Authors Electric

I've no idea where our readers are. But some of those in the UK might be preoccupied today. For we had a referendum yesterday in which we decided our future place in the European Union. The media has been overwhelmed with arguments (I call them arguments - some not much more than appealing to primitive suspicions and beliefs about people who are different) for months. I confess I reached the point of turning them off. I couldn't bear watching yet another rich white man pontificating and making promises he can't possibly keep. However, it has absorbed my thinking. The implications, for myself and my family, are huge. We can't reverse this decision. It's not like an election; if we elect a bunch of tossers we can vote them out in another five years. We have to get this 'right'. (Today we find out what 'right' might look like). Then came the murder of Jo Cox - there's nothing to add to the millions of words that have been written about this. ...

Today is Referendum Day in Scotland and this country where I have lived and worked – on and off – for the past fifty years, is torn in two in a way that I would hardly have believed possible. Way back at the start of the year, my husband said, ‘It will get very much worse. It will be terribly, tragically divisive.’ I didn’t believe him. Well, I hoped he was wrong. But he was right.  Every morning, for the past few weeks, as the debate - often between otherwise close friends - has become more bitter, more insulting, more angry, I have woken up at three or four in the morning with words practically bursting out of my head. I have, so far, resisted the urge to write them down. They are too angry, too insulting, too divisive in themselves to be committed to paper or screen. But I’m feeling sleep deprived and rather ill. Because here I am, living in a divided country. And make no mistake, it is divided. Horribly so. People speak about winning and losing, they speak about an insp...