Lights out: 5 am

And thank God I work for myself, at home. Probably would have stayed up to watch the Inauguration regardless, though, I think. (And be paying for it now in spades.)

Well. Great speech, of course, although he almost lost me when he overloaded the water metaphor early on and changed it in, if you will forgive me putting it like this, midstream -- from rising tides to still waters vs. raging storms, all in one sentence -- which I put down to the youthful indiscretion of speechwriter Jon Favreau. Actually it would be fun to fisk the speech but one must get on and earn one's living, and in the meantime I thought the delivery was flawless as per.

Loved all the shots of the crowd, one by one and en masse. Thought the First Lady carried off the OTT dress (which I hope hid thermal underwear), with the aid of her own radiance and of the brilliant combination of contrasting heavy, dark, saturated colours on and in her hands and hair. And as for Aretha Franklin's hat: if you look like that, dress up to it, I say. I loved the way people's clothes reflected the cold: the crowd in ear-flap caps, Franklin all bunnyrugged up below the hat in a matching soft all-enveloping winter cape, even the pianist (of all people) complementing her speccy three-string pearl necklace with a fetching pair of fingerless mittens.

Apparently Teddy Kennedy collapsed at lunch after the inauguration and was taken out on a stretcher, but I was glad he saw the important bit and I bet he was too. Clinton, Bill not Hillary, looked monumentally pissed off about something right up until he walked outside. Jimmy Carter looked almost unchanged since the 1970s. Bush Senior looked scarily doddery and perhaps should not have been outside and walking around. Bush Junior looked haunted, miserable and scared. As well he might.

After I decided to stay up, I went to the great big 24/7 servo up on Grand Junction Road for an early paper and some strengthening snacks and the joint was jumping at 2 am, including a couple of graveyard-shift coppers with blood sugar issues. Back home again, I settled down to watch, determined not to get all emotional no matter who said what, but didn't even get as far as Obama's speech; I was reduced to a wet mess the minute the ranting-Baptist-type chappie who made the Invocation mentioned Martin Luther King, and again at the end when the Navy launched into four-part harmony one verse into the Star Spangled Banner. There is something visceral about that harmony moment in choral music, the moment when the music spreads out sideways, like the opening of a fan. Or, as the great Dorothy Dunnett once remarked, 'Music, the knife without a hilt.'

Also loved the poem after the oath. Obama commissioned poet Elizabeth Alexander, Harlem-born and now a professor at Yale, to write the poem for the inauguration ceremony. It was not the usual official state-commissioned stuff but a beautiful, simple set of clear images celebrating the value and virtues of ordinary people's everyday lives, their capacity for dignity and beauty. Oh and with, in the middle, a sharp truth and another wet mess moment. 'Say it plain: that many have died for this day.'

What was even more fabulous than the poem was the fact that thousands of people shut up and listened to it, as they did when that quartet of legendary musicians played John Williams' intriguing arrangement of 'Simple Gifts' (from traditional Shaker music via Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, and that article suggests the extraordinary depth of reference that characterised almost every segment of the inauguration ceremony), which is one of my favourite pieces of music. I was reminded of the two things I love most about Americans in general: their beautiful courtesy, and the fact that they love and respect music and poetry.

Apparently the cello was made of special cold-resistant carbon fibre. And speaking of the cello, never mind how cute Obama is; I think I'm in love with Yo-Yo Ma.