It has  been an odd time since the Brexit vote. Immediately after it I was plunged into bitter despair, my hope of escaping if I had to to somewhere cheaper and assuming I went south, warmer to live should my health make carrying on what impossible scuppered. And what of all my friends who live abroad or love travelling and what about the young people who had work opportunities on their doorsteps, etc, etc.  Once over the shock and listening to some Brexiteer friends I have had to try and understand some of their concerns and because the EU is so unwieldy it is hard to defend some aspects of it, so whilst always hopeful that somehow the ghastly situation would somehow be resolved I have just sort of hunkered down. I have not acted actively to change the situation, but in my own way I have been quietly mourning the situation.   I have done this by deliberately trying to see and understand the EU in a slightly new way.  I went for example to Luxembourg for a weekend, a place I had never thought of going to before, but which suddenly seemed more significant.  I wish I could have taken away some of the information on the EU found there as it looked very interesting,  and I stood outside the EU offices and just stood really.

Then I celebrated borders without borders, slipping across from Italy to France, without being stopped and again from Spain to Portugal, not a passport in sight.  For all we know it might be just as easy come April 2018, but again it might not be and so then I travelled from Cork to Dublin and on through to Northern Ireland and that really sharpened the senses - and concerns about how Brexit might play out.     Northern Ireland voted to stay in, as did Scotland, but Wales and of course England predominantly voted out, so this "loyal" ist area has to follow where England leads yet so many Northern Irish people also just seem to feel Irish as well and definitely want the peace to hold whatever their politics.

Virtually everywhere I have travelled a great European Empire was there before me, unifying Europe but one where all the power was in the hands of the Romans, Britons were enslaved/ colonised/ conquered and then they were gone.  Sounds strangely familiar and so I returned to Rome and now I am in the place that inspired the Romans, who the Romans, amongst others conquered, but was in many ways the birth place of Europe and European ideology - Greece.