They have little or no sense of national identity, ‘nation’ being a dirty word. They are far more interested in identity politics, such as trans issues and questions of race and so-called white privilege. The only thing they really seem to care about is how they come across on social media – a kind of ‘does my virtue look big in this?’ mentality. How they ever managed to go on to live anything even resembling a normal existence is a mystery to me. But somehow, they did.

They knew the value of life, you see, understood how precious and precarious it is. They had survived: they owed it to those who did not to keep going. There is more passion, more vitality, in someone like Joy Trew, 98, a great-grandmother from Bristol who served as a corporal in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, than in your average 18-year-old, sitting in their bedroom watching TikToks or feeling triggered because someone’s misgendered their cat.

The lack of self-awareness, the total entitlement, the utter selfishness: when you stop to think about it he’s probably far more representative of modern British attitudes than his (comparatively) hard-working brother or father. I have no doubt that his experience was by no means unusual. We wave our little flags today, pile the cream and jam on our scones, chink our teacups. But what that generation endured is hard to fathom, decades on.

No technology, no phones, relatively basic medicine, no touchy-feely therapy sessions. It was do or die; you had no choice but to get on with it. The park spans 375 hectares with visitors able to watch surfers attempt the Eisbach wave on the Eisbachwalle River, Online Algebra 5th Grade Teacher or enjoy spectacular views from the Monopteros, a small Greek temple folly at the top of a hill.  And just as a reminder of the absolute agony he’s suffering, his tin-eared idiot of a wife posted a picture of him and their two children with their backs to the camera, enjoying their not-so-hard-earned ‘freedom’ in an idyllic garden.

And don’t get me wrong, it was wonderful to see so many people thronging the Mall, and all those street parties (in defiance of the gloomy weather). But for me, at any rate, the official celebrations were just tinged with… well, an inescapable sense of melancholy. It’s not just that the few remaining veterans of the Second World War are very much in the twilight of their years, or that the woman who led that generation through their darkest hours with her parents – Queen Elizabeth II – is gone.

Watching the Red Arrows, seeing the faces of the crowd, listening to the stories of the veterans, I felt a sense of wistful longing for a nation, a people, a spirit and, above all, a clarity of purpose that I fear no longer exists.