Walian culture is right there on the streetsigns - half in English, half in Cymraeg. You have to push well north into Scotland, further than I’ve ever been, to see streetsigns in English and Gaelic. I wonder if that will change. Right from my first visits to Scotland, in my teens, I was powerfully aware that I was in a foreign country, far more so than in my frequent visits to Wales. I nearly moved to Scotland, in my twenties.

I come from the ancient Kingdom of Essex. Trinovantes, Saxons and Vikings. It’s hard to be a nationalist when you’re Celtic, German and Danish. I identify as English and British (and European), but I could just as easily claim to be from the Danelaw or the Heptarchy.

If you weren’t conscious of crossing a border, when travelling to Scotland, and closely aware of the privileges of a treaty of convenience, then I can’t help you with your crocodile tears over the referendum. In a month’s time, the Union may be no more present in our lives than the Danelaw. We can stand on Hadrian’s Wall singing “there is power in a union” all we like. We don’t get a vote. For very good reasons. It’s the Scots’ call to make.

I’ve seen too many English people, these last few months, bemoaning their lack of agency in the future of “our country.” Whichever way the referendum goes, I hope that perhaps some of those people have been taught that it was never “our country.” It was, and is, theirs.