So, what Remains now?

Given that I made my 'Remain' views clear before the referendum, I shall use this space to reflect on my reaction to the whole process and result.

Disappointment doesn't get close to how I felt on Friday morning. I am deeply fearful for our future. My generation will probably suffer nothing worse than a few unpleasant ripples. I only hope that, by the time my grandchildren are adult, new bridges have been built with Europe and a commitment to peace is sustained. History would suggest I'm a hopeless optimist.

Meanwhile, we all have to pick up the threads of our lives.

But it's not true that we can do nothing. We can continue to live with integrity and dignity and uphold the principles underpinning the European Union even when we've left: opposition to racism, sexism and homophobia in all its forms, upholding the dignity of working people and disabled people and protecting their rights, compassion for those in need or fleeing persecution. We can challenge xenophobia. We can hold our representatives accountable, especially when they fail to keep promises.

Many of us can do this because we have the education that has enabled us to think in this way, and are well-enough paid to meet our own immediate needs and still have energy to engage with political processes. We have social opportunities that are denied to millions. For what this referendum has exposed is the depth of the disaffection felt by those who have felt excluded - socially, economically and politically - for decades, and the failure of Westminster to begin to understand that. Unfortunately, I can't see that changing in the short term. Whatever happens next it seems likely that the government will be run by rich white men from posh schools and Oxford - men who would feel an urgent need to wash their hands if they ever entered the house of an unemployed steel worker. And it might be worth reflecting, as we try to get to grips with our own feelings of alienation when faced with Brexiteers, that many may have felt like this for decades and no one has listened.

What can we do? Not a lot? It would, surely, be arrogant for anyone outside disaffected communities to begin to speak for them. But we can listen. We can try to understand. We can join movements that seek to bring the powerful to account when they ride roughshod, yet again, over the powerless. After all, right now we know how they feel.

And it is fine to want to smack Farage. It's just not okay to do it.

And, for those who have space to even notice anything else going on in the world at the moment, Frogs and Frigate Birds is out!!! Give me a week or two and I'll tell you more about it. Here is the link for readers in the UK.