Friday, July 8, 2016

338 hours later

I remember the feeling when I discovered that Britain had voted to leave the European Union.

I had woken early, and reached for my phone - to see what time it was, not through force of terrible habit, honest.

"I'll just look" I thought to myself.

The Guardian's home page loaded, there was a smirking Nigel Farage, and my stomach immediately churned.

And then there was a metaphorical 'click'.

Amidst all the bombs exploding as politicians resigned, went into hiding, disavowed promises that were merely possibilities, faced the media with faces far from those of triumph, stock markets crashing, the pound sinking, arguments over who should have had a plan for this, social media filling with cries of 'what have we done?', hundreds of searches enquiring what exactly was the institution that the people had just decided to leave, newly empowered xenophobes and racists somehow believing that their vote was in fact for 'send the buggers back'....

...one bomb remained unexploded. The one closest to me and my family. The one primed under me and my family.

It's still there, ticking. And nobody can tell me if or when it's going to explode, and what will happen when it does.

And now I'm relying on Oliver Letwin to lead the negotiations? Good grief.