During my son's first and last holiday as an EU citizen, I'm saddened by the loss we've inflicted on these younger generations

What will I tell my son in years to come? That Britain took a wrong turn? I quite accept that the EU is flawed in a great many ways, but we would – I feel quite sure – have been better off sticking where we were

We hadn’t been abroad for four years. Our son had been a bad traveller and a bad sleeper, and we hadn’t wanted to risk a flight – the prospect of a screeching two-year-old, and the disapproval of other passengers, was not enticing.

This summer, though, seemed the right time to head to foreign climes once again, although Mallorca is hardly a challenging destination. We boarded our Easyjet flight last week confident that all would be well.

For those of you expecting a “but”, well there isn’t one really. Our children – eight and three – neither puked nor were overly obnoxious during the journey; the plane was on time and we touched down in Palma in 30-degree heat. It was only when I got out our passports to hand to the polite but disinterested border control guard that it hit me: not only would this be our last European holiday as EU members; for my son it would be his only one.

For a definite Remainer, that is an oddly dispiriting thought: a shared European endeavour of decades, thrown to the wolves (as far as Britain is concerned anyway) on the promise of restoring a level of sovereignty that makes practically zero difference to most people’s lives. Meanwhile, generations who have not had a chance to benefit from EU educational programmes, shared intelligence efforts and tariff-free trade, not to mention short queues at airports, might one day wonder what their parents and grandparents were thinking of.

Before I am taken to task for being a “snowflake”, or a “libtard” or any of the other epithets granted to “remoaners” like me (see below the line for more, quite possibly), I should say that I quite accept that the EU was and is flawed in a great many ways. I have seen European institutions up close and personal and they are frequently a bureaucratic quagmire. The national characteristics of member states often prove stereotypically correct to the extent that reaching agreement on minor matters is nightmarish.

For what it’s worth, I suspect too that, in the long run, Britain will be broadly alright outside the EU. People will suffer along the way – possibly those who can least afford to – but most Leavers seem to accept that price for departing. We will probably have less clout internationally. But we’ll get by, thanks in part to an appetite for hard work on the part of a decent proportion, a dab of ingenuity and a continuing supply of immigrant labour (it’s not going to end, you know).

All the same, we would – I feel quite sure – have been better off sticking where we were: even allowing for the fact that the world is a more uncertain place now than it was in 2016, the EU is arguably more stable. By the by, I suppose it’s possible that the fateful day may not actually come.

What then will I tell my son in years to come. That Britain took a wrong turn? Of course if things work out better than expected I’ll tell him I was wrong and be glad of it.

Or will I just ignore all that and remind him that on his first trip abroad he refused to go in the swimming pool because it was too cold; that he and his sister behaved like a pair of chumps in the supermarket, causing a charming Spanish man to give their mother some words of consolation (in English of course); that he wouldn’t finish a single meal (”too chewy”, “don’t like it”) but banged on constantly about needing another sweet; that he refused to accept a teddy bear from the delightful holiday rep, instead shouting “got you” at the poor man.

As it turns out, a holiday with a three-year-old is a holiday with a three-year-old, wherever you go, irrespective of Brexit or very much else. Regular chants involving the word “poo” are tedious inside and outside the EU. Similarly, when he looks as pleased as punch at having climbed to the top of the nearest mountain, knowing what shenanigans are afoot in Brussels doesn’t seem especially important.

For a bit of light holiday reading, I had brought with me Robert Harris’s Munich. Before the novel’s opening chapter is a quote from the historian FW Maitland: “We should always be aware that what now lies in the past once lay in the future.”

Twenty years from now, maybe that’s what I’ll say to my son about Brexit and about his first foreign holiday. Who knows, he might be preparing to vote in a referendum by then.