to catch the excitingly-named Javelin train from St Pancras to the Olympic Park and getting back weary but elated well after midnight. My family had a personal motive, roaring ourselves hoarse (as you can here in one of my wobbly YouTube clips) in support of Susie Rodgers, my older son and daughter-in-law's bridesmaid, who won three swimming bronze medals. Go for Rio, Suse Missile ! But you didn't need that sort of connection to be carried away by the mood of the Games, supervised by Sir Philip Craven from Bolton, and the extraordinary crowds they drew: warm, friendly, co-operative, cheerful. In a word, Northern, in the sense which persuaded viewers that the famous Hovis TV advert filmed in Dorset was actually filmed up here. I know that I am inviting derision by saying that, or at least mild reproof in the gentle spirit of most comments in the Guardian Northerner 's threads, but it is a serious point. Guided by the Gamesmakers , who really should be put in charge of everything all the time everywhere, the rushing, self-regarding, sharp-elbowed side of the metropolis had a wholesome dose of the way we live, by and large, in the English regions. When we left the park, how we missed the purple and pink uniformed volunteers and the care-plus-fun-minus-saccharine which they gave to visitors. Two other points. One of the friends who came with us said: "We only just stopped grumbling in time", and a datasearch back on the relentlessly sceptical tone of the pre-Olympics media coverage bears her out. It isn't new. We went round Kensington Palace in between times and were struck by its display on the Great Exhibition , the most successful event ever held in the UK, and how Prince Albert and his co-organisers had to stick to their belief that it would work in the face of what the Queen noted in her diary as the newspapers' 'cold indifference.' Such long-standing scepticism by public and press may be part of our national character and perhaps it keeps everyone up to the mark; we certainly wouldn't want the speciously optimistic culture and denial of problems which marked Eastern bloc Communist countries. But a Levenson inquiry into the corrosive effect of downbeat, gloom-ridden and sometimes sneering assumptions about public life would turn up fascinating stuff; not breaking the law, but braking people's energy, confidence and hopes. How excellent that Channel 4's decision to broadcast so much of the Paralympics has been rousingly vindicated. That puts me in mind of another brave and justified broadcasting decision, the BBC's move to MediaCityUK in Salford. On which point, a final impression from London is the scale of funding which has gone into the Olympic and Paralympic Games and made them such a success. It is stunning, as is the level of prosperity which you pass on your stately Boris bike in front of packed restaurants and pubs spilling drinkers on to almost every street corner in the city centre. I don't begrudge this. It's marvellous. But goodness, it needs sharing with the rest of the country. You can read more on the effect of the Paralympics in previous Guardian Northerner posts here , here and here. To avoid getting too euphoric, you can also read these Northerner posts here and here on the reality of life with a disability in the UK. Other photographs by Martin Wainwright.