Brexit - the marmalade factor

Seville’s oranges are notoriously unappetising if eaten as oranges; processed into marmalade they provide a crucial commercial and culinary link between that delightful Andalucian city and the United Kingdom.

In Seville is the magnificent Museo de Bellas Artes, which specialises in Spanish art, much of it religious in nature, and featuring significant collections by the likes of Murillo and Zurbarán. Entrance to the museum is free to citizens of the European Union. The day of our recent visit happened to coincide with the European elections. We declared our nationality to the lady at the ticket window, and expressions of doubt as to our future membership of the EU passed between us. Doubt and regret.

 
I felt a strong and immediate pang of something like loss. How could we be stupid enough, how could we be small-minded enough, how could we be self-destructive enough, to have reacted to the inadequacies of politicians in Westminster and Brussels, by wanting to deny ourselves all this? To reject hundreds of years of European civilisation, not just the great works of art and the mindset of which they speak, but marmalade too? 

Suddenly I came over all Paddington Bear. Surely marmalade, euro-marmalade, could still stick us together? None of our political dimwits have thought of this, have they?