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As parades go, it was pleasant enough.

City boys wolf-whistled at . Office girls took photos of Chris Hoy on their mobile phones and zoomed in on the triple-layered bling around his neck. Natasha Danvers-Smith warned autograph hunters to "watch out for the horse-poo" left by the mounted police escort.

What was missing, as the 12 floats rolled slowly from Mansion House through to Trafalgar Square, was the giddy-eyed Olympic fever which had gripped the nation back in the summer.

There might well have been good reasons why the parade had to be delayed until the middle of October - planning issues, traffic control, the busyness of - but it was hard to escape the feeling that the moment had passed.