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Gowing up, I thought there were two contries: one when I lived, and the other where the cowboys and indians lived, as they were on TV all the time.

And then we went on one of those fancy continental holidays in August 1973.

I found out they ate different things, drove on the other side of the road, had different money, different langauages. We stayed seven days, stayed on Oostende, travelled to Amsterdam, Brussels, and in a 20 hour trip, to Paris and back to Oostende. In the hotel, they had three courses, even if the first course was either liver pate on toast or a small glass of fruit juice.

Nearly 50 years later, I am still trying to understand how we allowed an entire course to be just a small blass of fruit juice. And desert was usually crème caramel which are crimes against humanity. But some thinks, like the chocolate wafer bars were great, and on this first holiday in hotels and everything, I got to drink as much fizzy pop as I wanted every day, even if it did make me ill.

Anyway.

Four years later, I went on an exchange trip to Holland, to stay with a family on Lowestoft's then twin town, Katwijk. The towns are no longer twins because the Dutch found Lowestoft to be "too boring".

Who knew?

So, for a week I stayed with the Routens, making friends with their son, Robert. They had different things to eat, like hundreds and thousands. In a snadwich! The Dutch called them "spinkles" and I still like this for breakfast when I go to either Holland or Belgium.

Holland also had cycle lanes. Everywhere. Still does. Making getting around so easy, most Dutch homes even used to get BBC TV piped into their house, so they we all pretty much better at speaking English than I was speaking Dutch. Dutch is a difficult language, much easier if you have a cold and lots of phlem. I learned no Dutch in my week there, but it did broaden my mind.

I still didn't trust cheese, even from Holland.

Two years later, I went on the first of two exchanges to Germany, a small town between Hannover and Celle called Burgwedel. I stayed with a really nice German lad called Thomas and his two alcoholic parents. Thomes, his parents, all his friends, their dog, all smoked. Did I want to smoke they asked holding a full packet for me to stake one or several from.

No, I'm fine. None of my friends smoked at that time, though my neighbour James did in time, but as both my parents did, and their rasping coughs herralded each weekend morning, and even as a child I used to gaze upon my Dad's nicotine stained fingers with suspicion, so I wasn't going to try.

Germany did have fine chcolate, honey roast peanuts too, not just the dull salted ones we had at home. They also had huge handmade wafer sandwich cakes, dipped in milk chcolate and nearly a foot long. Much btter even than a Dowson's doughnut back home. They had summer homes, a car (a 1600 VW beetle that they made fly once at a level crossing), school started at seven in the morning, but finsied at two, but they sometimes had to go in on a Saturday. I could barely say "my name is Ian" in German after 18 months, while Thomas could speak good Englsih, French and was doing extra lessons in Russian.

I went to a Russian lesson, could I say something in Russian the teacher asked? I said "Nottingham Forest", as they had won the European Cup the night before.

Sigh.

Thomas was let out to do what he wanted, he could go by bus to the next town, get on a tram and go to the centre of the city and was given money to spend. On records if he wanted, but he was a Kiss fan, a group I had not heard of and I thought were crap when he played me one of ther live records. I think much less of them these days. They had a teen magazine which did pop music, even if their two most featured bands were Village People and Kiss (again), but there was a problems page, that had pictures of half naked teens. Words cannot describe the effect that had on the 15 year old me.

I liked Germany, even with it split in half with the border. We saw that too. I began to ponder that maybe the way we did stuff in England wasn't the best after all. We boil sprouts for weeks on end, and for us, a glamourous meal was Findus crispy pancakes in the little restaurant beside the labour club for Sunday lunch. We all had them every Sunday for weeks.

I ended up living in Germany when I was posted to Laarbruch in 1993. I loved it there, even with my first wife. Best part was shops closing at half twelve on Saturdays and not reopening until Monday. No housework was allowed, no work in the garden either. Weekends were given over to families and proper relaxing time. Silence covered the land with no mowers or trimmers to break the peace. You jsut adjusted life to fit.

And Germany was clean. Very little grafitti back them, but no litter. Just clean. People seemed to have a pride in their neighbourhood, town and country that we just didn't seem to have, and here its got worse that that.

It takes some time for an idea to grow, and the idea was to move to France, live on a tumbledown farm, grow fruit and vegetables into our dotage. We both realised this at the end of last year watching a cooking show, but by then Brexit was happening, and that dream would remain just that; a dream. I hope that in a few years, we will get some freedom back and will be allowed to move to Aquitaine or Burgundy. Or maybe Tuscany?

This is how our horizons are shrunk thanks to Brexit. Not just ours, but our children's and their children's.

Our lives will be duller, smaller as a result, lacking in the oportunities and advantages that those who voted it away had.

Never forgive, never forget.