Peter Rhodes: The great smell of fudge

DARK rooms, guttering candles, creaky floors, witchcraft, religion, mediums, seances and infants dying in their thousands. Sometimes it seems the entire 19th century was created solely as a backdrop for ghost stories. The Living and the Dead (BBC1) proves that even we rational 21st century cynics are not immune to Victorian ghoulies and ghosties. Be honest. How many times has it made you leap out of your seat? Loving it.

MEANWHILE, back in the real world, the enduring mystery of this whole referendum thing is how many bright young people, now distraught at leaving the EU, came to regard an ever-expanding empire as the good guys in the first place. Have they never seen Star Wars?

THIS time last week I was toying with a little pre-referendum gag. I was going to suggest in the column that only Brexit votes would be accepted at polling stations on Thursday and that if you wanted to vote Remain, you'd have to vote on Friday. I had second thoughts because while 99.999 per cent of my readership would see the joke, someone, somewhere would not.

AND if you doubt that the world has its share of gullible folk, did you not hear the kids plaintively complaining that someone had assured them there would be polling stations at Glastonbury? Priceless.

AND yet, in these uncertain post-referendum days, do you not feel the sand shifting beneath your feet? Like many Leavers, I watched the results coming in on Friday with mounting delight, followed by that "what have we done?" moment, followed in turn by growing pride and optimism. We are an amazing nation. We can do great things. But now there's a growing suspicion that Brexit is simply not going to happen. As I wrote on June 13, not entirely tongue-in-cheek: "Let me say it once again. If we vote In, we stay in the EU. If we vote Out, we stay in the EU. Simple as that."

IN a piece for the Guardian, the veteran human-rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson explains how MPs could stop the withdrawal process by voting against the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act. He says: "MPs have every right, and indeed a duty if they think it best for Britain, to vote to stay." You might think no MP would vote against the will of the people. Maybe not now, but how might the mood of the nation have changed in the four-month deadline created by David Cameron? Scotland is threatening to veto the necessary legislation in its own Parliament; it may sound like constitutional nonsense, but who knows? And yesterday Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt seriously proposed a second referendum on the terms of leaving the EU.

AND what are we to make of Boris Johnson's distinct lack of eagerness to get the Brexit process moving? He's like a father who has promised the kids a great holiday, and then admitted he hasn't actually booked the tickets.

FINALLY, there is a little-reported flurry of options on the sidelines, including the suggestion from German industrialists taken up by the influential newspaper Die Welt, for Britain to have the status of "associated partner country." The whiff of victory is slowly being replaced by something sugary in the air. Can you smell it? It is fudge.