In May 2012, I was among the press representatives who accompanied the London 2012 party to Athens to fetch the sacred flame that had been carried from the seat of the Ancient Games at Olympia before being flown back in a liveried British Airways plane. 

I even had my picture taken with the strange little enclosed spark on the neighbouring seat.

Sitting behind me was Boris Johnson. It is a shame we could not have arranged a swap, but there we are.

On July 7, 2012, I stood at Hockerill crossroads near my home in Bishop's Stortford as the Olympic Torch that had been lit by my strange little next-door neighbour - we're talking about the Olympic flame here, not my actual strange little next-door neighbour, just to be clear - was carried on its long and winding road to the Olympic Stadium in Stratford.

To be honest, the experience was underwhelming - like seeing the Tour de France come past with all the usual buses and outriders and panoply, but only one rider.

The experience was far from underwhelming, however, when I was lucky enough to see the Olympic cauldron lit at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony. I can still remember a good friend of mine sitting alongside me who was moved to tears, and I almost joined him.

On Tuesday (October 24) this week, there was another offshoot of the sacred Olympia flame as the Torch began its latest convoluted journey, this time bound for South Korea, where the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games will take place next year from February 9 to 25.

According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), it will travel 1,200 miles by plane, ship, train, boat, robot, zip wire, cable car and bike and will take more than 100 days, with 7,500 Torchbearers helping to carry it along the way.

The background to this latest Olympic Torch Relay has been bleak, given the sequence of nuclear and ballistic missile tests that have recently been carried out by North Korea and the uninhibited war of words that has been conducted between its leader, Kim Jong-un, and the United States President Donald Trump.

Against such a background, the words of the man credited with founding the modern Games, Baron Pierre De Coubertin, ring with something close to poignancy:

"May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic Torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous, and more pure."

And yet, and yet…

Just a day before the Torch-lighting ceremony at Olympia, I attended the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on Olympic Cooperation at the InterContinental, formerly the Grand Hotel, in Paris by the city's Mayor Anne Hidalgo and her counterpart from Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti.

All too often, a Memorandum of Understanding has a cumbersome feel to it. But this, Garcetti insisted, was different.

The first section of the Memorandum speaks of Paris and LA creating "a new gold standard of sustainability for major international sporting events" offering "exemplary and innovative approaches to energy and water efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions reduction and climate resilience".

Article Two commits to a goal of "hosting inclusive Games", with the cities sharing expertise "in the area of expanding procurement for minorities, services and housing for refugees, migrants and the homeless".

The third article involves offering "innovative, data-driven solutions to common challenges and to create sustainable jobs".

With the signing taking place during the C40 Summit on Air Pollution Control that was being held at the hotel, and with Hidalgo and Garcetti holding positions as, respectively, chair and vice-chair of C40, the strongest emphasis was laid upon the sustainability element.

Having attended the discussions two years earlier that had led to the creation of the Paris Climate Accord, Garcetti clearly represented a philosophy diametrically opposed to that espoused by Trump, who announced in June that the US would be withdrawing from the Accord.

Several US states, including California, responded by stating that they would undertake responsibility themselves to continue with the anti-global warming measures that the Accord is designed to encourage.

Asked to outline his position on this issue, Garcetti - whose city will host the Olympics four years after Paris 2024, following September's historic joint award by the IOC - offered a narrative that spoke of the power of individual cities, and also of something created uniquely from a real sense of Olympic solidarity.

"Because of changes in our national leadership I have been asked a lot recently - are cities more powerful and more important than ever?" he said.  

"The feeling I have is that cities have always been important.

"But maybe at the moment we are called to do even more. Cities are accelerating human understanding and progress.

"When we started the Olympic bid as competitors I have to say that when this crazy idea of awarding to two cities first came up, at first there were many reasons to dismiss it. We should both compete, there should be one Olympics, and there should be one winner.

"But as I got to know Anne better I realised that the opportunity to actually have a collaboration instead of a competition was something that so heavily weighed on the positive side that we had to open up a conduit to change the dynamic back to the Olympic ideals that Anne just spoke about.

"Those Olympic values are so important to what we need in this world right now. Because I think our experience is everything they told us the Olympics were not supposed to be.

"Okay, it's supposed to be a competition, but it's collaborative. It's supposed to be closed and secretive, but it was open. It was supposed to be a bunch of losers and instead it was a bunch of winners.

"To have a dual award to two cities gives us an opportunity to turn our attention to what's important.

"So this agreement, this accord, is something that Anne and I discussed from the very beginning of the Olympic bid cycle, long before the award. What can we do to collaborate on the environment? What can we do to collaborate on transportation and technology? What can we do to make sure that the Games themselves are the best they can be? 

"What can we do about  immigration and integration in a pluralistic world that needs that so much?

"I think both of us have signed a lot of symbolic things in the past. This is real. This is something that will accelerate human understanding and progress for both of us."

Amen to that.