A tale of refugees from ‘Brexit Britain’

In the New Year I was introduced to a couple who had fled Britain impulsively on New Year’s Eve with just a suitcase each to escape ‘Brexit Britain’. They rented a terraced house in our quartier of the village and had us round for supper, and I also went there to watch football on the laptop. They appeared to live modestly and frugally, wore the same clothes every day, and spent their days walking ceaselessly in the blazing countryside armed with shepherd’s crooks.

Had they done the right thing, we privately wondered, fleeing their native land merely to prove their allegiance to the ideal of a politically and culturally united Europe? And if it was the Union Flags that they were so afraid of, there are far more proudly displayed tricolours in republican France than there are in Blighty. Surely they would wake up one morning, having come to their senses, and return defiant but chastened to their home and two cats?

Not a bit of it.