So now it really is goodbye, and it hurts. On a storm-filled Sunday, here's a thread (OK ! my 3rd in 8 years !) on why Brexit has affected so many of our lives - yours, I’m sure, if you follow me - and the only one I can really talk about with any expertise – my own /1

I grew up in Britain. It comes out in the mince pies which even now are my go-to at Christmas, my never ending search for the perfect cup of tea and my accent when I speak the French I worked on TV and radio in for 30 yrs, even write books in (but not my diary) /2

There will be a part of me that is forever England. But my England was never the England that has so noisily taken over these last few years, parading Union Jacks so noisily in its alarmingly nasty xenophobic newspapers no other country would tolerate /3

My England was full of Sixties sunlight, the Beatles, Mrs Peel and Carnaby St. It was the 70s, watching glam rock on the telly while eating spam by candlelight during the 3 day week when we really were “the sick man of Europe” /4

It was also being called queer and pansy in the school playground and the little boy who somehow understood that foreign languages were his passport to one day being accepted somewhere else. French irregular verbs and German grammar were my visa “out” /5