The World Changed Overnight

We stayed up late first buoyed up by the opinion polls and currency trading. Then the Newcastle and Sunderland results came in. There was a brief respite and then the full extent of the referendum vote became apparent. Tried to sleep a few hours.

Up at 6.00 to get The Principal to the station and then a ridiculous 10 hour drive to the Welsh border to see mates. The M25 was no better after the Brexit earthquake than before. Hours crawling along. It's maybe not so much that 'the country is full up' than its roads are.

I finally arrived flat exhausted with my rough cutter and other tools. Revived with beer and brownies - it was that kind of day - we worked our anger and shock out on a large pile of aging oak planks and beams, finishing with a glorious blaze as the evening light faded.

Safe to say it is a day more momentous and full of dreadful portent than any I have known - save the bombing of Bologna railway station in 1980 when I was living literally round the corner. But Bologna although horrific and desperate was the work of a few madmen and its impacts were limited in time and space.

As I sat on the M25 the pound began its calamitous fall. In half an hour something like 28.5 times the UK's annual net EU budget contribution of £7bn was lost on the FTSE 100. By the end of the day $2tn had been wiped off international stock exchanges.

I went to bed late, shell shocked and wondering what the morrow would bring.

The photo is taken in a soft-fruit field - blackcurrants - in Herefordshire getting close to the Welsh border.

It was a real SNAFU photo. And a real SNAFU day.