bucks, where he would have to have written
the drinkers’ names on the cups as well. We
would have been there all day as he scrib-
bled gobbledegook with his marker like
Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind.
After 15 minutes, the customer behind
me tutted and exclaimed at the barista:
‘Come on! What’s taking so long?’ But I put
her in her place. ‘You came in after me. You
don’t know what was ordered. You weren’t
here to witness the sheer chaos and anar-
chy of the demands made on this poor chap
behind the counter. You think you could do
any better? No one could do any better. Ste-
phen Hawking couldn’t make sense of this
order any better. And Bear Grylls couldn’t
assemble it any faster.’
The man doing the ordering for his
unseen friends looked at me accusingly, but
I didn’t care. I was reaching a Crisis Point.
I stared back, trying to work out what
sort of person he was. He seemed sensible
enough. Probably, he was the owner of the
regular black Americano with one and a half
shots. But who the hell were his friends? As
the ludicrous order took shape I assembled
a mental picture.
There was surely at least one woman
with green hair who rode a pine bicycle;
several hipsters with beards who worked in
web start-ups; a stay-at-home man mummy
with a ponytail and a child in a papoose on
his stomach; and in all likelihood a designer
cockapoo crossed with a Maltese terrier, a
cockapootese, who I assumed would be tak-
ing delivery of the creamy decaff chocolate-
less mocha.
I stood and waited, my sad little ham and
cheese croissant in my hand, and I thought:
‘I can’t do this any more.’
London has simply overtaken me. It has
become too sophisticated, too complex, too
demanding and, above all, too full of too
many choices.
I don’t want any more choice. I was
full up years ago. I ran out of the ability to
choose more after the BlackBerry, the lap-
top, and the regular latte. Everything since
then simply won’t go in. I’m full. I want less,
not more. I want fewer choices, fewer possi-
bilities and fewer varieties of variety.
I want a cup of black or white coffee,
and a cottage with absolutely nothing more
sophisticated than a space for my books and
my piano, which have been racking up stor-
age bills for months now.
Just as well, then, that a few hours after I
emerged from Caffè Nero on Battersea Rise
with my regular latte, the estate agent rang
with an offer I could accept on the flat. And
just as well that, minutes after that, the ven-
dors at the other end accepted my offer on
the cottage in Ripley.
Long life
Alexander Chancellor
I may have made the odd disparaging
remark about Brexiteers during the heat of
the referendum campaign, but I have been
the perfect gentleman since. Although a
Remainer, I have accepted the referendum
result with good grace and treated the win-
ners with courtesy and respect. I’ve never
called them swivel-eyed, or xenophobic, or
racist (or ‘deplorable’, as Hillary Clinton
called Donald Trump’s supporters). I regard
them as normal human beings.
I don’t even dismiss them as angry
working-class rebels, driven by resentment
of a heartless ruling elite. They come from
every part of society. If there is a class war,
it is going on in America, not here. I have
American friends who say they have never
met a Trump supporter. Here, however, I
have constantly bumped into Brexiteers;
and I don’t only mean Nikki, my cleaning
woman in Northamptonshire, and Gary,
the man who mends the television, whose
grandchildren have lost school places to
Polish immigrants. I also mean plutocrats,
art-lovers, opera-goers, and people of
refined tastes; colleagues on The Specta-
tor, for example; even members of my own
family.
No, the Leavers were a coalition of
groups with different grievances. Some
raged against immigration, some against
bureaucracy, some against loss of freedom;
and all of them blamed these ills on the EU.
They wanted done with it, and in the refer-
endum they got their way.
It wasn’t an enormous victory — 48 per
cent of voters wanted Britain to stay a mem-
ber — but it was a decisive one nevertheless,
and an unexpected one. How exciting it must
have been for the Brexiteers to have won,
how thrilling to have proved the pollsters
wrong! But the extraordinary thing was that
they didn’t seem very pleased at all. Instead
of rejoicing as victors do, they behaved rath-
er more as if they were the oppressed vic-
tims of some hidden injustice. And we, the
minority who had lost, were identified as the
oppressors. It was all topsy-turvy.
We Remainers were accused, without
any evidence, of seeking to defy the peo-
ple’s will. Almost from the day that Nigel
Farage claimed he had got his country back,
they suspected us of plotting to give it away
again. Oddest of all, they expected us to cel-
ebrate our defeat. It wasn’t enough for us to
be good losers: we were expected to throwI want fewer choices, fewer
possibilities and fewer varieties
of varietyour hats in the air. Because we didn’t do
that, we were derided as sulks. They called
us ‘Remoaners’.
It’s true that we doubted the wisdom of
the new course on which the country was
set. I wouldn’t call that moaning, but what
if it were? A bit of moaning would have
been perfectly understandable in the cir-
cumstances. Imagine a football team losing
an important match: would its players runabout hugging each other? If Andy Murray
lost a tennis championship, would he punch
the air with exultation?
The perplexing question is why the vic-
torious Leavers aren’t more joyful. Why are
they so miserable and chippy? One expla-
nation could be that they doubt that Brexit
is going to be a success. Despite Mrs May’s
professed confidence to the contrary, they
may fear that our divorce from the EU will
be acrimonious and end badly. They attack
the Remainers for having had no contingen-
cy plan for Brexit, but this may only be to
cover their embarrassment at having no plan
of their own. They don’t look at all confident
of sunny times ahead.
Still, they regard such doubts in others
as a lack of patriotism, a failure of belief inFREE
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to receive the October 2016 issueISSUE 9 / 22 OCTOBER 2016BY MUESLIPOISONED
MAUREEN LIPMAN
HYPNOTHERAPY: DOES IT WORK?
NEIL ARMSTRONGTHEODORE DALRYMPLE, IAN MARBER, TOM CHIVERS AND ROGER HENDERSONPLUS^MUSCLES FOR NERDS
NICK DEAKININ ASSOCIATION WITHIS YOUR CAT
MAKING YOU ILL?CONSTANCE WATSON ON THE FELINE PARASITE BEING BLAMED
FOR EVERYTHING FROM MISCARRIAGES TO ROAD RAGEWhy aren’t the victorious Leavers
more joyful?