Hoping Scottish separatism is a bad dream

My husband and I fled Scotland during the run-up to the independence referendum and took refuge in the beautiful Italian seaside village of Santa Marinella. Santa Marinella is 40 minutes north-west of Rome, so we travelled into the capital daily to forget our political worries amid Rome’s cobble-stoned streets, lavish palaces, ancient churches and juicy gossip. 

We know a number of journalists on the Church beat, and we listened to the latest Vatican news with fascination. But eventually these well-informed people gazed at us with morbid curiosity. Why on Earth, they wondered, would Scotland want to leave the United Kingdom? And what did we think of it all? 

Frankly, as I write this column four days before the vote, I’m horrified. When I left Canada with my new husband, I was consoled that I wasn’t going somewhere foreign and inexplicable, but to the United Kingdom, land of my mother’s ancestors and cradle of parliamentary democracy. Same language, same system of government, same Queen. As a Canadian, I could (and can) vote in local and federal elections; indeed, I believe I could (like my fictional countryman, Brideshead Revisted’s Rex Mottram) run for office.