Virginia Water - the cascade

We have had a huge amount of rain and it has made the cascade really impressive! So I stopped to take a film of it yesterday.

Two nations - and more

Benjamin Disraeli wrote a novel which I haven't read, but I will, called Sybil, or The Two Nations, and this is the most famous quotation (never "quote" please, girls!) from it.

Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.
 

Well, now we know, don't we! In this country it's the educated and the uneducated, and it's the same; we don't know each other. We hardly visit each other's websites - even though it's easy to do so - because they are so unattractive each to the other. I accidentally went to a website called Right Lad and I was really disgusted by it - jeering hatred of a tearful liberal woman. ("Her period will stop and she'll forget all about it.") And this is triumphalism, which they are good at (not that they know the word) because they have won the referendum. The level of their comments ranges from "Suck it up you whining bastards" to "Don't you get it, losers, it's a democracy!"

At present the situation which most worries me is the potential for a split between Scotland and England - another two nations. This is such a small island that to break it apart makes no sense at all, except for the Europe question. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, that this thing had to happen at all. How gloriously happy and blinkered we have been. Of course, often when I wrote about my life I said we were lucky and that many people in the U.K. are not so lucky, and I jeered at myself in a way, because I am not entirely unfeeling about that.

London voted to remain - in large numbers - and they are pretty angry with the situation. London is interesting. It is becoming politically active. It supports Jeremy Corbyn, whose parliamentary party is trying to oust him as leader - resigning in huge numbers - really with no reason as most (62%) Labour supported voted to remain, the same as Nicola Sturgeon's Scottish Nationalists. There is another binary split between the lefties outside parliament (pro Corbyn) and those inside (anti Corbyn) and why on earth should those inside entirely ignore the wishes of those outside whom they are supposed to represent? Anyway, a mob came out to show their support of Corbyn on Wednesday. The London mob! It hasn't been seen for centuries.

Parliament Square, Wednesday

Sadly, not so many at his last meeting yesterday in Bloomsbury.

The reason why all these people support him is because he is not at all glossy and tailored; he can't be bothered about his image; he is just himself - a conviction politician who has been active all his life for the things he believes in - veteran of anti -apartheid, anti- nuclear protests; you can go back decades and see him protesting. When you look at the last Labour leader, Ed Miliband, you can appreciate the difference. He was part of the political machine - he lived and breathed Westminster - it was very hard to identify with him because he was such a rarefied species. I never felt he'd been to anything like a protest where he might have to rub shoulders with the common people! For me, he was Blair's man, so I loathed him the way I loathed Tony Blair.

Of course, Miliband has said that Corbyn should resign!

In the Tory party there is also a great deal of infighting as they try to decide who will take the leadership from Cameron. If it is Boris Johnson he will split the party as he is not respected or trusted; he doesn't seem to have convictions and he has not served much time as an MP. When he was an MP he did it part-time as he was still a journalist, and was editing the Spectator at the same time. He delegated his MP work to some secretary. Not much commitment, then, no time to make connections or to form judgments of his fellow Tories. However, the people seem to warm to him. They think he is a real Union flag, Brexit man like themselves, who wants to close the borders (he doesn't).

Some people want Theresa May, who is a natural successor to Cameron, but she was in the Remain side and some people say the new leader must be someone who was in the Leave side. (Theresa May has no moral scruples. There was a programme on Parliament and it showed her pushing through an important piece of legislation by tabling it at short notice at the end of the day so there was no time for a debate on it. She swept in with her acolytes and looked like an Empress with her courtiers. She didn't look as though it had occurred to her to represent anyone but herself and her own glory.) Well, the Tories will like that, I suppose.

Another thing about Corbyn is that he does want to represent the ordinary man who voted for him. I don't think this is laughable. I think he correctly understands his function!

When I see Owen Jones trying to be brave and encouraging us all to make plans for the future, I still feel terribly sad, and reading all the comments I see that everyone else feels the same. We are like headless chickens.

The Day After The Shock

If anything, today is worse! When I went out yesterday everywhere was really quiet - the car park at Virginia Water was almost empty. I heard more Urdu spoken than any other language, and I also heard Russian, and American accents. At V.W. there is a private American school - we have three of these in this area, and the Americans spend a lot of money  - they rent big homes, they pay school fees (employment for local teachers) they buy big cars, private healthcare, and our expensive petrol - I won't go on, but believe me, they live very well (and they also employ people to clean their swimming pools and have fireworks displays and so forth) - the redeployment of the Americans will be a huge hole in our local economy.

When the area is poorer the Poles and Czechs will follow the money to the part of the EU that's richer. So the Vote Outs will have had their way on immigration - but the COST!!! It turns out that they honestly believe that the EU is where the Muslims come from, and they've just stopped women in burkhas from entering the country. There were also some regrets from the Vote Outs yesterday because it seemed they regarded it as a protest vote and didn't expect to win!

Anyway, I am slightly sorry that Cameron has to go - he has behaved like a gent and kept his promises, although he was foolhardy about the referendum. The main horror is that there is no person of talent to negotiate our exit (which may turn out to be more of a quick march to the door and a hard push) because when you look at Gove and Johnson you don't feel inspired by their talent. Johnson is a good journalist and a brilliant self-publicist, but he is all for himself. One feels his grasp of issues and problems is weak. Gove is slightly mad (he took To Kill a Mocking Bird off the choices for GCSE reading on the grounds that it wasn't challenging enough, and wasn't English, also Of Mice and Men, replaced by Romantic Poetry. Hard luck, 15 year-olds!).

Apparently, according to a specialist I heard on the radio, the referendum was a choice between - Do you want everything to stay the same ? (Remain) or Do you want change? (Leave), so malcontents voted Leave.

Still shocked. Can't wait to see our friend in the IMF and find out what's going on there.

But actually - from something my sister-in-law said on Facebook I have been thinking again about the vote and why the Leavers won - they voted that way because they don't care if the economy tanks, because they think we all deserve to be poor, like them. They think we rich southerners have had it easy for too long and when we are poor too, we will get a taste of our own medicine. It's not a mistake on their part - it's an intentional vote for decline and chaos.

It was close, but now it's such bad news

I feel as though this is the most terrible day of my life - although nothing has changed yet. I did work hard on understanding the issues; I did my research, I did think about it carefully, and I decided Remain was really important and the only way forward. But when we drove up to Birmingham last week we saw nothing but Vote Leave signs. I think the Vote Remain people were intimidated by the more pugnacious Vote Leave people and they never put up signs - or in one case - it got torn down almost immediately by a White Van Man.

So the White Van People have taken us out of Europe and shown us why democracy has never got more than two cheers out of three, and today I can't really cheer for it at all. Some of my friends have been crying, especially the young people who really feel their futures have been chucked away.

We have been so lucky here in the South East, ever since the 1980s we have had prosperity and I really can't see that continuing - I can imagine the bankers moving out of the country leaving a lot of empty houses - I can imagine a property crash - I can imagine pensions being worthless as the economy collapses. Why did anyone believe Farage? He clearly knows nothing - he just wanted the right to smoke in his local pub. And look where that's got us.

Can we have proportional representation now?

Virginia Water, Allotment part 7, and Half-term

This week I have been doing a number of things about the house and the allotment, and I have also begun a new writing project so I am less disposed to write anything here; I have some notebooks on the go.

I have a new favourite book: Why be happy when you could be normal? which is something Jeanette Winterson's mother actually said to her. Somehow, it made me feel as though I could be more happy and less normal, so I have given in my notice again at my job, and feel as though I will go dancing and skipping into the future ...

...until I suddenly feel worried that I will actually start to feel very introverted when I don't actually have to go and meet people; I worry I will become a miserable recluse - and perhaps worse than unhappy. But I can write my scripts. Which is something I've been putting off for a long time.

It's very hot today. We have just been to the allotment to cover the strawberries with a net. The net went onto a hooped structure which Ashley constructed this week. He was happy that he had built something. It's a light structure that you can move around easily made of blue plastic piping.

The main disappointment at the allotment is that there are six completely dead raspberry canes and about the same number that are very weak. Another is that the strawberry that looked a bit ripe turned out to be mouldy, and Anne said this was because we had watered it, and she told us that we could water not too often.  She also said not to water the parsnips because these could stretch down into the earth to get their water and should be encouraged to do so. What a mine of information.

Unfortunately she also mentioned tomato blight which sounds a miserable thing and said she had planted hers a metre apart, and I realised that I had made a mistake and planted mine too close together so that they are all sure to cop it if one does, and apparently the allotments do usually get the tomato blight. So I am glad I've got six growing at home as well.

May is the best month at Virginia Water because of the azaleas and the rhododendrons, and here is a selection of pictures of the month's delights. I am now so well acquainted with the place that I can roam around all the unmarked ways - it's much more interesting than plodding around the lake, although that's OK sometimes.