I do not envy Prime Minister Theresa May one bit as she navigates our Brexit

IT is an indisputable medical fact that, with age, our intellectual faculties do tend to diminish.

This may be a slow or rapid process. One - neutral - way to describe it is dementia. According to that ever-reliable organ, the Daily Express, living near a busy road can enhance it. Whether pollution - by car or by media - had a bearing on the referendum result is a moot point.

One can only be amazed, however, how competently those diminished intellects were able to cope with the complex economic and political issues of the campaign, and yet be saddened that very many, given pessimistic forecasts of a ten or more year delay, will not survive to experience those broad, sunlit uplands where our doors will be knocked down by purchasers from all over the world, and even beyond, desperate to buy products we have not yet invented, in an astonishing reversal of our manufacturing decline.

Granted, their grandchildren might be a little resentful if their opportunities for travel, study, employment and residency will have narrowed.

Indeed, if said uplands turn out to be steep, rocky and gloomy, some plodding survivors may come to regret a decision taken ten years previously; after all, when we look back 10 years at decisions taken in our private lives, we often do so with remorse and disgust at how stupid and ill-advised we were.

As for Mrs May, I do not envy the lady one bit. She could go down in history as hero or villain, for hers will be a task whose importance outranks any undertaken by any Prime Minister, perhaps outranking even that which fell to Mr Churchill in the war (and who, incidentally, wished to realise those broad sunlit uplands within a peaceful United States of Europe).

Let us hope that Mrs May - a genuine Remainer - or a Brexiter as sly as a fox?- is intellectually up to the job and be glad that she does not live in proximity to heavy traffic