Referendum Day. We poets have sensed the drifting presence of the malevolent genie uncorked from its bottle by the foolhardy chancer David Cameron as we journey further northwards. A front garden outside Gloucester is entirely fortressed by three huge boards repeating the wish: Give Us Our Country Back.
On Thursday afternoon, we drive on to Crickhowell, but there’s time to wander the pleasant streets of Monmouth first. Proprietor of Boutique says Leave. Taxi driver: Leave. Waiters in curry house: Leave. Gig organiser Helen Taylor and I picnic on the river by the Monnow Bridge, the only surviving medieval bridge in Britain, and chat about our families. One of Helen’s daughters, on her way to vote, texts: “See you on the other side.”
Crickhowell is an easy 24 miles from here via Abergavenny, and soon we are passing grey Raglan Castle, heading towards the Sugarloaf, the tallest peak on the mountain range, the childhood scent of cut hay drifting in from the Usk valley fields. Gillian Clarke explains that Usk is an early British/Welsh name for water. It’s endearing to see how her spirits soar as we burrow further into her beloved Wales.
Crickhowell is teatowel pretty, decked in flags, the tall witch’s hat of St Edmund’s Church poking up behind the houses and little shops. I drop my bags off at the Dragon Inn and take a stroll around town. People are sitting at outside tables discussing how they have voted as I make my way back to change for that night’s event. Our guest is the Welsh poet Paul Henry, a writer we all admire. Yesterday, Gillian had read us the poet Owen Sheers’s moving statement outlining his reasons as a father for voting Remain. This evening, he’s at the gig.
The venue, Clarence Hall, glows in the late sun beneath the Black Mountains. In the green room, Book-ish – the local independent bookshop – has left us gifts of bara brith, welshcake, and Penderyn whisky. I save mine for later, to have as the results come in on TV. I sit by the open window backstage, as the first of our audience walk across the car park: teenagers, two guys hand in hand, a woman in a wheelchair … Camilla pops her head round the door to tell us it’s a sellout.
Each night, musician John Sampson introduces the makar (Jackie Kay) with a frantic Scottish reel. Tonight, as I sit stage right in the wings, I see her and Helen in the opposite wings dancing. They seem to have caught the joyous mood of this audience – who, we all agree later, have done Wales proud.
Back at the inn, it’s a garden supper outside under the stars, before bed and BBC coverage of the referendum results. Texts flit like bats between our rooms after Newcastle and Sunderland declare, then fall quiet. An owl mourns outside in the darkness. I leave the TV on low and fall asleep, waking throughout the night to the restless bad dream of the counts.
At 4.40am the BBC confidently predicts that the UK has voted to leave. Neil Hamilton – Neil Hamilton? – is interviewed. I recall his appearance on Have I Got News for You, when they paid him on-screen with an envelope stuffed with cash. As I write, it’s approaching 6am and JK Rowling has tweeted that Cameron’s legacy will be the breaking of two unions. His unleashed genie has indeed given us our country back – torn in two like a bad poem.
