So here I am in my French field. The silence is constant apart from the odd bird call or the tractor that moves along the two roads that transect us.
When I say us, of course I mean the dog and me. There is no other.
The odd car goes by, as does the postmistress and occasionally there is the TNT van to deliver my books and wine.
We are on ‘friends’ status now and ask each other how we’re doing. As if either of us really care. But, you know, it’s a touchstone.
The dog, poor soul, is far more excited than me, to greet the delivery man he’s got to know. He doesn’t know that many people in our rather limited life.
I though, of course, have another life he cannot enter – the Internet.
And so while he chases the cars that do pass by our field I enter life…not a real life in terms of touch or speech, but the closest I can come to it these days.
Before me on my screen I watched almost three quarters of a million people march in London for a peoples’ vote.
I saw them pour through the streets with banners proclaiming a love of united nations, where freedom of movement was a right.
And my heart filled with joy at all those who defied a sullied referendum and shouted out to Parliament that cheating was not, and never should be, acceptable.
As those tired people made their way home, me, who hadn’t moved beyond my computer, felt vindicated that right had triumphed over perfidy.
Among those marching were those from all over ‘mainland’ Europe – those Brits who have made France, Spain, Portugal and all those other countries, their home.
Thanks to Brexit they now risk being third country aliens; overnight illegals forced to prove residency via numerous, difficult documents.
I have written of this before. I do not apologise of writing about it again.
The last time I did, I received an email from a reader who began by saying how much she liked my columns from France.
She then berated me from coming out of my box to discuss brexit and suggested I had no right to do so. I no longer lived in the UK and therefore was exempt from any opinion on what occurred there.
So, she continued, I should just return to writing about life in la France Profonde and the changing seasons etc.
Now, I have always replied to all who take the time to email me, but I found myself pressing delete for the first time ever on this patronising missive.
Of course the essential point of this column is it began as life in France, or rather the moving towards a life in France with all its many problems and many joys.
And along the way it became my story in all its twists and turns. My particular story, which had an outlet here.
But there are many, many stories of numerous people who have moved all over Europe in pursuit of something more; something different before life draws to a close.
They are not, as many would have it, rich retirees staring into the gin glass instead of the abyss. Sure, some are, but more work here than not.
The turmoil created by the vote for all of us ‘abroad’ extends way beyond the mountain of paper work and red tape now having to be navigated.
It goes deep into the soul and the realm of displacement. It changes forever the concept of freedom to roam.
All of this played in my head as I watched PM May address the House following her return from Brussels.
A kinder person might have felt some pity in seeing the changes in her face. Make-up can cover just so much – not the bags and deeply scored lines under her eyes.
But as she played to the braying mob of Parliament I felt only contempt for her certainty founded on lies and party disunity.
Her exhaustion is nothing compared to the fear felt by those who now may have to return to a country they left long ago; a country whose much heralded values have long been ground into the dust.
She acknowledged the 700,000 strong march only when forced to, dismissing it as meaningless in comparison to the 17.5 million who voted to leave.
Through the magic box it did not look meaningless to me as row after row walked wrapped in the flags of unity.
God knows what may have happened by the time this is published. She could be gone but I doubt it. She has, I’ve come to think, like Blair before her, a messianic belief in the righteousness of her cause.
For all of us, much of life is made up of people telling us what’s good for us. Or, like my reader, telling us to get back in the box.
Our lives are too precious for that. As is our right to live where we choose – even if that’s a field in France with only a dog for company.
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