Why are London Underground staff not cheering through the Tannoy? Black and white, do we feel like we are walking taller? (I certainly feel 5cm taller, and it’s not my heeled winter boots). Why is there not a sense of Christmas and spontaneous, happy chatter amongst passengers on the commute into work? It is because we realize that, however good a leader, change has to come from us too? A sobering thought on a grey morning in London.

I am quietly overjoyed that the American people so urgently feel the need for change. Inevitably, a huge new well of self-discipline is going to be needed to achieve that. Barack’s grandmother apparently taught him about ‘raising yourself by your bootstraps and working hard for everything to the best of your ability’. A good role model on all accounts. But Obama is right: change will take time, discipline and hard work to build. Obama may not have the political CV you would usually expect but how exciting that someone who has worked with community projects, who has witnessed poverty and cultural issues first hand, will move into the White House.
He seems a man with great integrity and someone who can find a middle ground. You hope that unlike other American presidents he doesn’t have the same casual assumption that America is entitled to bomb foreign countries. I don’t see the typical male pride and vanity that can spin the world into war.
Reading how personally well organised and disciplined he is, I feel an urgent need to tidy my desk and reactivate my exercise schedule. Nothing to do with that picture in the Metro last night of him coming out of the sea after a swim – quite a pin up I’d say!