And when the clock strikes eleven, all this magic will be undone, Cinderella. Your coach will once again become a pumpkin, your coachmen mice, your beautiful dress will crumble to tatters.
Though when my country slips out of its membership of the European Union at eleven p.m. this coming Friday, nothing much will change immediately. I will be able to fold myself away from the triumphant flags and flashing lights in Parliament Square, protected by my duvet and my distance. I expect to rise on Saturday morning and perceive no tangible difference; my pumpkin will still appear to be a carriage, my mice may still bow.
Yet, my country will have drifted away from the continent it shares a shelf with, as certainly as if a deep tectonic fault had ruptured the English Channel.
I challenge myself to record my feelings. But feelings don’t come easy in the post traumatic numbness. I voted remain. When I did so I knew fewer reasons to leave than I do now, but I’d still wish to stay. I voted for Corbyn. I found myself so deeply in love with Corbyn’s offer, policies and decency, that I was prepared to make a fool of myself over it, like a granny (which I am) re-watching a film where she fancies the fit protagonist, or the ladies who stand on street corners clutching religious pamphlets and wearing sublime faces. I had glimpsed Nirvana.
And I do feel deeply cheated by a whole cast of villains; the liars and cynics who now wedge their too numerous bottoms onto the Conservative benches in our House of Commons and their game playing puppet masters: Cummings, Putin, Bannon, IDOX, who else can you imagine tugging the strings? Some of the new class of Tory, hurriedly signed up for their promise of obedience, don’t look like they could stand alone, let alone think or act. Let’s face it, I’m a full-blown conspiracy theorist because, let’s face it, this is a full-blown conspiracy gaslighting a whole nation with its lies.
After ten years of unnecessary hardship, this sham of a phwoff, phwoff Boris de Pfeffel P.M. has managed to dissociate himself with that decade of abuse with the soft-soap, ‘I love you’ of a million abusive men that have gone before him persuading their victims that they will be looked after this time, it will all be okay, I know just what you want and need, it will all be okay.
And they do know exactly what people want. How? Because Johnson and Cummings asked them. ‘I am your new P.M.’ posts slipped into our Twitter and Facebook feeds, ‘tell me what is troubling you?’ Tell me what is troubling you and I will promise it. I will lie, a lie of a million targeted ads, speared straight into your consciousness promising you just what you want. Whether that be to save the polar bears, see fewer non-white faces on the bus or to know that there will be fifty thousand more nurses by 2025, we will promise empty promises, because promises are cheap. Especially if there is no intention of keeping them. Which there isn’t.
So, what do I feel in this landscape of emptiness? Mostly just that, emptiness. The network of lefty twitter-friends that had buoyed me is drifting away, each into their own private chasm. Corbyn’s resignation has added to the void, because for all the unfair MSM (Mainstream Media) misrepresentation and the Chief Rabbi seeding doubt timed to do the maximum damage, he was the fairy on top of our Christmas tree, and the disastrous squabbling in the Labour Party over replacing him has fractured our fragile unity. Already defeated, the feeling of facing more fractional distillation in the party within the post-truth landscape and the searing realities of first past the post, that gives Johnson an unassailable parliamentary majority with forty-four percent of the vote, has well and truly burst our bubble.
Hideous echoes of carelessly paunched white men with boorish chins singing ‘Bye bye E.U. Bye bye E.U.’ to the tune of Auld Lang Syne haunt my earwaves. A tune that entreats us to look back in kindness, to be so abused, has me reaching for google translate: jusqu’à ce que nous nous revoyions, until we meet again.
Me and mine are suffering from a collective by-stander syndrome, numb in our hopelessness, waiting for something inspiring to grow, phoenix like, from the ashes. I don’t know what to think.
Bristol
26thJanuary 2020
aggiegoatmother 