What a year. When legend after legend started dropping like flies I mourned; Bowie, Rickman, Wogan, Prince. The entertainment industry would never look the same again. Then June. Brexit. A blonde muppet and a beer lout celebrating victory, claiming to have ‘Made Britain Great Again’. And now. Another blonde muppet celebrating victory. ‘Making America Great’.

Walls to ‘protect’ against foreigners. The danger is all too often in one’s own back yard. It’s not the hardworking ‘others’ but the bigoted, racist, xenophobic arseholes who view a different skin tone with contempt. The misogynistic sexual deviants who pride themselves on their conquests and the perceived quality of their prey.

Slow clap America. Slow clap Britain. Bowie was far from the worst that was to happen this year.

“Let’s regain control over our borders” forces thousands upon thousands of desperate people to do desperate things. Children fleeing as The Jungle was torn down, untraceable and unaccounted for, through fear. Bodies washed up on shores. Families divided forever. “If they’re so desperate then how come they had iPhones back home” It could happen to us, Apple won’t protect you from terrorism, dictatorships, civil war, world war.

Build walls, stop people with different coloured skin getting in. Divide. Build walls and build fear. Ignorance. Guns don’t kill people. They just give those firing them the ability to kill people. Jo Cox.

Bowie, Rickman, Brexit, Trump.

Entertainment loses some of its most prolific and wonderful talents. Humanity loses some of its most valuable and intrinsically vital qualities.

And in my beautiful home, with my beautiful family by my side, I feel detached and yet completely overwhelmed. I feel fearful of my children growing up in a world where walls and sexual abuse create power, where those in the most dire need die and those with the most money and the least humanity thrive.

I can’t stop whatever chain of events may come as a result of the voting decisions that have been made this year. All I can do, with Phil, is raise our children with morals and values that reflect the good that does still remain in this fractured world. Raise them to know that acceptance is right and sexual abuse is wrong. That we shouldn’t judge by race or gender or sexuality or looks but by character.  Is the person standing before me a good person with good values? They will follow where Phil and I lead, so we will take their hands and guide them to the best of our abilities.

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