letting rip

Note: this was written last Monday, before Thursday’s Makerfield bye-election result which has cheered me enormously.

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Oooh, I am so close to letting rip here instead of at the breakfast table where Simon and I have a ‘state-of-the-world’ discussion every morning over coffee, toast (me) and ultra-healthy piles of muesli, porridge, raisins, seeds, yogurt, honey, fruit (him).

[Proust’s ‘Balbec’]

Now, I know that not everyone who reads this is as pro-Europe as me; a few times I’ve been the unintended recipient of an email criticising a newsletter (tip: always check the ‘to’ line before slagging someone off). But I am unswervingly and totally pro-Europe. I has summer jobs in France, studied Modern Languages, travelled all over Europe with work, lived in Germany for three years, in Belgium for three years, had twins in Frankfurt, another baby in Leuven. I feel European, our children are European, our grandson is Swedish-British-European, two of our children’s partners are EU citizens. But we are not. And it kills me on an increasingly regular basis. All that has been lost, for the sake of what?

I’m not just talking about stuff like passport queues with questions which were never asked before (why are you visiting, how long for, where are you staying). It goes very much deeper than that, and comes down to the thing I hate most of all, people having power over others, deciding what they can and can’t do, where they can and can’t travel, work, have families and good lives.

I sound like a broken record when I say that while things were not perfect before Brexit - when are they ever? - they were pretty fine Europe-wise. We had innumerable freedoms, so who in their right mind would actually think it a good thing to take those away from others, from themselves?

[Cabourg]

The whole of Europe on our doorstep, all those opportunities, all those connections and networks, for everyone. Je m’en fou, said a lot of people. Thus wrecking plans and studies, impacting families, undermining livelihoods, almost obliterating the learning of languages in schools and universities, making what was previously perfectly easy and doable now nightmarishly complicated and often impossible.

[Honfleur]

This truth-bomb is always ticking behind my usually carefully non-confrontational, non-controversial Substack newsletters, but last weekend it exploded. I read that Farage has started a Substack (in his name, who knows who writes it?) and my stomach churned. I know it’s all virtual and not in the real world, but the degrees of separation between me and him suddenly collapsed and it’s as though we are all in a big virtual Substack office building and he could actually be my neighbour, and people visiting his office could wander down the corridor and put their head round my door for a quick squiz at what I’m doing.

[Le Havre, not offices, but you get the idea]

It may sound overdramatic, but I really, really do not want to be in the same office building as Farage and his supporters. I’m now wondering how Substack will react to his “essay” which is appalling (I’ve had a look, because I need to know who my fellow office-workers are). Words do not fail me, but they are unprintable here. Will Substack now go the way of Twitter/X?

As a result, I’m on the verge of metaphorically chucking my phone and laptop in the fountain like Anne Hathaway does in The Devil Wears Prada.

Because I see Simon filling the decking with hostas, tomatoes, agapanthus, and geraniums, Theo squishing Play-Doh and endlessly reconfiguring his Duplo train set, Zoë teaching him Swedish songs, Tom running round Sôdermalm and leaping into the water on his way back home, Phoebe sending a photo from an Italian supermarket of a jar of Amarena cherries for making ice-cream (but can’t bring it back in hand luggage, because, you know), Cian getting his jiu-jitsu black belt, Alice making chocolate cake from Edd Kimber’s book, Wilson making the best chicken katsu curry this side of Tokyo, and I think this is the way it should be, the way I like it. Analogue, creative, sharing, making, doing. Not virtual, divisive, negative, intolerant.

Well, it seems I let rip. It’s not a bad thing, because self-censorship as a way of avoiding alienating or offending readings is only good up to a point. And this subject goes very deep, and is part of who I am and why I write as I do.

I keep thinking of how The Beatles refused to play to segregated audiences in the USA, and how they were amazed that anyone would think this was OK (“we just play to people”), and how easy it was for them to say no. And, as a result, more and more acts and performers did the same. Well, if I don’t say quite simply that Farage and his views are edging dangerously ever-closer and Brexit is a disaster, then my silence makes me complicit.

Happy Sunday!