AS the boney fingers of mortality and Brexit begin to beckon with a steadily increasing sense of urgency, a recent rare day of sunshine found me sat outside and drifting slowly into the realms of sentimental reverie.

With my only companions a now denuded bottle of wine, an empty glass and no desire to partake of any more, I found myself reaching out for the new, favoured narcotic of choice for the wistful elderly, namely, nostalgia.

The days of youth, simple, a little sinful yet so full of assuring certainty, how pleasant and appealing a prospect would a cheap day return to there be?

The Hypnotique, made-to-measure mod suits and soul music, the cat’s whiskers without a doubt.

Memories are the silent assassins of truth, and common sense is the splash of cold water we need to sharpen our softening senses.

Those days are never returning, because, like the faded sunshine that had bathed my backyard for a few brief hours, the warmth has gone.

We can pine and hanker for Ukip’s vision of the fifties and sixties and the prospect of endless days of EU free May as much as we want, but the simple fact is this; until something is done about the heartless, neo-liberalism of rapacious free enterprise that has replaced the morality of being an honest and decent employer then, sadly, like the chilly evening that followed my too brief a day of sunshine, Britain is in great danger of becoming engulfed by a very divisive permafrost.

Richard Bowen, Farrar Street, York