The people have spoken. The bastards.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist*, but I called the Leave victory as soon as it became clear that the Tories had won an overall majority and Cameron wasn't going to have to regretfully drop the commitment to a referendum as part of his coalition negotiations. So I'm not as surprised as some people seem to have been, but I have spent the last 24 and a bit hours mostly swinging wildly between the "depression" and "anger" stages of the Kubler-Ross cycle, with occasional ventures into "bargaining". I started yesterday at work by getting teary at my line manager, which was probably good as it kind of got it out of my system so I could spend most of the rest of the day trying to be calm and reasoned and a little bit optimistic in a "the next few years are going to be really tough but it isn't the end of the world" kind of way for my staff, who were all horribly distressed. Even though part of me is still really worried that actually, it is the end of the world. Acceptance is going to be some time coming, I think.

I know that I am wildly lucky in all this. I live in an affluent, fairly liberal area of the country (Tory MPs notwithstanding). I may have Anglo-Indian heritage, but I'm white enough to pass. I may be bisexual, but I'm married to a man. I don't have a disability**. I don't have children. We own our house and I have a job which allows us to afford the mortgage payments quite comfortably, working for an organisation which, as our VC's all-staff-and-students "Keep Calm and Carry On" email yesterday said, has weathered worse in its long history, and whose arcane and antiquated governance structures mean that it can't even consider redundancies for people at my grade without the majority consent of around 5,000 academics and senior administrative and library staff who are not known for their tendency to support modern employment practices. And three of T's grandparents were Irish so he can claim citizenship by descent which gives us a route out if it comes to the point where we need one. I am probably one of the most fortunate people in the country right now, but I'm still appalled and terrified about what this is going to mean for everyone else; unlike our inglorious leaders I'm not capable of thinking that if I'm OK, it doesn't matter about everyone else. It matters hugely, and I need to work out what I can do to help, either by giving time or (more likely) money.

Today I am mostly back in "anger". I'm furious with David Cameron for being such an overprivileged bastard that he never imagined that he wouldn't get his way, and leading the whole country into this just to prove a point to his party. I'm doubly furious that the only consequence he'll suffer personally is going down in history as the Worst Prime Minister Ever. He's not going to struggle to keep a roof over his head, or eat, or afford medical care. I'm furious with Boris Johnson for using the whole country as his pawn in a game where the only objective is for him to get what he wants. I'm furious with the Leave campaign for running such a hateful, dishonest campaign and with the Remain campaign for being so lacklustre it was never going to win anyone over. I'm actually less furious with Nigel Farage, though still furious enough that the sight of his face makes me want to punch the TV or computer screen, but he is what he's always been and I'm far more furious with the media and politicians who've taken him seriously and turned someone who should never have been more than a lunatic fringe candidate into an actual political force.

Still, despite having very rarely had a greater desire to get absolutely stinkingly drunk as I did last last night, I didn't have a drink. And I actually slept better last night than I have in ages (by which I mean that I woke up at 5:40 instead of 4am, but that's nearly two hours more sleep than I've been averaging!). And at some point this weekend I'm going to do the only really constructive thing I can, and email my Tory MP asking her to do what she can to make sure that the next Prime Minister is someone moderate and sensible who will try to negotiate the actual exit on the best possible terms for the country.

* That's what growing up left-wing in the South-East under Thatcher gets you; I automatically assume that any political opinion I hold must be in a tiny minority, and that I'm doomed to disappointment. Sadly, my life as an adult voter has tended not to prove me wrong (with the exception of 1997, but look how that turned out).

** While I do have mental health problems which make living my life harder than it would be without them, I'm (again) fortunate that they aren't bad enough to prevent me working, and they aren't a visible disability.

Reading: Landmarks

I bought Robert MacFarlane's Landmarks because there was a whole tableful right next to where I was queuing in Waterstones to buy a birthday card, and picked it up to read last weekend because I was looking for a book just after coming back from a seven and a half mile walk and it seemed appropriate.

It was a good book to be reading this week, as the actions of so many of my compatriots appalled and distressed me, because it reminded me of the things I actually love about my country. I'm deeply suspicious of patriotism and don't feel any more commonality with someone born five miles from me than I do with someone born on the other side of the world, but I love the landscape of Britain and I love the English language, and MacFarlane's book marries the two. It's a study of the way the English language shapes our sense of place; chapters discussing the work of particular writers are interspersed with glossaries of words describing different types of landscape; woods, mountains, moorland, coasts. I found it a fascinating, entertaining and gentle read, by and large. The glossaries are particularly delightful to read, and I found myself reading them slowly, savouring the sounds of the words; the chapters on particular authors are more variable, and I think I would have preferred a more general survey of writing about the different landscapes rather than the particular focus on individual writers. In particular, I felt that the chapter focused on John Muir, whose work led to the creation of America's first national parks, seemed out of place in a book whose focus was otherwise on British landscapes, and was deeply disappointed that a chapter entitled "Stone-books" didn't mention Alan Garner (who is actually not mentioned at all, despite being a writer whose work is absolutely steeped in place, but then most of the works discussed are non-fiction, rather than landscape in fiction). On the other hand, I particularly enjoyed the chapters about Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, which I may have to seek out, and the one discussing the work of Peter Davidson, who was my tutor at university and who is now a member of my faculty.

I have the paperback edition, which includes an additional glossary of words sent to MacFarlane by readers following the book's original publication. I'm not sure this really adds much, especially as quite a few of the words seem to be people's personal terms rather than anything more widely used; there are a lot of terms tagged as "Childish", as if children's babble was a universal rather than an individual thing, which I have to admit I found particularly irritating, and I rather wish I'd stopped after the original postscript, despite the inclusion of some interesting additional regional words.

And I have just emailed my MP

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