Sport and I have never been easy bedfellows. In fact we separated shortly after I left school. No more would I be required, by a rather overweight disciplinarian of a sports teacher, to engage in activities which gave me no pleasure and of which I failed to see the point. Of course there may have been another factor at play, illustrated by the fact that when it came to football, where other boys were chosen to be in a team, I was generally selected to be the referee. It meant I ran up and down the field but didn't have to be trusted with the ball itself. It also meant that I learned the offside rule at an early age, but otherwise, I am afraid that it did nothing to encourage me to participate in activities in the cold and wet. Thinking back on it, it may be that my refereeing experience started me on the way to becoming a lawyer. My view of sport, however, as something (not) to engage in has not really changed over the years.

But now, for the past couple of weeks we have had the Olympics. And worse still, I actually found some of it quite exciting to watch. Even I could hardly fail to be caught up in the moment. The slightly bonkers opening ceremony got us all in the mood and it would be perverse not to have immense admiration for the tremendous effort which had been put in by so many young and not so young people. At the end of the fortnight, with another slightly strange but involving closing ceremony, I think it's fair to say that the whole nation felt uplifted by it all. Everyone I've talked to about it has only praise for what has happened. We, the Brits, all seem, for the moment at least, to have a different and more optimistic view of ourselves. Even the definition of who is British in the mind of the man in the street seems to have widened to embrace our multicultural population. We seem to be more at ease with difference. Not only do we have Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Steve Redgrave, but I'm sure we'll soon have Dame Jessica Ennis and Sir Mohammed Farrah, neither of whom are exactly pure Anglo-Saxon, Norman or even Celtic. Brilliant. You couldn't ask for nicer or more down to earth Brits than the people who've been part of team GB.

How long the Olympic effect will last is another matter. It will depend largely on what the government does to build upon it, but I can't help feeling that it will at least be another step in our seeing ourselves in a different way. It will perhaps make us more resistant to the rhetoric of the shouty right wing of our political class. Those such as the idiot MP for Cannock Chase, Aiden Burley, who seems to be unable to accept that under the skin and behind the religion we are all simply people who can get on with each other given half a chance.

But sport itself? I find it even more puzzling after the Games than before. I think that my difficulty is two-fold the immense physical and financial effort required and the arbitrariness of it all. In one interview, Chris Hoy explained what it took to improve his physical endurance. As we know, as the muscles work, they produce Lactic acid. As it builds up in the muscles, so does the pain. It's the body's way of saying "Hold on a moment.". But for Chris Hoy, it means keeping going and going until the pain is unbearable. At that point, he falls of his bicycle onto the floor. And then the pain gets even worse for another 5 minutes or so. These are so-called 'sick-bucket sessions'. And that's not a metaphor. Others report the same type of gruelling sessions in order to be better than their competitors.

And then there's the fact that there are rules, complex rules, for each event. Without them there would be no event, as there is no obvious purpose to any of them, apart from perhaps racing against the clock the wish to get somewhere in the shortest possible time. Why the hop, skip and jump? Who apart from the competitors understands the rules of Judo or the Omnium bike race, particularly the scratch race? Why is it that in Tennis the ball has to go between the lines? Why is it that in Football, you cannot pass to a member of your team who is nearer to the opposition's goalmouth than at least one member of their defence? Why in rugby can you kick ahead as far as you like, but not throw the ball ahead to someone in your team? They are all rules which are created in order to define the game, in order to give it being. Each event is an arbitrary collection of rules designed to enable it to exist. Why? Because the various events have no purpose in themselves. And they pass the sick-bucket in order to be able to compete with each other and win their game. And then there are the injuries and the long-term damage to their joints. Of course it was not always like this. Years ago, in the days of the amateur, the training was, by all accounts, far less strenuous. But then neither were the rewards for success on the same scale. Nowadays, to the victor go not so much the spoils of war, as the millions from the sponsorship deals

But all of us indulge in pass-times, in hobbies: things that mainly have no purpose in themselves. Whether it is stamp-collecting, fishing with the fish being thrown back into the lake, or golfing with a ball being aimed at a hole a long way away. Or indeed, writing essays like this, which I cannot imagine will change the world one tiny bit. On the other hand, it does me good because in order to write them, I first have to collect my thoughts. And in thinking about things, I believe that I see things more clearly. And this to me is an end in itself. Or perhaps that's just how I define the rules of my game. To play it, however, I don't need to plough through mud, risk physical injury or make myself sick. Indeed, there is evidence that my activity will help to ward off Alzheimers and will be something which I can indulge in when the sporting types have long since had to give into their aching bodies. I can write when inspiration comes and veg out when it doesn't. To me it's an ideal situation. Not of course that I'm trying to justify my obvious lack of sporting talent in any way...