Читать книгу I Am the Border, So I Am - @BorderIrish - Страница 12

Jim!

‘Jim!’ I blurted out. I couldn’t help it.

‘Yes, Border.’

‘What are you doing, Jim?’

‘Just standing here.’

‘I see that, Jim. There’s no disputing the fact that you’re standing there, and fair play to you, Jim, you’re excellent at it. And I don’t mind you standing there. You’re as well there as anywhere, and probably better. There’s worse places you could be standing than beside me, Jim. Nevertheless, and I hope you won’t begrudge me raising this with you, but I recall now that you said you were Leaving …’

‘I am.’

‘And similarly, and correct me if I’m wrong, Jim, I recall that you said this three years ago. In the year of our Lord two thousand and sixteen to be precise.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Years ago now. And yet, one might say, without intended criticism of your lack of activity on the Leaving front, you’ve been standing there since then.’

‘And doing nothing, Border.’

‘Doing, as you say yourself, Jim, nothing.’

‘I’m Leaving, Border.’

‘Ok, Jim.’

Now, look, you know me by now. I’m not going to stop anybody Leaving. Nor, within reason, am I going to stop anybody standing still doing zilch. It just struck me that there was something of a gap between Jim’s belief that he was going somewhere and the fact that he wasn’t. Clearly Jim is, in his own mind, a Leaver, but his Leaving skills seemed a bit underdeveloped. It’s interesting, in a mind-numbingly paralysing way, to think about this Brexity paradox.

It crossed my mind that maybe he needed a little help, or at least that it might help him to talk about it. The UK negotiators kept using the phrase ‘reach out’. They’d say things like, ‘I’m going to reach out to the Irish side,’ which I thought was weird and probably illegal the first time I heard it, but eventually I realised they just meant ‘talk to without shouting at’. So I reached out to Jim, idiomatically.

‘Jim.’

‘Yes, Border.’

‘Have you thought about how to Leave?’

‘In what way?’

‘Moving is not really my area of expertise, Jim, but just off the top of my head, you could go that way, or that way. You could walk or run or even take a plane.’

‘You’re being difficult now. I’m Leaving.’

‘Ok, Jim.’