Mix

Mistmantle is by its nature a sheltered island. Not many animals move there from other places - they can't get through the mists. Those that do are not always good news. (It took a long time to repair the damage after The Raven War.) But refugee squirrels and visiting swans are always made welcome.

Wales has just gone out of the Euros, (the football, not the currency) but that little nation punched well above its weight to be in the semi-finals and I am proud to be grandmother to a little Welshman. Andy Murray is through to the semis at Wimbledon. I can hold my head and claim Scottish ancestry. (At the age of twelve I'd hardly ever been south of York, but I knew Blairgowrie and St Andrews like the back of my hand.)

Amid all the shouts about immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, let's remember that most of the British are mongrels. The Scots and the Irish changed places, the Britons and Celts were taken by surprise by the Romans, then just as Romano-British life was settling down, the Romans went home and along came the Angles and Saxons. They'd no sooner Angle-Saxed than the Vikings spoiled it all. By the time we'd sorted that one out and the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings had learned to speak politely to each other, William the Conqueror did his conquering and the Normans took over. Now, that really was bad news. They wouldn't even let the Scots be Scots (or Irish) or the Welsh be Welsh, and if you didn't speak French you'd never be invited to the posh parties.

We weren't invaded again, but refugees came over whenever life in France got scary or the Reformation kicked off again. Come the Second World War, the doors were open to people from all over Europe, fleeing fascism. Polish airmen came over and flew with the RAF. Some of them married and stayed here. There were German prisoners of war who were moved by the kindness of the locals, and stayed.

Since the Brexit vote, there has been some extremely nasty racist and anti-immigrant behaviour around. Let's just remember - Britain is a mongrel nation. The US, too, has influences from almost every continent. We're part of a mix. We're all Breltanglevikians.