Heartache

I ap­pre­ci­ate the way some Cata­lan friends pos­sess, in their suc­cinct Eng­lish, the gift of get­ting to the nub of a mat­ter.

“If your body is mak­ing a noise,” says our doc­tor Marta, glad of the op­por­tu­nity to switch lan­guages as we worry about an ache or a pain, “then it means you are alive.”

Hard to argue with that.

“Your heart must hurt,” says Nuria the pot­ter through her mask, look­ing into my soul. There is gen­uine con­cern and in­com­pre­hen­sion writ­ten all over what lit­tle I can see of her face. The topic is the dis­united king­dom leav­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union. Yep. That sums it up.

The di­vorce emo­tions are many, com­plex and com­pre­hen­sively neg­a­tive, in­clud­ing in­credulity at all the lies, em­bar­rass­ment at the sow­ing of di­vi­sion, dis­re­spect and ag­gres­sion, and de­spair at the loss of rights for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, waste of in­valu­able time and en­ergy when we should be wholly fo­cused on cli­mate change and in­equal­ity. Then there is the gross greed of a few at the cost of the many.

“What is hap­pen­ing to your coun­try?”

“I think it is bet­ter you go now – no, not you, Mar­tin, and your fam­ily – but the coun­try. Eu­rope has had enough.”

By the time you are read­ing this there may be a deal of sorts. I sus­pect that Boris John­son might not be dim enough to re­ally be­lieve his own blus­tery, of­fen­sive, jin­go­is­tic ram­blings and threats. Or maybe not, on both counts. Ei­ther way, the Eng­lish Chan­nel just got wider. Any air left in the British bal­loon of in­ter­na­tional trust and re­spect has been ex­hausted for now. Like a long final fart. The world has watched in dis­be­lief as a found­ing democ­racy, like the USA, turns in­ward and onto it­self. It is odi­ous but far from odour­less.

I know, as do so many in the UK, that a na­tion wed­ded for so long to the Amer­i­can model (oh the irony) has been well and truly shafted after years of a widen­ing so­cial gap eco­nom­i­cally and re­gion­ally, and a cal­cu­lated ero­sion of wel­fare and well­be­ing, com­pounded by a gross ob­ses­sion of putting profit above pro­tec­tions for the life-sup­port that is na­ture. I gen­uinely be­lieve most peo­ple on the is­lands never wanted or now re­gret hav­ing ever wanted what has come to pass.

The pop­ulist media has to a great ex­tent been com­plicit, to the point that the be­lief in great­ness and na­tion and damn any de­tail to the con­trary is what is at the root of the far right de-con­struct of the vital essences of British com­mu­nity, in­clu­sion and con­sid­er­a­tion. Sow dis­trust to­wards all things for­eign, sing songs of Em­pire, wave the flag, and peo­ple will lose rea­son. John­son and his car­tel have so much to an­swer for.

But for now it is too late. Re­mem­ber, though, there are a great many peo­ple on the di­min­ish­ing isle who are Eu­ro­peans, among them world lead­ers in their fields, re­spected for their quiet wis­dom, abil­ity, in­tegrity and achieve­ments.

Yes, Nuria, my heart aches.

May other na­tions heed the les­son.

And may 2021 bring rea­son, kind­ness, co­op­er­a­tion and hope.