History in the making...

I stayed up until 2am this morning, went to sleep and woke up briefly at 4am to see how the votes were going. The thing I liked was that every vote cast was being shown on television whereas in a General Election it's just how many seats the different MPs win. At 4am it looked very much like Leave would win by a narrow margin, which was a bit of a shock!

Keith and I went back to sleep and then woke up again at just before 6am to discover that Britain (or more likely England and Wales) had voted to leave the EU by a 52%/48% majority.

I can honestly say the shock was of seismic proportions with people not quite believing what they were seeing. Last night the predictions were for a very close outcome but with Remain being the winner. I'm not quite sure whether these polls will ever be believed again!

Of course, the news was shocking and even more dramatic was the decision by David Cameron to stand down as Prime Minister in October, a bit of a hasty decision, in my opinion. What I've found very upsetting today was the amount of venom and nastiness spewing out on social media and making it out as if the 52% who voted to Leave have been, and I quote, "Stupid, racist, foolish, that we've f***ed up our country, that the lunatics have been let loose to take over the asylum and that we should be ashamed to be English", etc, etc. Scotland and Northern Ireland have voted unanimously to remain in the EU so now it looks like Scotland will hold a second referendum to divorce themselves from the UK.

Keith and I do agree, though, that there should have been some sort of level at which any action was taken as it's clear that 48% of people who bothered to vote wanted to remain in the EU. The turnout was 72%, which is still too low in my opinion and I think that 16 and 17 year olds should have been allowed a say as they will be the ones who will be affected in the future. It would have been better if the majority had had to have been say, 60% of the vote, but it's happened, it's still a shock and we just have to get used to the idea that over the next year or two I suppose, we will no longer be part of the EU.

I also think that other countries will follow and I believe very strongly that the EU, as it is at the moment, is on its way out. We'll just have to wait and see and the next few months will be very uncertain.

Anyway, the sun shone brightly this morning and after taking Sophie to work, Keith and I went to BB's for a cup of coffee and a muffin before heading off to the hospital, where Keith had an appointment at the Urology clinic. The original problem he had with his waterworks seems to have been sorted since his operation (the catheter?) and he passed the "flow test" with flying colours. He has to go back and see his consultant next week but hopefully, after that, we will not have to go back to hospital for a long while! Fingers crossed!

We went home and Keith took Mike to have his haircut while I did some ironing. It's very warm today and the lovely sunshine of this morning disappeared in the afternoon to be replaced with grey clouds and rain.

I picked my Mum up from her house at 2pm and we went to collect Sophie from work before going to Beckworth for a cup of tea and a sandwich. Even though it was a Friday afternoon we still had to wait to get a table in the cafe. Sophie and I shared a sandwich and a slice of cake and they were delicious. We didn't have time to look around afterwards as we needed to get home to help Mike with his preparations for the Prom.

When we arrived he was already dressed and looking exceedingly smart! Sophie did a bit of titivating with him and he posed for some photos...

We dropped him off in Brixworth as he was going to the Prom with a friend but he'd forgotten his ticket so we had to meet Keith half way and go back to give it to him! I just hope that when I see him next he's not too much the worse for wear!