A black day in the sunshine
Woke up feeling better than I had done all week, and so was able to go to work. An unrealistically gorgeous sunny day. At this point the day turned into a paranoid Philip K Dick novel. Or that short story by Ray Bradbury A Sound of Thunder when a time traveller steps on a butterfly and on returning to the present, finds that the sinister Deutsche has won the presidential election. A day imbued with a feeling of nightmarish unreality.
Although I had gone to sleep to predictions of a narrow remain vote victory, the Brexit vote resulted in a narrow victory for the leave campaign. This is the darkest day I have ever experienced politically. As the stock markets and pound plunged, my phone peeped and the news of Cameron's resignation came through on my Guardian app. My involuntary swear, meant I told the people around me, maybe because the train was from Brighton (a bastion of remain) that everyone sighed. Amazing that a Prime Minister's resignation is just a footnote to a day of historical disaster.
The young bloke next to me said the BBC site had crashed. When I got to the agency, everyone was shellshocked. London voted convincingly for remain too. But then the agency is full of young people who this madness will hurt more than anyone. To take one case, Fernanda (who is Brazilian) is just about to buy a house, and plunged into worry about whether this is the right thing to do now.
The working day went quite well, however, and I managed to make up lost ground from yesterday. My brain working at last having been in some kind of cold storage all day. Train home, after absorbing all the dire news and looking at the bewildered and angry Facebook stream. Brexiteer friends on my timeline remaining very quiet about from a bit some self-righteous stuff about accepting the majority decision. The motivation for the leavers seems to have been around migration, as xenophobia and racism were stirred up shamelessly by the leave campaign. Keep thinking of 1930s Germany and how joke candidates nobody would take seriously suddenly become our leaders. We are a few steps away from this. Meanwhile Labour leader Corbyn has shown himself to be spectacularly inept and weak. He must go too.
So back home to Lorraine, very pleased to be with her tonight of all nights. To the Preston Park Tavern for a bite to eat and some beer, before we sloped home to an uncertain future.
Although I had gone to sleep to predictions of a narrow remain vote victory, the Brexit vote resulted in a narrow victory for the leave campaign. This is the darkest day I have ever experienced politically. As the stock markets and pound plunged, my phone peeped and the news of Cameron's resignation came through on my Guardian app. My involuntary swear, meant I told the people around me, maybe because the train was from Brighton (a bastion of remain) that everyone sighed. Amazing that a Prime Minister's resignation is just a footnote to a day of historical disaster.
The young bloke next to me said the BBC site had crashed. When I got to the agency, everyone was shellshocked. London voted convincingly for remain too. But then the agency is full of young people who this madness will hurt more than anyone. To take one case, Fernanda (who is Brazilian) is just about to buy a house, and plunged into worry about whether this is the right thing to do now.
The working day went quite well, however, and I managed to make up lost ground from yesterday. My brain working at last having been in some kind of cold storage all day. Train home, after absorbing all the dire news and looking at the bewildered and angry Facebook stream. Brexiteer friends on my timeline remaining very quiet about from a bit some self-righteous stuff about accepting the majority decision. The motivation for the leavers seems to have been around migration, as xenophobia and racism were stirred up shamelessly by the leave campaign. Keep thinking of 1930s Germany and how joke candidates nobody would take seriously suddenly become our leaders. We are a few steps away from this. Meanwhile Labour leader Corbyn has shown himself to be spectacularly inept and weak. He must go too.
So back home to Lorraine, very pleased to be with her tonight of all nights. To the Preston Park Tavern for a bite to eat and some beer, before we sloped home to an uncertain future.
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