Right, haven’t done a #MidnightMonologue for a while and it’s actually almost 1am, but what the hell?

Tonight: What’s It Like Being A Half-English Yesser? And the answer, unsurprisingly, is: Fecking Weird.

I was born in the same hospital as Sturgeon, coincedentally (what’s more, she moved to Prestwick & lived in the building next to my school for a year, and her dad is a total Ayr Utd fan too).

I had two English grandads and two Scottish grannies. Matt Phillips has nothing on me.

I was a Unionist right up until Theresa May tried to single-handedly destroy my life in 2012, and was actually pretty militant about it in my school/Uni days.

I don’t know if this was due to my genealogy or unhealthy diet of the Daily Record, BBC current affairs and talkSPORT.

My accent is technically Scoatish, although without most of the working class Scoatish-isms normally associated with Scoatland. I often pronounce words with an English tinge, to the extent that some confused onlookers have branded me “Irish” (I’m not Irish).

What I’m trying to say is I wasn’t a traditional safe-as-houses Yesser.

I’d warmed slightly to the SNP since they took power in 2007 (the country didn’t collapse and they seemed to carry on the decent work of the Lab/Lib teams before), but it was hardly pushing at an open door.

My case was different because, as I say, Theresa May is a fecking lunatic who effectively tried to deport me from my own country with bullshit and lies.

But even when I jumped to Yes, I expected it to be a rocky road, the half-English part of me wrestling me back to Unionism.

I was only following Pete Wishart on Twitter (and that was only because he used to be in Runrig). I followed the Scottish Labour “Big Beasts” and Lib Dems like Charles Kennedy.

What astounded me from the get-go was the total lack of intellectual depth to every Unionist argument.

You can discard the thoughts of Scottish Tory MPs/MSPs because, well, come on. But I expected the Lib/Lab guys to give me food for thought.

Instead their Twitter accounts were robotic repetitive half-arguments and half-truths, that were easily debunked in the comments below.

Even Charles Kennedy, god rest his soul, the one Unionist I would have loved to swap in the indyref, didn’t deliver a hammer blow to Yes from what I saw.

It was just the same old tired arguments: the oil is running out, you have no other economy, what currency will you use lol.

When it came to politics (but not football) I always thought of My Country as the UK. They should have been inspiring me with a tremendous vision of what the UK could achieve together.

Instead they talked utter shite about Scotland. Dreary insular nonsense that wasn’t even true.

They, along with May, somehow succeeded in turning a half-English Unionist from a town that loves golf and cricket (cricket!) into a claymore-wielding Scottish nationalist in the space of about three weeks.

And they did it by talking consistent and unwavering bollocks.

I’ve calmed down nowadays (ish). I can see that Yes has just as many zoomers as No.

My reasons for voting Yes are now less about seizing “the oil money” (in fact I’ve gone off oil completely #ClimateEmergency) & more because we need the centre-left government we always vote for.

But key point is this: if Labour / Lib Dems had presented some kind of alternative to awful Tory pish in 2012, I’d have jumped at the chance of backing that version of No.

Even after 8 years of demented Yes tweets, I’d still be tempted to give centre-left Keir Starmer a go. But.

There is no chance on god’s green earth of the UK being salvaged as a unified political entity. It’s gone. Has to be put out of its misery.

Every PM in my lifetime has been a let-down: failed to reverse inequality, or environmental destruction, or run-down post-Thatcher towns.

I love England. Half of me is literally from there. I grew up with all its TV and a lot of its music and some of its books. Many of my best “follows” on Twitter are from there.

It’s just: why should I be governed for all of eternity by its worst politicians?

I and many other Yessers (either with English blood or just a lot of affection for England) consistently argued that we wanted to be friendly neighbours after Yes vote in 2014.

And we were met with “Stop being an anti-English racist”.

I’ve never heard such shite in all my life.

And since then: every SNP MP has been ignored/verbally abused for doing their job. Brexit, slowest car crash in history, is happening against our wishes.

Now we have one of the worst humans in England seemingly trying to foist a deadly virus on us to please his pals in business.

Can’t begin to describe how bloody frustrating the whole thing is. To be told you can’t back independence - the normal state of affairs for EVERY country on Earth - without being racist against the country you’ll share a land border with.

Even when you’re 50% English. Demented.

And despite all the deluge of genuinely anti-English and anti-Scottish tweets you see thrown about (99% of them because of this ridiculous political impasse), ultimately I know that independence will solve it.

Because then we’ll be normal countries.

Scotland won’t be perfect after indy (god, where to start) and I’m damn sure England won’t be either. But at least we’ll know who to blame anytime it goes tits up.

And to answer Theresa May’s ludicrous guff about “citizens of nowhere”: yes, you can be “from” two different countries. Ask many mixed-race child.

Or that guy who used to play squash. Or everyone in Edinburgh with those kind-of English accents (not the Hibs fans).

Another of these same time tomorrow, where I’ll be continuing my run-through of every single subject in the world by discussing Cambodian mixed doubles badminton: what went wrong? #MidnightMonologue