Today I have spoken to a farmer who I used to do a lot of work with in the UK. He is German and has lived most of his adult life farming in the north of England.
We were catching up after a while without speaking to each other. He is always good value, talks and swears a tremendous amount and has an infectious personality.
He was asking how I was getting on in Brussels and was very interested to talk about the UK and EU question that is exercising a lot of minds.
Here is what he said:
"I meet up with my family who now live all over Europe every two years. There are 150 of us because I have 8 brothers and 5 sisters and we hire a conference centre so we can all see each other. Between us we speak 10 different languages as a mother tongue.
"I don't think some people understand these things. There is no one alive that can remember when England has been occupied. When you have some jumped up horrible people telling you what you should do and where you should go you remember these things. When I was at school in 1955 there were 40 children in the class and exactly half of the class, 20 children, didn't have a father. They were either dead or still in prison camps.
"So when I hear all of this EU discussion going on I can hardly understand it. Wars are now impossible in Europe and that is why we have the EU. I wish people would think about this."
I thought this was a powerful thing to say.
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