Iceberg, dead behind.

En español abajo.

Given the infrequency with which I now make these posts, it would be understandable if, dear reader, you’d thought the blog were dead. So what can have moved me sufficiently to write once again, finally, after so long an absence?



Well, July 4th. A day of great importance, for once, on both sides of the Atlantic. It’ll come as no surprise to anybody who’s read these entries over time that I regard the Tories as a corrupt, incompetent rabble. And a few short days from now they’re going to be swept from power with what, if the polls are to be believed, will be devastating completeness.



If that’s what comes to pass it will not be a first. At least in my lifetime, once the Tories have held power for some time, people seem to come to their senses (from my point of view) and comprehensively remove them from government. And while I will of course be happy if Labour sweep in with a large majority and some sense of society and civil conscience dictates political decision-making – in theory, at least – the reasons why it may be quite such a thrashing are a bit depressing, to be honest.



Putting aside the fact that Labour haven’t had to do or say a damn thing to build a huge lead in the polls, simply letting the Tories’ own vices and indifference to poorer people do their work for them, a significant element of their loss of vote share is going to be the Reform Party splitting it. 

The idea that Nigel Farage, who got his craved-for Brexit, should still be relevant in British politics, and apparently likely to enter parliament as an MP, should of course be an indicator of just how shit things are right now, thanks in large part to the great, shining turd of a decision that he campaigned for. 

But, while there seems to be evidence that even some Leave voters are beginning to accept that Brexit was a stupid fucking idea in the first place, the ongoing presence of that xenophobic, Putin-apologist gobshite on our screens betrays a lurch even further to the right by a chunk of the electorate.

 Brexit didn’t deliver the land of milk and honey that we were all promised? Their much-trumpeted £350 million per week inexplicably never got sent to the NHS? But that must have been true – their campaign bus said so. Just goes to show how deeply those pesky immigrants have screwed things for us. Let’s keep hammering that immigration nail for all it’s worth, shall we?



So we face the unedifying prospect of the far-right spectre in parliament on both sides of the channel. (That's how I view Reform, for all their efforts at in-public respectability.)

 And once the dust settles, and Labour have to actually govern, as they surely will because the polls can’t be that badly wrong, what the hell are they going to be able to do?

The red wall will surely go back up now that those Leave voters have got what they wanted. But nationally, the damage is already done. Brexit isn’t going to be undone any time soon - and why would the EU allow it anyway? - so Labour are just going to have to rearrange the damn deckchairs on the Titanic once again and hope nobody notices we’re still sinking.



Never mind, though. At least England are going great guns in the Eur… oh.

(Here's an addition, made a couple of days after posting this, about the true face of the Reform mob, in case anybody were in any doubt.)

Dada la poca frecuencia con la que ahora hago estas entradas, sería comprensible que, querido lector, dieras por muerto el blog. Entonces, ¿qué puede haberme movido lo suficiente como para volver a escribir, por fin, después de tanto tiempo de ausencia?



Bueno, el 4 de julio. Un día de gran importancia, por una vez, a ambos lados del Atlántico. No sorprenderá a nadie que haya leído estas entradas a lo largo del tiempo que considere a los conservadores una chusma corrupta e incompetente. Y dentro de unos pocos días van a ser barridos del poder con lo que, si las encuestas son creíbles, será una demoledora totalidad.



Si eso es lo que ocurre, no será la primera vez. Al menos durante mi vida, una vez que los conservadores han estado en el poder durante algún tiempo, la gente parece entrar en razón (desde mi punto de vista) y desalojarlos completamente del gobierno. Y aunque, por supuesto, me alegraré si los laboristas arrasan con una amplia mayoría y algún sentido de la sociedad y la conciencia civil dicta la toma de decisiones políticas, en teoría, al menos, las razones por las que puede ser una paliza tan grande son un poco deprimentes, la verdad.



Dejando a un lado el hecho de que los laboristas no han tenido que hacer ni decir una maldita cosa para construir una enorme ventaja en las encuestas, simplemente dejando que los propios vicios de los conservadores y su indiferencia hacia los más pobres hagan el trabajo por ellos, un elemento significativo de su pérdida de votos va a ser la división del Partido Reformista. 

La idea de que Nigel Farage, que consiguió su ansiado Brexit, siga siendo relevante en la política británica, y que aparentemente pueda entrar en el parlamento como diputado, debería ser un indicador de lo mal que están las cosas en este momento, gracias en gran parte a la gran y brillante decisión de mierda por la que hizo campaña. 

Pero, si bien parece haber pruebas de que incluso algunos votantes del Leave están empezando a aceptar que el Brexit fue una puta idea estúpida en primer lugar, la presencia continua de esa mierda xenófoba y apologista de Putin en nuestras pantallas delata un bandazo aún más a la derecha por parte de una porción del electorado.

¿El Brexit no ha traído la tierra de leche y miel que nos prometieron? ¿Sus tan cacareados 350 millones de libras semanales inexplicablemente nunca se enviaron al NHS? Pero tenía que ser verdad, su autobús de campaña lo decía. Eso demuestra hasta qué punto nos han jodido las cosas esos molestos inmigrantes. Vamos a seguir martillando ese clavo de la inmigración por todo lo que vale, ¿de acuerdo?



Así que nos enfrentamos a la poco edificante perspectiva del espectro de la extrema derecha en el parlamento a ambos lados del canal. (Así es como veo la Reforma, a pesar de todos sus esfuerzos por la respetabilidad pública).

 Y una vez que el polvo se asiente, y los laboristas tengan que gobernar de verdad, como seguramente harán porque las encuestas no pueden estar tan equivocadas, ¿qué demonios van a ser capaces de hacer?

El muro rojo seguramente volverá a levantarse ahora que los votantes del Leave han conseguido lo que querían. Pero a nivel nacional, el daño ya está hecho. El Brexit no se va a deshacer a corto plazo (y, de todos modos, ¿por qué lo permitiría la UE?) así que los laboristas van a tener que reorganizar las malditas tumbonas del Titanic una vez más y esperar que nadie se dé cuenta de que seguimos hundiéndonos.



Pero no importa. Al menos Inglaterra va viento en popa en la Europacop... ¡joder!

(He aquí un añadido, hecho un par de días después de publicar esto, sobre la verdadera cara de la chusma Reform, por si alguien tenía alguna duda).

Disenfranchised and disgruntled

En español abajo

It's election time in Spain again. Local elections - on which I've written in the past on here. Given what's happened in our town hall over the course of the term that's currently ending, this one's an intriguing affair and every vote counts. That's always the case in areas with low populations, of course, and it makes it even more important, if you're of a mind to pay attention to matters of politics, or complain about how things are run, that you exercise your democratic right. 

So I was slightly concerned when polling cards arrived for my partner and her sister, but not for me. Not to worry, I was assured. The vote's not until May 28th, they've only just started sending them out. It'll arrive. Well it turns out, dear reader, that it will not in fact arrive. Why's that? A very good question.

Last time round, Britain was still in the two-year interim period while the Tories negotiated the exit terms, a sort of pre-Brexit limbo that held things loosely in place and more or less as they'd been before the referendum. As a then-EU citizen, my right to live and work in any country within the EU was automatic. I didn't have to do anything beyond register myself as living in Viana do Bolo and that was it - I was on the electoral roll. Couldn''t vote in the general elections, though that right still extends to me in the UK for 15 years after moving abroad. But in the local council elections, where the things that affect my village's residents most immediately are decided, I could.

You can probably guess where this is going. The two-year interim period is over, and with that the automatic rights conferred on EU citizens are lost to those from outside it. I have been, without any notification, removed from the electoral roll along with every other British citizen living in Spain. I can still vote, but I have to request that I do so in every single election in which I wish to vote from now on. I was completely unaware of this fact, and I'm not alone in my ignorance; according to the BBC, of the 400,000+ Brits living in Spain, fewer than 37,000 have registered for these elections. Under 10%. I don't doubt that some of that will be down to indifference, laziness or a rejection of Spanish party politics, but I suspect a lot of it will be down to the fact that they simply didn't know they had to.

I'm not going to rehash my view on the idiocy of leaving the EU here. It seems, finally, that the people who either voted out of ignorance, or xenophobia, or desperation for change – any change – to the shitty way things were going, or whatever the hell their reasons were, are now realising it wasn't the right call. We've all seen the documentary on Grimsby a place that most certainly voted Leave out of desperation. Things, of course, haven't got better for these people - they've continued to get worse, with a cost of living crisis kicking in to accelerate that decline.

So I'll settle for saying that I'm still waiting for a single one of these mythical 'benefits' of leaving the EU to kick in. We've got blue passport covers again, and... what? The automatic rights of free movement, residence and employment within the EU have gone. Increased bureaucracy in both imports and exports exacerbating already significant supply-chain issues. Import duties on anything you buy from the UK and deliver to the EU, making anything coming from a British company so much more expensive as to not be worth bothering with. (Oh, and this is going to get worse soon. Soon we'll have to pay a Visa waiver to enter the EU, similar to what we currently have to pay to visit the USA.) Absolutely no decrease whatsoever - quite the opposite - in the number of desperate people trying to get into the UK illegally. (How the fuck did people think immigration was going to be affected in the slightest by leaving the EU? The legal immigrants we need, and who do jobs that Brits don't want to do any more, no longer feel welcome. And the illegal immigrants have considerably more urgent concerns to worry about).

And now, a little cherry turd on the top of the shit cake that is the whole clusterfuck, Brits who live abroad find their general lives more difficult, and over 90% of us in Spain won't be voting in this month's elections. So yeah, thanks, Brexit. Even though I've left the country partly in response to the insane, incomprehensible and idiotic referendum result, its consequences continue to fuck things up for me and everybody else.

De nuevo es tiempo de elecciones en España. Elecciones municipales, sobre las que ya he escrito aquí en otras ocasiones. Teniendo en cuenta lo que ha ocurrido en nuestro ayuntamiento a lo largo de la legislatura que ahora termina, se trata de un asunto interesante y cada voto cuenta. Siempre es así en las zonas con poca población, por supuesto, y eso hace que sea aún más importante, si estás dispuesto a prestar atención a los asuntos políticos o a quejarte de cómo se gestionan las cosas, que ejerzas tu derecho democrático. 

Por eso me preocupé un poco cuando llegaron las papeletas electorales de mi pareja y su hermana, pero no las mías. No hay que preocuparse, me aseguraron. La votación no es hasta el 28 de mayo, acaban de empezar a enviarlas. Ya llegará. Pues resulta, querido lector, que no va a llegar. ¿Y eso por qué? Una muy buena pregunta.

La última vez, Gran Bretaña aún estaba en el período provisional de dos años mientras los conservadores negociaban las condiciones de salida, una especie de limbo pre-Brexit que mantenía las cosas más o menos como estaban antes del referéndum. Como ciudadano de la UE, mi derecho a vivir y trabajar en cualquier país de la UE era automático. No tuve que hacer nada más que registrarme como residente en Viana do Bolo y ya está: estaba en el censo electoral. No podía votar en las elecciones generales, aunque ese derecho me sigue amparando en el Reino Unido desde 15 años después de trasladarme al extranjero. Pero en las elecciones municipales, donde se deciden las cosas que afectan más inmediatamente a los vecinos de mi pueblo, sí podía.

Probablemente adivinen adónde va esto. El periodo transitorio de dos años ha terminado, y con él los derechos automáticos conferidos a los ciudadanos de la UE se pierden para los de fuera de ella. He sido, sin notificación alguna, eliminado del censo electoral junto con todos los demás ciudadanos británicos que viven en España. Todavía puedo votar, pero tengo que solicitarlo en cada una de las elecciones en las que desee votar a partir de ahora. Desconocía por completo este hecho, y no soy el único en mi ignorancia; según la BBC, de los más de 400.000 británicos que viven en España, menos de 37.000 se han inscrito para estas elecciones. Menos del 10%. No dudo que parte de ello se deba a la indiferencia, la pereza o el rechazo a la política partidista española, pero sospecho que gran parte se deberá a que simplemente no sabían que tenían que hacerlo.

No voy a repetir aquí mi opinión sobre la idiotez de abandonar la UE. Parece, finalmente, que la gente que votó por ignorancia, xenofobia o desesperación por un cambio -cualquier cambio- en la mierda de cosas que estaban pasando, o cualesquiera que fueran sus razones, se están dando cuenta ahora de que no era la decisión correcta. Todos hemos visto el documental sobre Grimsby, un lugar que sin duda votó "Leave" por desesperación. Las cosas, por supuesto, no han mejorado para esta gente, sino que han seguido empeorando, con una crisis del coste de la vida que ha acelerado el declive.

Así que me conformaré con decir que sigo esperando a que se haga efectiva una sola de esas míticas "ventajas" de salir de la UE. Volvemos a tener fundas azules para el pasaporte y... ¿qué? Han desaparecido los derechos automáticos de libre circulación, residencia y empleo dentro de la UE. Aumento de la burocracia tanto en las importaciones como en las exportaciones, lo que agrava los ya importantes problemas de la cadena de suministro. Derechos de importación para todo lo que se compre en el Reino Unido y se entregue en la UE, con lo que todo lo que proceda de una empresa británica será tanto más caro que no merecerá la pena molestarse en comprarlo. (Ah, y esto va a empeorar pronto. Pronto tendremos que pagar una exención de visado para entrar en la UE, similar a lo que tenemos que pagar actualmente para visitar EE.UU.). No ha disminuido en absoluto, sino todo lo contrario, el número de personas desesperadas que intentan entrar ilegalmente en el Reino Unido. (¿Cómo coño pensaba la gente que la inmigración iba a verse afectada en lo más mínimo por la salida de la UE? Los inmigrantes legales que necesitamos, y que hacen trabajos que los británicos ya no quieren hacer, ya no se sienten bienvenidos. Y los inmigrantes ilegales tienen preocupaciones bastante más urgentes de las que preocuparse).

Y ahora, como guinda del pastel de mierda que es todo este lío, los británicos que viven en el extranjero tienen la vida más difícil en general, y más del 90% de los que estamos en España no votaremos en las elecciones de este mes. Así que sí, gracias Brexit. Aunque he abandonado el país en parte como respuesta al demente, incomprensible e idiota resultado del referéndum, sus consecuencias siguen jodiéndome las cosas a mí y a todo el mundo.

Doing things differently

It's just over a week away now, and like everybody else, Christmas this year is going to be a bit different for me. A lot different, actually. With my mother being in a high-risk group, and cases rising fast in the south-east of England, it's just not worth the risk I'd be putting her in, or the possible enforced ten-day quarantine that may be necessary on arrival. There's also the possible faff of the journey home - I'll come back to that.

So, for the first time in my life, I'll be spending Christmas outside of the UK. I've mentioned in these entries before, the difference between the overwhelming Christmas lights, decorations, etc, in the retail streets of Britain, compared to the rather more understated way it's done here. I don't know if that's the same back home this year - it hardly seems worth decorating streets that are largely going to remain empty - but this year's decoration of the plaza mayor, the main square, in the village, is rather good in my view.

A metal 'tree' built around the
square's fountain. I like it.

    There's also a competition this year for the
     best window display in the local shops,
     and a big push to get people to spend
     locally, both brainchildren of my other
     half. Since we can't really go anywhere,
     like many other people, backing local
     business has become an essential element
     in the fight to keep the economy alive
     when we eventually emerge from this
     pandemic.

     There are some non-window displays that
     say a lot about the culture here as well.
     To a Brit, a wide selection of beers at the
     local boozer is more or less a given,
     especially these days with craft beers
     being hugely popular. While I'm lucky
     that there are a couple of bars with
     a decent selection of beers in the
     village, it's by no means the norm here. 

Frankly, Estrella Galicia is king. It's absolutely ubiquitous - their branding is everywhere and almost all the bars sell it, the majority on draught. It far outsells any other beer here and some people won't drink any other beer. I could, rather than just explain its place in the culture here at such length, show you this, adorning one of the bars:

Mmm. Beer.

We are at least free to go to the bars at the moment, being pretty free of Covid cases locally, and therefore at liberty to enjoy such invention.

There are differences, too, in how Christmas is actually celebrated in the home. There's no one, standard dish that most people eat - no annual turkey genocide across Spain. The big Christmas meal itself is often lamb or shellfish, or both, and it's eaten on Christmas Eve. Dec 25th is for going out for a drink, or mass, of course, and isn't that big a deal here. Many people don't exchange presents until Jan 6th, the day the three kings arrive. Got to be a killer wait for the kids, and no sooner have you got your hands on your new Scalextric than you're back to school again. Ouch. Me and Cris will be exchanging presents UK style, on Dec 25th - neither of us have that much patience.

Then there's New Year's Eve. Now as many who know me will already know, I don't like NYE much. I've never understood what people are celebrating, particularly - the change of one day to another happens every 24 hours. And while I certainly understand that many people will be delighted to see the back of 2020, for me this year, midnight on NYE marks the moment I lose EU citizenship and Brexit finally happens. This is singularly depressing, and the chaos of the talks and the complete lack of clarity about what's going to happen on so many issues demonstrate all too clearly that, straight away, it's going to show what a shit idea it was from the start. It's also, going back to what I said earlier, another reason not to fly to the UK right now. What's it going to be like, on top of all the Covid crap, flying back into the EU from the UK in the first few days after we leave - is anybody going to know how to deal with it? Which queues? Do we have to pay that extra £7 tax thingy that's been mooted? Do we even have the right to travel there at all, not being on the Covid safe list? No thanks - I'll wait a while.

But, anyway, back to what I was saying. Most people in the UK go out, pay to get into a bar they can usually access for free, wait in six-deep-at-the-bar queues to get pissed, cuddle their mates and strangers at midnight, and crash home shit-faced in the early hours, right? Not here. Standard form here is to have dinner at home, 9 or 10 o'clock. You celebrate the midnight moment by stuffing a dozen grapes down your neck before the chimes are out, then go out, around 1am. Most people knock it on the head around 11am. This year, the bars have to shut at 1.30am, so many bar owners are expecting most people to not bother going out at all. A major departure from the usual habit will be required to fill the bars even to their current limited capacities.

However you ultimately end up celebrating the whole show this year, have as merry a one as possible. Be safe, and may 2021 not be the shit-storm that the outgoing year has been. I'm off to watch Muppet Christmas Carol.

-

Falto poco más de una semana, y como para todo el mundo, la Navidad de este año va a ser un poco diferente para mi. Muy diferente, en realidad. Con mi madre en un grupo de alto riesgo, y los casos aumentando rápidamente en el sudeste de Inglaterra, no merece la pena correr el riesgo en el que la pondría, o la posible cuarentena de diez dias que ha ser necesaria. También está el posible lio del viaje de vuelta a casa. Volveré a hablar de esto mas adelante. Asi que, por primera vez en mi vida, pasaré la Navidad fuera del Reino Unido.

Ya he mencionado en este blog, la diferencia entre las abrumadores luces navideñas, decoraciones, etc., en las calles comerciales de Gran Bretaña, en comparación con la forma más discreta en que se hace aqui. No sé si es lo mismo en Inglaterra este año - no parece que valga la pena decorar las calles que en gran parte van a permanecer vacias - pero la decoración de este año de la plaza mayor en el pueblo es un espectáculo, en mi opinión.

Un árbol de metal construido alrededor
de la fuente de la plaza, con luces
por todas partes. Me gusta.

  También hay un concurso este año para
  el mejor escaparte de las tiendas locales,
  y un gran impulso para conseguir que
  la gente gaste dinero en los establecimientos
  locales. Ya que no podemos ir a ninguna
  parte, apoyar a la comunidad local y a los
  negocios locales, se ha convertido en un
  elemento esencial en la lucha por mantener
  la economía viva cuando finalmente
  salgamos de esta pandemia. 

  Para un británico, una amplia selección
  de cervezas en los bares es más o menos
  un hecho, especialmente en estos días con
  las cervezas artesanales siendo
  enormemente populares. Aunque tengo
  suerte que hay un par de bares con una
  seleccion decente de cervezas en el pueblo,
  no es de ninguna manera la norma aqui.

Francamente, Estrella Galicia es el rey. Su presencia es casi absoluta - su marca esta en todas partes y casi todos los bares la venden, la mayoría en barril. Se vende much más que cualquier otra cerveza aqui y algunas personas no beben ninguna otra cerveza. Podría, en lugar de explicar su lugar en la cultura de aquí tan extensamente, mostrarles esto, adornando uno de los bares:

Mmm. Cerveza.

Somos al menos libres de ir a los bares en este momento, estando bastante libres de casos Covid localmente, y por lo tanto en libertad de disfrutar de tal invento.

También hay diferencias en la forma en que se celebra la Navidad en casa. No hay un solo plato estándar que la mayoría de la gente coma, no hay un genocidio de pavos en toda España. La gran comida de Navidad en si es a menudo cordero o marisco, o ambos, y se come en Nochbuena. El 25 de diciembre is para salir a tomar algo, o a misa, por supuesto, y no es gran cosa aquí. Mucha gente no intercambia regalos hasta el 6 de enero, el día en que llegan los tres reyes. La espera de los niños debe ser mortal, y tan pronto como tengas en tus manos tu nuevo Scalextric, volverás a la escuela. Ouch. Cris y yo intercambiaremos regalos al estilo del Reino Unido, el 25 de diciembre. Ninguno de los dos tiene tanta paciencia.

Luego está la víspera de Año Nuevo. Como muchos de los que me conocen ya sabrán, no me gusta mucho celebrar el fin de año. Nunca he entendido lo que la gente esta celebrando, en particular - el cambio de un día a otro ocurre cada 24 horas. Y aunque ciertamente entiendo que mucha gente estará encantada de ver el final del 2020, para mi este año, la medianoche en fin de año marca el momento en que pierdo la ciudadanía de la UE y Brexit finalmente es una realidad. Esto es singularmente deprimente, y el caos de las conversaciones y la completa falta de claridad sobre lo que va a suceder en tantos temas demuestran con demasiada claridad que, de inmediato, va a mostrar la idea de mierda que fue desde el principio.

También es, volviendo a lo que dije antes, otra razón para no volar al Reino Unido en este momento. ¿Como será, además de toda la mierda de Covid, volar de vuelta a la UE desde el Reino Unido en los primeros días después de que no vamos? ¿Que colas? ¿Tenemos que pagar esa tasa extra de siete libras de impuestos que ha sido discutida? ¿Tenemos siquiera el derecho de viajar allí, sin estar en la lista de seguridad de Covid? No, gracias. Esperaré un poco.

Pero, de todos modos, volviendo a lo que estaba diciendo. La mayoría de la gente en el Reino Unido sale, paga entrar en un bar que normalmente puede acceder de forma gratuita, espera en colas de seis en el bar para emborracharse, abraza a sus compañeros y desconocidos a medianoche, y se queda en casa con cara de mierda a primera hora, ¿verdad? 

Aqui no. La forma estándar aqui es cenar en casa a las 9 o 10 en punto. Celebras el momento de la medianoche metiéndote una docena de uvas en el cuello antes de que suenen las campanas, y luego sales, alrededor de la 1 de la madrugada. La mayoría vulve a casa alrededor de las 11 de la mañana.

Este año, los bares tienen que cerrar a la 1.30 de la madrugada, así que muchos dueños de bares esperan que la mayoría de la gente ni se molesta in salir. Se requerirá un cambio importante en el habito habitual para llenar los bares incluso con su limitada capacidad actual.

Sea cual sea la forma en que termines celebrando todo el espectáculo este año, que sea lo más alegre posible. Tengan "sentidiño", y que el 2021 no sea el desastre que ha sido el año que se va. Me voy a ver el Cuento de Navidad de los Teleñecos.

(Gracias a Cristina por su ayuda con la traducción.)

Dawn of the brain dead

So we're seven weeks in to quarantine here (I think!) and we do, regrettably, finally have a confirmed case in the village. Inevitable, I suppose, given that very few corners of the globe seem to have escaped entirely. But we're both still well and if we were hardly leaving the house at all before (you're not even allowed out for exercise here) we'll be doing so even less now. Suspect we'll be discovering what the freezer's been hiding in the ice monster at the back over the next few weeks. We're coping happily enough with the confinement – though I'm really missing football now. I do confess, however, that I don't miss the weekly terror of another defeat on the inexorable slide to relegation that most weekends brought.

The reason for the title of this entry would not test the guessing capabilities of a simpleton. In a world, virtual and physical, where we're being told the Chinese created the virus deliberately, that 5G masts spread it. That it doesn't exist at all, that 'cures' can be bought on the internet. What we most needed was the planet's most powerful half-wit telling his countrymen and women to ingest bleach.

It is, of course, the press's fault – he was only being sarcastic to test their reaction. Well let's give the man way, way, way more credit than he deserves and believe him for a moment. Such a 'test' at the very least shows that this so-called politician has about as much grasp of politics as a three-year old. You can only hope that his supporters, who seem bewilderingly in thrall to this dolt, aren't stupid enough to follow his advice.

A secondary reason for the title is a piece of what (I hope at least) was poor journalism on a Spanish newspaper's website, claiming that medical staff at a hospital had been attacked by a 'fallecido' of Covid-19. This means that a dead victim of the virus attacked hospital staff. For everybody who's been waiting with something like gleeful anticipation of the zombie apocalypse, or who regard this crisis fearfully as its herald, the accuracy or otherwise of that paper's headline will be of considerable import.

Away from Trump and other horrors, the vast majority of 'normal' people continue to display patience, empathy and support for those on the front line. Just in the social media stuff I see, which is extremely limited, there are friends of my partner making medical gowns and masks in Sussex, others volunteering to help locals who can't get out to do their own shopping. The spirit of community, which in large cities is at best attenuated and at worst non-existent, has been revived most powerfully when people paradoxically are forced to stay away from each other.

I've seen a lot of messages that we can't go back to 'normal', that 'normal' was the problem. Well, yes. I'd certainly like to hope that when we slowly start to come out of this, the recent appreciation shown to key workers everywhere is converted into something a bit more concrete, that would actually confer rewards on them for their hard work and fortitude. I'd be lying, though, if I said I thought that's what would happen. The everyday worries that most people have to deal with - the mortgage, the kids, their job - will quickly barge their way to the front of most people's thinking, understandably. Brexit (remember that?) will once again dominate the news.

Of course some aspects of society will have changed - we'll all fly less, I reckon, because it's going to be a lot more expensive and people won't have the money if they were furloughed. There may also be a lot fewer airlines about. But the right won't have to pay lip service daily to the NHS and can go back to denying them pay rises and telling us how lucky we'll be to be 'independent' of the EU, though this crisis demonstrates the inter-connectedness of things in a manner which should be clear even to the stupidest individual. Stuff like this affects everybody, and would better be resisted if we prepared for it, and then fought it, together.

Be well, all.

Lotteries

This entry, on what is a deeply depressing morning for many millions of Brits, myself included, is going to be a curious mixture of politics and Spanish Christmas habits.

I wake up this morning scarcely recognising the country I've left behind. An election in which former mining communities like Blyth can collectively forget what life is like under a large Tory majority, in which Dennis Skinner's seat can turn blue, in which the final nail is being busily polished for Scotland's membership of the Union, feels fundamentally at odds with how I've always pictured the British nature.

That's not to say this couldn't be seen coming, as shocking as some results like the ones I've mentioned above may be in isolation. My partner has retained a resolute optimism that minds had changed since 2016, that our departure from the EU would ultimately never happen. It's an optimism I've never shared. A right-wing dominated press, owned by an ever-smaller group of billionaire barons, has been busy sowing xenophobic seeds which have sprouted healthily in the north of the country. Genuine belief that getting out of the EU and the supposed drop in immigration that would entail would make for a better future gave us the referendum result in 2016, and those people want what they voted for. They still seem to believe the lies they were told.

It's come down to that, in my opinion. Brexit has so divided the country, that it alone would have been enough to hand this election to the Tories. This was another referendum in all but name, but if you also throw in the constant vitriol the likes of the Mail and the Sun - still comfortably the biggest-selling papers in Britain for all that circulation is down everywhere - have thrown at Corbyn in personal attacks, you've got a Labour leader that many people regarded as unelectable to add to the anti-EU sentiment. Hence the total clusterfuck we have to digest today.

The crumbs of comfort have to be looked for with a microscope. My home city Brighton remains a little island of red and green in a sea of southern blue. The good people of Liverpool have not forgotten their abandonment by the Thatcher administration, and kept the city red. (Chin up, Hels.) I'm oddly pleased for the Scots. Separatism is anathema to me, but the fact is that they will now absolutely hold another referendum on leaving, they will absolutely vote to leave after the promises made to them if they stayed were (of course) broken, and will then remain within or rejoin the EU. So this separatist movement at the same time stands for unity - just with Europe, not Britain. A pretty damning indictment and admirably respectable.

If I hadn't already left, I'd absolutely be looking for a way out now. An increasingly isolated, deep-blue Britain tied ever-closer to a United States possibly still led by Trump is a dystopian future I'd want no part of. Those people to whom getting out of the EU was more important than, for example, not selling off the NHS - does anybody, anybody, seriously believe the Tory promises on that score? - will be the ones who most surely reap what they've sewn. You can bet your arse that the patrician class will be able to afford the drugs, won't have to wait in corridors, won't die of neglect in an American-style health 'service'. Maybe then, when it's too late, people will realise what they've done.

How do I pick myself out of the slough of despond that's in danger of settling? Ham and hampers. Obviously.

When I head to Britain for Christmas on 19th December, the enormous difference between how it's done back home and how it's done here will again strike me. There are, of course, a few lights strung across roads here. But it's nothing like even a small village of Viana's size would do in Britain. Nor do you see lights twinkling in people's homes, suspiciously perfectly triangular 'trees' outlined in their windows. It looks, basically, a lot less Christmassy. There are signs, though.

The most obvious ones are in the bars, which sell lottery tickets for the big Christmas draw. For some reason, Spaniards go completely crazy for the lottery at Christmas. Tickets for the biggest one are given as gifts, with some bizarre superstitions about not giving one from a different area to somebody who's gifted you a ticket from their area. The tickets all have the numbers already printed on them, you see, and are different everywhere you go. So you have people buying them everywhere they stop in Spain to make sure they've got loads of different numbers. OK, fair enough. Except. Ex-cept. Each of these tickets costs €20, and is known as a 'décimo'. That's because holding the winning number entitles you to a tenth of any prize that ticket may win, as they're sold in perforated sheets of ten. So you'd have to buy all the tickets of a particular serial number, costing €200, to take home the whole prize. These tickets are sold in their millions, despite the fact that on any given weekend the Euromillions jackpot can be bigger than the Spanish Christmas prize, the tickets cost a tenth of the price and if you happen to have the only ticket with the winning numbers on it, you keep the lot.

There are cheaper ways to get involved. All the bars also raffle off hampers, or legs of ham similar to the one I won in the half-time raffle at the football. The hams are tempting enough, but the hampers are absolute monsters. Clipped on the left-hand side of the image of this one is a grown man's coat to give you some idea of scale:

It has to be tied to the ceiling at the top,
to stop it collapsing under its own weight.

The way this works, you usually pay between €3 and €6 for an entry, depending on the size of the prize, and take a two-digit number from 00 to 99. Your name goes on a poster against that number, and if the last two digits of the big Christmas lottery match your two, congratulations, you've won the chance to wrestle the bastard home.

I shudder to think what me and my partner, the two of us already overweight, would do with one of these if we win it. Confronted with so much chocolate, biscuits, alcohol and top-notch ham, and dealing with a new year that will see the dawn of the post-EU, Tories-doing-what-the-fuck-they-want Britain, I've got a horrible feeling it'd all be gone by Easter. And that's being conservative. With a small c. A very small c.

Cross no boxes

Unlike Britain, which went to the polls on Thursday, Spain's European and local elections were yesterday. This was my first chance to vote here - I'm ineligible in the General Elections - and we came back from O Grove, a couple of hours' drive away, to do so.

There are of course similarities with Britain - you see election posters all over the place, though not, I've noticed, displayed in people's house windows. Instead the council provides large wooden boards at strategic points around the village onto which all the parties post their campaign posters. What unspoken arrangement exists as to who gets to put theirs at the top, what stops them removing competitors' posters etc., is unclear to me, but they seem to be neatly arranged such that they appear alternately, as if all parties are trying to be polite. (Though I've been told that some naughty types do indeed sneakily remove other parties' posters in the dead of night. Tsk.) Since the local elections mean you're basically voting for somebody you know personally, most of them simply show a slightly awkward-looking local staring directly at the camera, and the party's name and colour.  On a local level, at least, I don't hear people talking about the PSOE, the PP or the BNG so much as 'Pablo', 'Andres' and 'Secundino'.

The local school is the polling station, just as is often the case back home. You go and identify yourself, you're checked against the list, you go into the booth to vote. One vote for European election, one vote for local mayor. There's no crossing of boxes, though - you pick up a slip of paper branded with the party of your choice, insert it into an envelope provided, and drop the sealed envelope into the relevant box. This means that a lot of the election bumph you receive in the mail during the build-up includes envelopes with slips of paper already in them, so you can just take that and drop it in the box if you so wish. Very thoughtful of them!

The count, unlike back home, takes place in the same rooms in which the votes do. Five classrooms were given over to the task, being grouped both regionally and by surnames - so Viana do Bolo, A to F for example. The doors are closed for the count but people gather in the hallways of the school and peer in through open, slatted windows. The envelopes are opened, the name of the party called out, and the score kept on the whiteboards in groups of five. So you can see a running total as the votes are read out. Regular 'shushing' is required to stop chattering spectators making too much noise for the count. The votes are also, of course, counted by observers and checked against each others' scores at the end to make sure they all agree.

A few envelopes contained no slip at all - the local equivalent of writing 'none of the above' on the slip, and one of them contained only a photograph of one of the candidates. Draw your own conclusions - it didn't count. A proportional representation of the votes left the council, as in so many other places, with no overall control. PP - think of them as the Conservatives - came out with four seats, PSOE - Labour equivalent - with three, and BNG - a sort of Galician Plaid Cymru - with four. Negotiations will now have to take place as to who becomes mayor and whether any two - realistically BNG and PSOE - can coalesce. It was extremely interesting to see it done somewhere else, despite a local copper and council member good-naturedly threatening to sling me out of the building because of Brexit. I voted to remain, I reminded them, earning me the right to remain to watch the rest of the 'show'.

Results across Spain, as in much of Europe, served mainly to illustrate increasing polarisation of European politics. Nowhere more though than in Britain. Seeing the results, I can't seriously believe that even committed Leavers find that boorish tosser Farage an appealing politician, but his party served to underline just how much anti-EU sentiment there is in Britain. (Or perhaps it's just an expression of 'Just get it done, for fuck's sake...) The rise of the pro-EU Lib Dems and Greens and Labour's incoherence on their stance, added to huge punishment of the Tories' own inabilities, made Britain's results as divided as anywhere that voted.

I've watched what's been going on in Britain with increasing apprehension, particularly given May's recent resignation. It's not that I think she was capable of doing a decent job of the Brexit negotiations - I defy anybody to navigate the conflicting desires of both sides of that debate with any success - so much as the fear of who might follow her. May at least isn't Boris Johnson, for example. She's been praised by all sides for remaining polite and calm, and I've always had some residual goodwill for her over her stance and work on Hillsborough. People have said she was dealt a bad hand and played it badly. I think she was dealt an impossible hand and played it no less well or badly than anybody else could.

What we may now get is some bug-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth anti-European determined to pull us out of the EU under any circumstances. (Bloody foreigners! Keep the pound! Close the Chunnel! Ahh, India... If only we hadn't lost you...) The possibility that it may next be Boris to whom this most difficult negotiation is tasked, a man who already has a trail of gaffes, insults, casual racism and rule-breaking behind him, doesn't really bear thinking about. It was fun to watch him dangle from a rope slide waving flags in 2012 and all that, but hasn't his disastrous term as Foreign Secretary already demonstrated that giving him a real job is taking the joke much, much too far?

That the more moderate wing of the Tory party are already warning sternly against leaving with no deal or they may help 'bring down the government', and that such a thing is possible that people like Gove or Hunt almost look preferable to Johnson as next leader, shows just what sort of a shit-storm we're in the middle of.

It's all made last night's election here, which to some is simply about whether the road outside their house is going to finally be repaired or money can be found to employ another doctor locally*, for example, seem like much more of an exercise in real politics, frankly. Being there, seeing the count unfold, knowing the candidates and their seconds and thirds - it was actually fun. Who'd have thought?

*This is of course an over-simplification but it's that sort of stuff that motivates people here and can decide a person's vote.

There's a change coming

So, months have passed since my last blog entry. It's not like there's been nothing worth writing about - the current diplomatic crises, particularly with Russia and North Korea, our own political shambles and forthcoming election, the ongoing crisis in the NHS - I could go on. But when the will's simply not there, it just ain't there. That sense of despair I wrote about after Tump's election has manifested itself in my turning away from the news - for the first time in my life - and largely ignoring it.

I've still known what's been going on, of course; in the West the news media is all but ubiquitous. But that knowledge has only been broad strokes. I haven't really paid attention. Instead, I suspect like a lot of people, I've focused on personal stuff, and taking great pleasure in things that have gone well in my own life and those of the people I care about.

One of those things has been a long time coming, but is now in the process of happening. For about two years my partner and I have been seriously contemplating selling up in London and going to Spain permanently. We could see all too clearly what some of our family members are experiencing having worked hard all their lives, and hoped to avoid the same if possible and buy ourselves a little more time off work, as it were, than they've been granted. My own father died less than two years after retirement, and for around 18 months of that he was ill. My mum's stroke, which has left her partially disabled. My partner's mum is not in the best of health either, having worked bloody hard herself just as most people our parents' generation did.

Add those personal reasons to the broader stuff above, and you'd probably think we've got a pretty compelling desire to get 'out'. Well, it's a bit more nuanced than that, of course, as I'll explain below. It's taken a year to sell the house - thanks a lot, Brexit - but it's done. We're currently in Sussex, working our notice periods and getting ready to take car and cats out there. The contents of the house are already out there - more on that particular adventure in another entry. It's nearly done. I have two days' work left as I write this.

I've written in these pages before about the village where we're going to live. The work/life balance, the pace of life generally, the character of the people, the tranquility - all are considerably different to London. This is one of those chances that you have to take, I think, if the opportunity presents itself. We know what we're moving to - Viana doesn't change. It's probably not going to for the rest of our lives. Not much, at any rate. Therein lies the appeal, of course. But therein also lies the apprehension.

I said to my workmates, before my leaving drinks last Friday, that I'm extraordinarily fortunate by any measure. I've been blessed with a happy childhood, loving parents, friends that I'm proud to so name, jobs I've enjoyed. Sometimes. A partner I can never adequately live up to or properly explain her meaning to me. I've not suffered poverty or serious ill health. And anybody who knows me will know that I'm baling out on Sussex just as my football team has finally reached the top flight again after a 34-year wait. Complaining about pretty much anything at the moment would be self-absorbed to the point of solipsism and churlish in the extreme. So to be in a position to choose to make such a monumental change, to give up something that's so good anyway. maybe I'm pushing that luck?

What's swayed us, if I can speak for both of us, is the micro and the macro. That personal stuff gave us the initial trigger, and then what's going on at home and abroad seemed merely to serve up daily reminders that it was time to go. The country moving farther to the right, with a convincing Tory victory seeming likely (assuming they don't trip over their own feet as they seem to be doing their utmost to do). The appalling response of some Brits, both triumphalist and xenophobic in equal measure, to the referendum result. The erosion of the sense of tolerance and modern thinking that has always formed part of my pride in being British.

But, in London, and both working, we've been largely insulated from feeling those things personally. It's been more of a prickling sense that things aren't right out there than a jabbing pain of specificity. We've had it pretty good here compared to most. Even my partner, who's returning to her own home town in this move, has admitted to a sense of loss. Leaving a teeming London, where your door is locked overnight but anonymity is blissful and opportunity everywhere, for sleepy Viana, where your door never needs locking but everybody knows everyone else's business, will be a seismic change.

Locals have warned me about how hard it is over winter. Long, dark nights. Cold. Not seeing the sun. (I have to misquote Billy Connolly here - where do they think I'm from? Benidorm? Brits go whole summers without seeing the sun...) But the summers there are long, warm and reliable. We'll be able to travel. Getting back to Britain to see family and friends is cheap and relatively easy. If you're a child, or of a certain age where yoof stuff is no longer important, there can't be too many better places to be than Viana. We hope our friends will come and visit us, so we can share out just a little of that good fortune in our own hospitality.

So there may not be too much happening to us specifically which prompts me to write here, but who knows? I have so much to learn about leaving the London mindset behind permanently and settling in to another culture, that it may prove a rich seam. I'll keep you posted.




Edit: having just posted this, I've just seen the appalling news coming out of Manchester. Exactly the sort of horror that only happens in places where the shock value of it can be maximised. The likely ages of the victims of this atrocity, when they come out, are going to make unbearable reading. My thoughts with families and friends of everybody affected up there.

The way things are going

Maybe I'm over-dramatising it a bit, but it feels a little like the end times are coming at the moment. I'm sure it's been worse - during the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example - but during my own lifetime I can't quite remember feeling this sense of dread at the way the world's politics seem to be moving.

It feels, for a start, like everything is shifting dramatically to the right. Right-wing political parties are gaining ground across Europe. Barriers are being put up, literally and emotionally - even an enlightened, modern country like Norway is building a fence along its border with Russia, for example. We all know what happened over Brexit. Russia, with a President who seems as close to a dictator as is possible without being named as such by other leaders, is moving nuclear missiles within range of Berlin. They're falling out with the US over Syria, to the point where relations seem as bad as they've been at any time since the Cold War.

Then there's us. (Not all of us, of course, but enough of us that it's horrible.) We seem to be dehumanising refugees to the point where putting up walls seems an acceptable solution to their appearance. I'm pretty sure that anybody with a shred of humanity, if they found a helpless child abandoned outside their front door, would do their best to help that child without a thought for where they'd come from, what colour their skin was, that they needed food from your larder and a blanket from your bedroom. Number those children in the thousands, though, mix them in with similarly needy adults and put them on the news, and the response seems oddly indifferent. Cruel, even; it's apparently OK even for a Prime Minister to describe these people as a 'swarm'. It all seems a bit shitty, frankly.

The most worrying thing of all for me though, is the forthcoming US Presidential election. I normally regard these with only a passing interest - as with party politics in Britain, there's usually a nagging suspicion that basically not much will change regardless of who's in charge. Witness Obama being thwarted at every turn on free healthcare or gun reform. This time, though, with the Americans going to the polls a month from now, one of the possible outcomes is genuinely terrifying.

I'm always slightly wary of commenting on matters of another country's politics - you could argue it's analogous to complaining about a bloke three streets away's lawn being too long - but in this case the prospect of Donald 'can't we just use nukes?' Trump becoming President is too scary, and seems too likely, not to allow some sort of comment from any quarter. You would complain about a lawn three streets away if the lawn owner's proposed solution to his problem risked razing the entire neighbourhood to the ground.

Quite apart from his alarming attitude to foreign policy, there's the fact that the man is, plain and simple, a pig. Is this really the sort of person Americans want sitting in their most powerful seat? The latest stuff to come out - I'm sure you've all heard about the video - is merely the latest in a long line of appalling insults and abuse. He's an Islamophobic, racist, misogynistic, bullying atavist who'd be suitable only as an exhibit in some kind of weird exhibition of antediluvian masculinity, fit only for scorn and laughter, if he were not dangerously close to becoming President of the United States.

He's dismissed much of this latest stuff as ' locker room banter' even during an apology for it. 'This is not the man I am', he explains. Which version of him are you to believe is genuine - the private, unguarded one or the one who's trying to persuade you to vote for him? He's losing backing from within the Republican party, but still many of his 'rank-and-file' supporters seem unmoved. In the case of some of them it'll be down to good old, down-to-earth, honest stupidity. But there's the much more frightening prospect that a significant percentage of the US electorate, whether stupid or intelligent, whether educated or not, whether well-travelled or parochial and insular, share at least enough of his views to be prepared to vote for him. Or perhaps simply hate Mrs Clinton.

I don't know. But I've learned a lesson about thinking that things would be OK, that sanity and humanity would prevail, from our own referendum. As much as I'd like to think that his is merely the side which makes the most noise, the polls still have them close, and it kind of feels like the world's holding its breath waiting for this one to play out, hoping desperately that the 'right' outcome is arrived at.

Can you imagine a world with Trump in the Oval Office, Putin at the Kremlin, Britain isolated from Europe, Kim Jong-un in charge of North Korea and The Muppets moved to subscription-only TV? Three of those things have already happened, one is definitely going to. That leaves Trump as the one that can still be stopped. Please, America. Please - I know she's not perfect, but no career politician is - please vote for Clinton.

Consequences

I've always been a proud Englishman, but that pride is not bound up with the usual motivations for it, or expressions of it, that typify such an animal. I've always, for example, absolutely detested the flag-waving, tub-thumping spectacle of the last night of the Proms. Instead it's come from the fact that I've always thought us an island of open minded, tolerant, modern-thinking, creative, culturally significant people.

That belief has, obviously, taken something of a dent these past few days. Immediately on hearing the referendum result, my reaction was pretty sanguine. Just accept it and get on with it, I thought. But what's been happening since then has served only to make me think that, frankly, we're a nation of idiots. Look at this piece in the Indy, for example. The morning after the vote, and only once the result had been announced, there was a surge in Google searches for what happens if we vote to leave. I'd thought, rather naively as it turns out, that this is the sort of thing you looked for before you cast your vote. Accepting that some of these may have been worried Remain voters fearing the worst, if you don't even know what it is you're voting for, should you really be in the damn polling station in the first place? I guess it's possibly because many Leave voters were busy fretting about being robbed by a conspiracy to alter the results by erasing the pencil marks beforehand. Perhaps they didn't have time to actually consider the other stuff.

Then there's the quantity of spoiled ballot papers - over 26,000. Of course the bulk of those are people making some form of personal protest, but over 9,000 of these were rejected for both boxes having been marked. What the fuck? How much more simple does it have to be to enable people to vote correctly?

The post-vote response of some people has been startling, too. A workmate told me that more than one of his friends had said they 'didn't think their vote would count'. Apart from wondering why they bothered to vote in the first place if they genuinely believed that, you again have to ask how they thought this process was going to work if some votes counted and some didn't.

There's no room for voter remorse, and no point arguing the result. No matter how huge the petition grows for another vote, it's pointless and doomed to failure because it's asking for retrospective legislation. There was one vote, and it's done.That's how democracy works - the people have spoken and now have to deal with the consequences. Consequences that we're seeing all too quickly. An apparently broken PM resigning, the only thing he could do in the circumstances. The Parliamentary Labour Party rebelling against its leader and, in the process, showing that it doesn't think the same way as the bulk of its voters - in the north at least - because Corbyn, who better reflects what those northern voters think, was too lukewarm in his support of Remain. The prospect of Boris Johnson or Michael Gove taking over at Number 10, in the process giving us an unelected leader that I rather thought was the type of thing the Leave campaign were against. The two of them may at least have managed to sound gracious in victory, but it's hard to ignore that they were doing so when a nice spot in Downing Street had just opened up.

We're also seeing the first noises being made in what could ultimately lead to the break-up of the supposedly United Kingdom (what a joke that name looks like now, given the enormous division in voting). The Scots were already pissed off about the failure to deliver on promises made after their own devolution referendum. They're positively livid now. And what's going to happen on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic? Surely they're not going to want to return to the days of patrolled borders, checks to get across etc, which would be horribly reminiscent of the Troubles they've worked so hard to leave behind.

Meanwhile, Leave are busily distancing themselves from much of the stuff they'd campaigned on. The £350million claim, for example, which I described as already discredited in my previous entry, has now been called a 'mistake' by none other than Farage himself. The version of Britain for which Leave voters thought they were voting never existed, and never could. I wonder if they're beginning to realise that for themselves now.

I confess that, living in Lambeth, with its second highest pro-Remain vote in the country behind Gibraltar, I'd been optimistic that it would go the way I wanted. I hadn't seen a single Leave sticker, window poster etc, in my area. It was difficult, as that's all I was seeing, to see it going against Remain. I thought people would vote with a 'better the devil you know' nervousness about what would happen if we left. I was very badly wrong.

So - and I realise this is sour grapes, since that bitter taste in my mouth must be coming from somewhere - over 17 million people, plus the 28% who couldn't be titted to vote on the most important matter in our lifetimes - have forfeited their right to complain about what happens in future as a result of this vote. They've made the bed, it's just a pity that the young, the Scots, the Northern Irish, Gibraltarians and Londoners, the majority of whom all voted to Remain, will all have to lie in it with them.

And that pride in being English I was talking about? Well, during the General Election people turned out in their droves in Farage's constituency, some of them openly saying they were voting tactically specifically to keep him out. That's the sort of thing I was talking about making me proud. It's a pretty good thing they did, because his lack of class in victory was quite incredible. Then there's this sort of thing. I don't feel a great deal of pride at the moment. I feel ashamed, to be honest.

I can even get biscuits into an entry about the referendum...

It's been, again, a long time since I made an entry here, but the third-ever national referendum in Britain, and one held on such a fundamental matter, seems suitably weighty a subject on which to return.

At time of writing, we're perhaps eight hours, and certainly less then 12, from knowing the final result of the vote that seems, thanks to the ludicrously negative and bitter campaigning, to have taken forever to arrive. I had to queue to cast my vote this morning, which suggests a high turnout, so at least all the effort both sides have put in may have been worth it from the point of view of voter engagement.

It does seem to have been something that people genuinely care about. Mooching around a farmers' market in Oval recently - very good chorizo Scotch eggs to be had there - there was a civilised debate going on between two fairly eloquent reps, one from each side. This was being amplified though speakers so the whole market could hear, and indeed there was a decent smattering of people sitting listening. This debate, though perhaps atypical of the campaign as a whole in that the speakers were at least civil and didn't interrupt each other, instead alternating at the mic, still threw up some ridiculous claims from each side that were all too typical of what we've been hearing over the past few months.

The Leave campaigner, for example, trotted out the standard bollocks about the £350m fee we pay every week to the EU, a number long since discredited since it makes no account of either the rebates we receive or the mitigating benefits we're paying for - see this rather marvellous piece from John Oliver for a much better response that this layman can come up with. In turn, the Remain campaigner retorted that for every £1 we spend on the EU, we get £10 back. She offered absolutely nothing by way of evidence for this number, merely giving her opponent the rope with which to hang her. This was somebody on the same side of the debate, broadly speaking, as me, but who'd still managed to make me snort with derision at what she'd said.

Overall, the two rather nicely summed up the biggest problem with what amount to the sticks with which each side has beaten the electorate lately - there's been nothing genuinely convincing from either side. As far as I can tell, the Remain campaign has largely been about all the crap that could fall on our heads if we pull out. While I can, of course, see that, couldn't they have focused the main thrust of their argument a bit more on the positive, rather than treating them as some kind of side show? The Leavers' argument, however, can pretty much be summed up as 'Hurrumph. Bloody foreigners.' Not even close to good enough, lads.

It's only fair to point out that, as somebody whose partner is an EU citizen who came here a long time ago, and who hopes to move permanently to Spain with that partner, my own position would be rather simple even without all the 'facts' that have been spat at us during the course of the campaign. My partner has worked without a break ever since she got here, and has certainly paid more tax than I have during that period, offering considerably more to our society with her career in teaching and the charity sector than I ever have with mine in advertising. We'd like to live in Spain but come and go to Britain and elsewhere as we please. We'd also like to do this without having to get married, or either of us taking the other's nationality. So to me this is a no-brainer before either side even put their case to me. 

I like to think, though, that I'd want something a bit more substantive than 'if the immigrants would only sod off everything would be OK' to make up my mind, even if I weren't living with one. But in the event that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to go on, I still think there'd be a way to decide. Let's imagine you had, for whatever reason, not the slightest knowledge of what each side was campaigning for. Not an inkling. You've been living as a hermit for ten years so for all you know, it could be about whether chocolate digestives should be banned from having a layer of caramel added between the choccy and the biscuit base - you just have no idea what's going on.

But you've come back from your little hole in the desert ground, have realised from the hubbub that this is important, and need something to key on before you cast your vote. All you'd need to do is take a look at some of the standard bearers for the respective campaigns. They've given us nothing more useful to go on, so that's as good a criterion as any. So, let's see...

On the Remain side you've got the leaders of the main political parties, a lot of high-profile business leaders and quite a few celebrities. Not exactly the champions you'd send in to joust for your honour, but hold on - have a look at this lot on the other side. Yes, there are business leaders on this side too. But... Gove. Boris Johnson. Nigel fucking Farage. 

Quickly! Give me that pencil. Decision made.