TO see those images of the Sturgeon-May meeting in Glasgow was to understand why the market for divorce photos will never match that for wedding pictures.

Quite apart from the stress involved in getting the warring parties to agree on a neutral location, the optics, as our American friends would say, are awful.

One newspaper asked body language “experts” what they thought, with the first pointing to crossed legs and interlocked fingers as showing the lack of bonhomie between the two leaders, and another referring to their forced “PanAm smiles”.

If you thought that was sexist, the English edition of the Daily Mail went with the headline: “Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!” Byline: Sarah Vine, aka Mrs Michael Gove.

Patrons of Bookbug baby sessions at the local library, where the age range of the main participants runs from 0-18 months, could have done a better job than any of them in summing up what the pictures meant. No fancy words, or indeed any words, required: just look, open mouth, bawl, and reach tearfully for mum or dad.

A fair few adults, pondering the prospect of many more May-Sturgeon meetings to come, might be tempted to do the same.

But hang on, aren’t we all meant to be giddy with excitement at what has been dubbed an historic week?

March 27-31, a usually unremarkable five days, is playing host to the launch of the Great British Stand-Off (following yesterday’s vote at Holyrood); Independence Day (what Brexiteers are dubbing today’s triggering of Article 50); Great Repeal Bill Thursday (aka National Highlighter and Sticky Tab Day); and Freak Out Friday (when the EU will respond to Downing Street’s proposals).

History: like the professor once said, it is just one bloody thing after another.

It was scheduled to have been made at Holyrood last week but the Westminster attack led to the debate on a second independence referendum being suspended. When MSPs resumed it yesterday there was an inevitable sense of anti-climax. Little wonder.

The outcome of the vote was as predictable as the stances taken in the chamber.

The old battle lines remain: Ms Sturgeon arguing she has no option but to give Scotland a choice, her opponents telling her to get on with the day job. The only freshly drawn line is on the timing of a second referendum; whether it should be held in 18 months to two years from now, as the First Minister reckons or whether it will take longer for a Brexit deal to bed down and its impact on Scotland to become clear.

Post-2021 and the Holyrood elections sound about right, Prime Minister?

The dance was both drearily familiar and inevitable. We have been heading here since Ms Sturgeon greeted the post-EU vote dawn by declaring the result had made a second referendum more likely. She could have adopted a wait-and-see stance but she did not. So we move on. To what is the question.

The First Minister yesterday said she would come back after Easter with a plan for her next steps should Mrs May continue to repeat her “now is not the time” response to a second referendum.

Ms Sturgeon has a plan, while David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, never tires of saying Whitehall is stuffed with contingency plans.

But do politicians, and the media, have a plan as to how they are going to take the public with them on this voyage into the unknown?

With a few exceptions, the media hardly did an exemplary job during the EU referendum campaign in holding both sides to account to an equal extent.

The Remain campaign was cast as the doom-mongers who could not possibly know how things would pan out.

The Leavers were embraced as optimists whose predictions were too good to query.

As a result, the latter got away with murdering the truth, the prime example of which was the claim that Brexit would mean £350 million a week more for the NHS.

Given the timescale and the range of subjects covered by Brexit, there will be more to chew over this time, more that can be challenged.

But at the same time, a greater number of participants with competing interests will add immeasurably to the complexity of the process.

If the binary EU referendum could end up a blur, imagine the anarchy when the 27 voices of EU member states join Downing Street, Westminster, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and the rag-tag bands of Remainers and Leavers still fighting the last campaign.

The resulting din from this Tower of Babel could test the eardrums and the patience of even the most dedicated observer.

Which brings us to Monday’s BBC Question Time Special on Brexit.

If this is a sign of the kind of broadcast coverage to come the next few years are going to make Endurance, the Japanese game show lampooned by Clive James, look like the warm-up session at Bookbugs.

The six-person panel was too large, too male – only two women present – and everyone was white.

Alex Salmond had bagged a seat, but there was no-one to speak in the main for Wales or Northern Ireland.

Speculation, the grander the better, was the order of the night. In the end, the event billed as the viewers’ chance to make sense of Brexit was just another shout-fest.

If the media can learn one thing from the coverage of the EU referendum and the US presidential election it is to stop acting like a cat following a laser pointer, darting this way and that according to the whims and directions of political parties.

Though it runs contrary to the industry’s direction in the last decade, Brexit points to the need for “slow” journalism, where time, space and money are given over to proper investigative reporting.

There is still a place for journalism of the fast kind – even more of it in the shape of short, sharp, need-to-know bulletins – but it cannot replace solid digging.

How to find a way to keep people informed while not boring them to death or distraction: that should be the plan the media is working on this week and beyond.

Are we ready? As with everything else Brexit, we are about to find out.