The Musings of a Thirty-Something Lady

I am feeling a profound sense of loss today. My country, my tolerant, welcoming, open, progressive, supportive, multicultural, friendly country, disappeared in 24 hours of shame and heart-breaking closed-mindedness. The referendum has dragged me, and 48% of this country from light into darkness. Their insecurities about our culture (and let’s face it, this was the overwhelming reason) has caused possibly the biggest insecurity in decades. It has made me apologetic for my country, not for the minority of idiots fighting at a football game, but for 52% of our UK voters. I have found myself saying sorry to my European friends, to people on Twitter, and to the lovely French guy in Pret who I say hello to when paying for my overpriced salad fix. I have found myself looking at everyone on the street with an eye of suspicion, did they vote out? Did they condemn us to this? I’m also feeling a real loss of identity. Above all I do identify myself as European first, British a very far o

There's a saying in nursing "Pain is what the patient says it is". It basically means that everyone's pain is specific to them, to their perception, and to how they are dealing with it. Today, my pain is 10/10. Unbearable, and uncontrollable. It will sound trite to people, however yesterday we lost our family cat, Abbey. She was an old girl (a rescue cat so we were never sure how old she was, but we had her 16 years, and she was a few years old by that point), and she was getting progressively more frail, but when my mum called yesterday to say she had deteriorated, I knew the time had come. I know everyone says this about their pets, but Abbey was one of a kind. She was kind - she never bit or scratched (apart from my parents' leather sofa, which was a constant victim much to my mother's frustration), she loved nothing more than a cuddle and mum's breakfast, she was naughty and bullied me - the weak link - until she got what she wanted, which she alw