Confessions

I have turned into a dirty rotten liar. I am ashamed to say it, but it’s true.

I am about to confess all, and I must remember that, whilst this post won’t be read by many, it will be read. And there will be no going back. Yikes.

I like to be honest – most of the time. O.K, there are occasions when honesty is not the best policy. Like, for example, when one of your children asks you if you have put their toy monkey on the bonfire, and then you hastily cover up said monkey’s grilled limbs with a bit of the old roof. (The monkey was hazardous to health, and had to die.)

But on Friday, I told a blatant, out-and-out lie to a friend. And what was it about? Bloody Sodding Brexit.

“Did anyone at this at this table actually vote to leave?” She asked.

I found myself shaking my head, indicating a negative response. If I shook my head only very slowly and averted my gaze, maybe I wasn’t lying. Maybe, I’d get away with it. Perhaps I’d dodge the shame I felt for my dishonesty, and for voting that way I did.

My shame was avoided. Temporarily. But my guilt was definitely not. It seeped into my pores and sat there, festering.

Yep, I voted out. I wavered, constantly, like many others, before the vote. But I fancied that David Cameron had offered us something that was tangible, possible and achievable. Easy, even! I liked the idea of controlling our own country’s finances. It wasn’t about immigrants or anything like that. I think I just felt that the world was getting too big, and by opting out of the E.U. I’d somehow slow everything down. We’d keep our currency, we’d make our own decisions, and we’d stay unique.

Pah!

All of that is codswallop, of course. My vote was generated through lies, half truths and nonsense. The most nonsensical tripe of all was that the buffoon Cameron actually had a strategy to leave. As soon as the twunt had wreaked his havoc, he buggered off and then I knew it was a mahoosive cock up. There never was a plan! I see that now. He just made a mess and left us in it. I used to trust politicians. Cameron was trying to prove a point, it seems, and nothing more. And I fell for it.

I fell for the idea that our poor, struggling, yet infinitely marvellous NHS would have more money. Wasn’t that particular Brexit Benefit plastered on the side of a bus somewhere? Now, I don’t actually think that was true.

So who can we trust? It is really hard to know. I believe what people say, especially well-educated folks who are supposed to be “in the know”. They let me down. But I must not pass the blame. I made my own, ill-informed decision. Silly me. Like with everything in life, I sit on the fence, and launch myself wildly off on whatever side I have a momentarily strong inkling for: in this case, my inkling was fueled by romantic images of Churchill defending this little island from a moustachio’d menace in the days when clothes weren’t cheap and we Brits hadn’t heard of pizza.

And now – who knows? Mostly, I wish I had voted to remain. At least then I wouldn’t feel like I was letting down all of my kind, forward-thinking, generous spirited friends who are now wandering around lamenting the loss of humanity. Then sometimes, I think that maybe, our island could do with being at its own helm. Oh, I’m on that frickin’ fence again.

I think the saddest thing about all of this is that I actually wish I hadn’t voted at all. Feeling like I was letting down Mrs Pankhurst might just have been easier to swallow than this mind-fu@k that is my Brexit Guilt. At least Emmeline isn’t actually around to disappoint.

So there you have it. I am a Brexit Coward, hoping for a referendum on the basis of the emergence of new information, i.e, that David Cameron duped me with his relative-good-looks for-a-prime-minister-but-he-was-a-prat-all-along malarkey. And I just can’t seem to warm to Mrs May. Her eyes are too small, and she’s shifty.

One day, I might start basing my political persuasions on more than just inklings and aesthetics. But I suspect that all politics have been borne of these things since time immemorial, actually. So I might just crack on regardless. After all, it’s all bollocks anyway.