I am only starting to creep out of my paralysing coma that the Trump election has caused. I am properly frightened these days; frightened in a way I have never been before. I understand that for me it is a combination of deeply personal micro tragedies and heartache, and the big, global picture, but the timing of it has left me reeling, spiralling, fearful and hopeless.

I have seen it coming. We all have. My own sense of helplessness has been strong these last times; right here in my neighbourhood, in my city, in my country and now in my world. And I am going to be asking for help. I need help because I cannot work out what it is that I can do to make things better and different. I know all the arguments against asking for help, and I usually speak them out myself. I know I need to just get on with it. I know. I know. But I am stuck, like in a bath of glue.

I keep thinking about how my father, dead thirteen years now, would never in his wildest dreams have been able to believe this world; what it has become. He would have embraced much of its raging change, but the radical horrors that we have come to accept in the last thirteen years would have struck him down too. Trump; hideous and vile caricature of idiotic reality TV as president elect of the country my father saw as great; an example, an image of what to work for. Evil, racist, sexist, moronic and base Trump chosen by people to be in his charge. No.

I am not sure I have surfaced from my paralysing coma. I am dumb struck. Struck dumb.