As an event it was eclectic, chaotic and a tribute to how things have changed

"I don't know whether Britons are as patriotic now as they were at the last jubilee," said Michael Lewington, 62, from Battersea, London, "but lots of people are here anyway, even if it's just curiosity that's brought them out."

Mr Lewis, an accountant, is a staunch royalist who considers it his duty to be in the Mall for royal occasions, be they funerals, Trooping the Colour or jubilees. But if his view was correct, most of the rest of the one million people who joined him were there for a show, and a show they got, embracing everything from a spaghetti bolognaise on wheels to a band playing traditional Indian music on bagpipes. There were Hell's Angels, dancers on stilts and martial arts exponents doing their thing down the Mall, which must have confirmed to the many foreigners in the crowd that Britain is one eccentric nation.

After the ordered dignity of St Paul's and Guildhall earlier in the day, the theme of the afternoon seemed to be that there was no theme. Quirky floats representing the decades of the Queen's reign were preceded by vintage AA vehicles and followed by a Commonwealth pageant to which a few guest members, such as Ethiopia and Brazil, seemed to have been admitted.

Perhaps in accordance with the slightly chaotic atmosphere, the timing of the event gradually slipped, so that the final fly-past was half an hour behind schedule. Punctuality was more important 25 years ago.

Seated at the Queen Victoria monument, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh could be seen frequently consulting their programmes, as if to work out why Barbara Windsor was gliding past them on a float full of photographic cut-outs, or what the mobile telephone box was meant to represent. They seemed to enjoy it all the same; when the calypso dancers passed by, the Duchess of Wessex looked ready to join them as she jigged in her seat to the music.

Standing in almost the same spot he occupied for the silver jubilee, Mr Lewington mused: "There was a lot more military involvement last time. I certainly don't remember anything like calypso bands."

But for David Martin and his wife, Yvonne, from Bedford, that was the point. "If the jubilee had been five years ago, I don't think the celebrations would have been as big," said Mrs Martin, 58. "The Royal Family has had to build some bridges, but I feel they have re-established themselves. They used to be a bit aloof – younger people would not have put up with that."

But technology has also altered the way in which we perceive this sort of event. Twenty-five years ago one either went to the jubilee celebrations or watched them on television; now, giant screens have turned them into an inter-active experience. Greeted by Princess Michael of Kent, one member of the public could not decide whether to look the royal personage in the eye or stare past her to see whether the two of them were on TV.

At the back of the crowd, people called friends elsewhere in the Mall on their mobiles to learn where the Queen was. "I saw her! I saw her!'' screamed Stanka Hrbe-kova, 23, an au pair from Slovakia, who had been pogoing up and down for several minutes in an attempt to see over the taller people in front of her.

The main thing one learnt from a brief glimpse of the monarch in her Queenmobile, however, was that her hat and dress were nowhere near as lurid a shade of cerise as they appeared to be on the giant screen she was passing.

If at times the festivities seemed overly multicultural and child-friendly, the finale was an authentically British blend of old-fashioned ceremony and spontaneity. The police allowed the crowds to spill into the Mall and the space on front of Buckingham Palace; at last everyone could see the Royal Family on the balcony, and the girls could indulge the urge to scream every time Princes William and Harry came out. The rain threatened by the forecasters held off until after the spectacular fly-past by Concorde and the Red Arrows, and a million people waved umbrellas and Union flags as they sang "Land of Hope and Glory" and "God Save the Queen".

For the monarch, in a year that began with fears that the golden jubilee might not take off, and in which she lost her mother and sister, the sight of the Mall filled with elated subjects must have been the one she enjoyed most.