High Fenced Brexit.

Today the UK has voted to leave the European Union.
Today is a sad day.
A day of endings not beginnings.
A day of uncertainty not calm.
A day when what divides us begins to become greater than what unites us.
A day when the door has been opened for racism and hatred and economic collapse.

In our garden we have take down our very, high fence and replaced it with a very low one.
Our high fence has been blown down by strong winds too many times.
It has kept us hidden away for too long.
And it is strange how such a simple action is slowly changing our lives.
While the UK must now begin to burn bridges and build higher fences, our garden has become lighter, brighter, more open.
And, more importantly, as I hang out the washing in the morning, I chat to our shy, private neighbour over the fence.
She and her husband have lived in their house on this road for 58 years.
We have lived in ours for most of 17 years. 
And yet in all that time of unapproachable closeness, we have known so little about each other.
The odd smile, a wave, a passing hello.
But there is something about low fences and busying ourselves with washing-hanging that has made it easier for us to talk.
One morning, clothes pegs in hand, she told me that her son was in hospital.
" He has leukemia," she says, staring away into the blueness of a cloud-free sky.
So now, each morning we stand and chat over the fence.
Just enough space between us for her to feel safe.
"All my son's friends from work visit him in hospital every day," she tells me, her smile sad and  proud.
I smile too,.
" He must be very special," I say.
" He's talking about all the things he's going to do once he is home again," she says, smoothing hope into the clean white sheets she has hung out to dry.
" The chemo's started," she tells me the next day.
I hang out mismatched socks and wrinkled shirts as I listen.
" Hopefully he can go home when it's finished.."
The flowers between our gardens have begun to intertwine.
There is no high fence to stop them, scented petals and deep green leaves, reaching across the space  between our lives,  white roses and purple sweet peas curling through the gaps.
Slowly, the 17 year barrier to a gentle friendship is being dismantled.
I carry a bag of washing out into the sunshine of a Summer morning.
Our neighbour is standing in her garden, staring at her empty washing line.
It is almost as though she has been waiting for me.
" I just want to tell you...," she says, quiet and dignified," I just want to say,... our son passed away at 7 o'clock this morning.
I drop the bag of washing .
Clothes scatter across the still-dew-drenched grass. 
I try to stop the tears.
I don't know him, their son.
For all this time, our fences have been too high for us to meet.
But her sense of loss is as palpable and gaping as the emptiness of her washing-line.
" Don't be sad," she says, " I keep thinking he wouldn't want us to be sad."
I feel the sun, warm on my face.
It seems wrong, somehow, this beautiful morning.
" I"m only telling you because you have been so kind,"  she says " you've been asking about him every day and I thought you would want to know."
And she turns and walks back inside.
There will be no washing to hang out today.

There are no words that can describe the painful hollowness of her grief.
It is a gaping, unfilllable hole.
No mother should watch her son die.
But if there is anything we can do to help, we will do it.
Our fence, at least, is low enough now.

I wish that was true of Europe.

We create so many barriers and boundaries in our fragile world.
We build higher and higher fences and stronger and stronger walls. -
It makes it much easier to hide and turn a blind eye to the suffering and poverty on the other side. 
There ares so many reasons why helping our neighbours is not convenient.
Why carrying the burden of others is too heavy a load.
The saddest thing about this vote to leave a united Europe is the reason why it has happened.
It is a vote based mostly on xenophobia.
A vote by people who have forgotten that the European Union was created to maintain peace between nations that had been warring for a thousand years.
A vote based on the fear that we are too kind, too open- minded, too generous.
A vote that goes against the very essence of what it means to be human.

This morning as we hang out the washing, our world has become smaller,sadder, less predictable, less certain...
But we don't have to become less human because of that

it is time to start tearing down high fences.

Putting the Brakes on Brexit

February seems to be lasting forever this year.
Grey days, grey evenings. grey politicians, grey news.
I dream of long summer evenings and deeply blue skies.
I remember the days we spent travelling in our camper van through Europe.
The beauty of the constantly shifting countryside, the every day passion of the Italians, the laughing vivacity of the Spanish, the laid back attitude of the Portuguese, the melt-in-the-mouth-crescent of a French croissant, the delicate flavours of a warm Sicilian snack. The wildness of Sardinia and diversity of Corsica, the beauty of sparkling lakes and drama of breath-taking mountains, the age-old cities and brand new art galleries.
No day was boring, every day was full of new discoveries.
And in these grey February days, I'm wondering why it is we are trying to separate ourselves from all that is beautiful and cultured and delicious about Europe.
I know that I am not informed enough about the economy or politics.
I know that I cannot possibly understand the complexity of the laws and interwoven relationships that make up the European Union.
I know that I am ignorant of the legal and financial implications that being part of Europe means.
But I am sure of one thing: I don't want to leave Europe.
I'm sure my reasons are flawed, they have to be because they are based purely on emotions and personal experience.
They are based on a rose-tinted hope that the more we try and overcome differences and create a shared vision, the more we will understand and respect each other.
They are based on a belief that being a small part of something big and full of potential is better than being a big part of something small that will slowly become less.
We live in volatile times where we are quick to hate and slow to forgive.
We live in divisive times where it is easier to build walls than create bridges, easier to look for problems than find solutions, easier to despise the culture of others than value diversity.
Is it so wrong to think that maybe, just maybe, a union of different countries could be a good thing.
Is it so hard to see the beauty in a patchwork quilt of mountains and lakes, of bluebells and orange trees, of different languages and different religions? 
And yet we want to cut the almost invisible thread that holds us so tenuously together.
I'm not sure what went wrong but I wish we could fix it.
I wish we could sew it back together with a multi-coloured thread of hopes and dreams.
Brexiting seems like running away rather than turning to face the storm.
Brexiting seems cowardly
Brexiting seems like a delusional attempt to return to the days when we believed we were better than everyone else.
But we are not.
We are all of us, wherever we come from, equal.
We have equal rights to a better quality of life, equal rights to a fairer distribution of wealth, equal rights to have our voice heard and our beliefs valued.
If we leave the European Union we will have to shout louder to be heard and work harder to trade fairly and be dealt with justly.
Before we know it the United Kingdom will be a splintered memory.
Every day the world seems to become smaller and yet the distance between us and our neighbours seems to become greater.
Instead of Brexit let's Brentrance into a better, more forgiving, brighter future.