"Go enjoy yourself," said President Bush in his congratulatory telephone call to Barack Obama on election night. It was like a child who has just smashed up all his toys inviting another to come and play in his nursery. To inherit two wars and a broken economy would not be most people's idea of fun. But that's pig-headed Bush for you.

His remark made me brood about the trials that Obama will face as president and the sad likelihood of disappointed expectations. Even yesterday, with his first proposed appointments, a question mark was raised over his promise of "change". For Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta, the men he wants as chief of staff and head of his transition team, are Clinton veterans and combative, partisan politicians who don't seem right for the "new politics" with which Obama has said he wants to bring Democrats and Republicans together. But then we still don't really know what he means by "change".

The one unquestionable and exciting change that this election has already wrought is simply his own elevation to the presidency. This is not so much because Obama is an African-American, but because he is a one-man melting pot whose complex family background makes him an ideal leader of such an ethnically diverse nation. An all-black descendant of slaves would too easily have been seen as representing just one ethnic minority. Being of mixed race, Obama is in a position to garner the support of everybody.

I confess to being an Obama maniac who finds reassurance not only in his internationalist background and attitudes but also in his calm, unruffled and reflective character. I can't imagine anyone better to steer us through the troubled waters ahead. This is so even if "change" turns out to be no more than an empty slogan.

Given the size of Obama's election victory, it seems strange now that millions of his supporters were anxious until the end that he somehow wouldn't make it. In reality, it has been clear for months that he was likely to win; and even in the immediate aftermath of the "Palin bounce", Bill Clinton (who, as Obama said at the time, "knows a little something about politics") predicted that he would win "pretty handily". There was really very little to fear. By the same token, we should now stay calm and keep hope alive. We face turbulent times that will doubtless rock Obama's presidency along with the rest of us, but I can find no reason to fear that he will let us down.

• The recession may be beginning to bite, but it seems so far to be having little effect on the British media, if their coverage of the American election is any guide. Anybody who is anybody in the press and broadcasting (as well as some who are, perhaps, not), seems to have been handed a plane ticket to the United States to experience this great event for themselves.

The BBC, for example, covered the election as if it were taking place in Britain, with reporters posted all over the country, sometimes even in quite obscure corners, to offer their comments as the results came in, while various pundits jostled for attention in David Dimbleby's Washington studio. One shudders to think what all of this will have cost (though not, I suppose, as much as Jonathan Ross's suspended salary).

In one way, it is encouraging that the media should devote such resources to a foreign story when economies have reduced their presence abroad to a fraction of what it once was. But it might be thought a more responsible use of a shrinking income to spend it on permanent representation in undercovered parts of the world, than on flooding America with London-based journalists.

The election, of course, was a momentous event, and this will doubtless have been used as justification for this extravaganza, though there was little danger that fewer reporters would not have kept us just as well informed. But such is the lure of the United States that every journalist dreams of going there, and the pressure on editors to let them do so must have been enormous.

• A somewhat overlooked anniversary is that of the gin and tonic, which was first served in London bars 150 years ago. It is a cocktail of remarkable longevity, given the vagaries of fashion to which such alcoholic concoctions are prey.

Cocktails come and go, and sometimes fall from favour altogether, but the gin and tonic soldiers on through thick and thin. It is one of those combinations that was always meant to be, like mustard and cress, chips and vinegar, or shepherd's pie and Worcester sauce.

Originally, tonic water wasn't an accompaniment to gin, but the other way round. British soldiers in India, who were forced to take quinine dissolved in carbonated water to fight off malaria, added gin to disguise its revolting taste and later brought the habit back to Britain.

But it only became popular in 1858, when Erasmus Bond patented a new "improved aereated tonic liquid" that tasted much nicer and was found, combined with gin and ice, to constitute a uniquely refreshing way to get tipsy. Thus gin rose in social status from being the 18th-century sedative of the poor to the 19th-century tipple of the moneyed classes.

That gin and tonic has survived its unfashionable associations with Surrey stockbrokers or retired officers in Cotswold pubs reflects the fact that it is absolutely and irreplaceably delicious.

• This week Alexander was glued to the television for the American election but managed belatedly to visit the Westfield shopping centre, which is only 15 minutes' walk from his London pad: "With its curving structures and snaking ceiling lights, it is a place of great architectural confusion, yet an incongruous citadel of glamour amid the dinginess of Shepherd's Bush."