STONE GROUND

The Canal Basin, Stone by Emma Joustra

Back in Crete after two cool and refreshing months in the UK, I kept any Brexit discussions under wraps since where we were staying was so ordinary, so prosperous, so 'carrying on as if nothing has happened', my current state of mind is just regarded as hysterical.  

Anyway, good things happened and we made up our minds to enjoy our surroundings, the lovely woods and farmlands, the canal happenings and lots of nice waterside pubs to have great pub lunches. We tried out North Staffordshire oatcakes, plump sausages, pork pies and all the delectable local fare which is scarcely found in Crete unless someone brings it back in their cases.

The wedding was a wonderful time where friends and family made a plan to be there several months in advance and co-ordinated their time off and holidays around being in England and enjoying the Peak District. Our daughters, their husbands and children all came over from New Zealand, finding holiday cottages and meeting up with old friends in their limited time in England. K had the use of a little mobility scooter which tackled the roads around the local town and gave him a bit of a boost. The wonderful three day wedding celebration was a brilliant time.

I also found our equivalent Makers Group in Stone at The Artisan Boutique where several ladies meet regularly for a knit and natter group on a weekly basis. We admired jumpers, patterns and different makes and I stayed for a Taster Session in felt embroidery work on one extra day. What with that and the local library, a church, nice coffee shops and pubs all within walking distance, we had lots going on. I was there for the Farmers Market, explored all the new shops and building project for the exciting Crown Wharf Theatre.

The news for us back in Crete, as a no deal Brexit looms, is ever more sombre. The British Embassy insensitively sent out a poster about the difficulties awaiting us should we dare to come back to the UK if S1 medical care is no longer available on a reciprocal basis in Europe. It seems that the powers that be have only just worked out a few of the consequences of their terrible decisions. We were told to expect a wait of six months back in the UK to be entitled to normal care under the NHS and the difficulty in finding a GP was spelled out. Also that social and welfare care would not be available to us. A gap of six months in, say diabetes care, cancer treatment or many other problems would be a death sentence to many. Perhaps that is what they hope for… to kill us all off. Investing in a property abroad and having to abandon it (virtually unsaleable in Greece) would still leave us with tax and bills to continue to pay in Greece, while many would be without anywhere to live or even with family links back in the UK. It has to be against all human rights to sweep aside people's life and status (except in a war situation) by those who are in no way qualified to make such a decision. We keep praying and praying for this nightmare to be over and for someone, somewhere to say that our lifetime of NI payments will still be honoured and that we are not being punished for settling in Europe when the UK was happily part of Europe. What would be the compensation for ruining so many families' lives who could no longer travel to be with parents or children, travel to find work or study abroad? Problems as occurred in the aftermath of the Berlin Wall and the troubles lying in wait for us at the Irish border are only a fraction of the difficulties we are storing up for the future. The United Kingdom has never seemed to be so dis-united or on the brink of dismantling.  Quite a price to pay for ... "sovereignty" and what did people actually mean by it?  What precisely had we given away that needed to be taken back?   

But its all been said a hundred times and many people are still oblivious to this Pandora's Box.

In view of this,  I need to write a thank you note to Europe. It was a wonderful hospital in Berlin who offered medical help to my brother for leukaemia treatment when nothing was available in the UK in 1961. The kindest of German families looked after my mother who was accompanying him, while the British Army took my ailing brother out for tank excursions. It was France, Austria, Norway, Portugal and Germany whose students of English came to stay with our family when we were growing up. It was France who (forgivingly) offered me my first ever job after leaving college at the European HQ of IBM. It was European law that took up most of my trade association jobs on returning to England in 1971 while we adjusted to decimalisation, metrication and new marketing rules. These arrangements all took many years to accomplish … so I knew first hand that a successful withdrawal from the EU would take five years minimum to achieve and the scant two year Article 50 withdrawal move would always have been impossible. It was from Greece that my husband's father came to Edinburgh University in the 1930s, London where my father in law settled and bought up his family. In the next generation, my husband's work with shipping companies that took him all over Europe with roll on-roll off ships.   And Crete of course became our home after our retirement.

I think many of us were guilty of thoughtlessly blaming some new code of practice or regulation change as “another EU regulation” and blinded ourselves to the improvements or peace that most of us were living through. We enjoyed all the good things like easier travel, stable currency, food, educational opportunities, grants for beleaguered communities and belly ached about trivial things such as losing our navy blue passport covers and swallowed all the misinformation regularly disgorged by the media. We did not check our facts, we did not appreciate everything we had in terms of young medical professionals serving us, youngsters making good in our midst or the richness of our life as a vital part of the European project of peace and stability. The dire effects of Austerity throughout the UK were due to the policies of the UK government and no one else. Objections to bendy bananas and maroon passports surely pale into significance to the UK Cabinet callously legislating for a no-deal Brexit knowing that faceless UK or EU subjects could die from lack of medical treatment because of some bureaucratic carve up. How have we really become so hardened and what kind of society are we blindly walking towards?

Since I typed the body of this text, Boris Johnson has pro-rogued the next parliamentary session to reduce the time available for MPs to debate the final Brexit issues in Parliament. Fortunately, there are plenty of people up in arms about such an assault on democracy and it isn't just me!

What next?

Ask not for whom the bell tolls!