Will mindfulness turn me into a Remainer?

Mindfulness at our all-inclusive Turkish beach resort began at 11 o’clock. Our mindfulness teacher was a tiny, smiley, flexible-looking woman who was not much bigger than the wheeled amplifier she dragged in behind her on to the beachside ‘wellbeing’ platform. With her musical voice she led us in a few brief arm stretches and neck rolls, then asked us to lie flat on our backs and think about what we were thinking about. Our intention this morning, she said, was to bring our minds back from elsewhere in time and space to the here and now and try and keep it there. This is what mindfulness is, basically, she said.

Eight of us had turned up: four men, four women, all middle-aged. We were all hungover, I think. Seven were lying on their backs on their yoga mats in a semi-circle. In the exact centre of the wellbeing platform, however, a woman who looked like Grandma in the Giles cartoons (except she was wearing a diaphanous sarong and bling sunglasses) was lying resolutely on a sunlounger imported, presumably, from the adjacent beach.