Politicians and artists often dismiss each other with obligatory distaste, but it seems to me that they have much in common: a messianic drive, a craving for a constituency (don’t let artists convince you otherwise), a self-importance confirmed in the corridors of Westminster and the art pages respectively. Something they ought to have in common is the ability to pay attention, to observe, to understand, to have their finger on the pulse of the communities they represent (in the case of politicians) or portray (if they are artists).

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Watching the results of the referendum in the early hours of Friday 24th of June, I wondered whether those artists who – myself included – were stunned by what was happening, were perhaps out of touch with the so-called "real" world (the way politicians are often accused of being). Whether our way of life, the insularity of the art/literary world, perhaps London in general, doesn’t offer enough opportunities to hone our skills of observation and empathy. If we had developed those skills, I thought, then we wouldn't have been surprised, we would have recognised what was happening long before the referendum, we would have understood (even if we disagreed) those who had voted out. Perhaps art is becoming too self-referential, it doesn’t challenge its beliefs, it’s preaching to the converted. Would George Orwell have been surprised by Brexit?

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Fifteen years ago, while I lived in Sheffield, my father visited from Greece, and one day he said, “I have to ask a favour of you.” I was surprised because he was a man who very rarely asked for any favours, not because of pride but because he did not want to inconvenience others. So I knew he wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t something easy to do. It was probably something that would give him great pleasure. “Will you drive me to Manchester?” he asked. “I want to see the house.”

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In 1965 he had come to England on a three-month British Council scholarship, half of it spent in Manchester where he took a couple of courses at the University. He had not been back to the city since but wanted to go now, not to see the University, the mummies at the museum or the Pre-Raphaelites at the art gallery but the house where he had lodged at the time. To my reservations as to the chance of finding the place, he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye – for one of the few things that he prided himself was his indelible memory –  and replied: “10 Oak Avenue, off Barlow Moor Road.” All I needed to make him happy was an A to Z.

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I felt rather ill at ease as the two of us stood on the pavement outside a suburban semi on a quiet Sunday, but my father beamed like a pilgrim who has reached the end of his trip. We stood in silence for a couple of minutes, while he looked at the house, and then the dreaded request: “Let’s ring the bell.” I demurred. I didn’t think it was a good idea. What are we going to say? But he did ring the bell, and the man who opened and listened to my father explaining the reason for our visit let us in with bemused politeness.

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To my relief we only stayed a couple of minutes, then left with our thanks. On the drive back to Sheffield my father talked about Mrs Cowley, his Irish landlady (who used to be told more than once to go home back to Ireland, or words to that effect), what she used to cook for him, and about her son with whom he would go to the pub. In the evenings in his room he would read Agatha Christie pen in hand, underlining the unknown words before finding their meaning in the dictionary. Those paperbacks, in fact, had found their way back to Greece where I still catch a glimpse of them, dog-eared, their pages yellowed, whenever I visit. “And have I told you,” he said, “have I told you how Mrs Cowley used to say I looked like Victor Mature?” He had, in fact, several times over the years, and it was true that in photographs of his youth he did resemble the famous 1950s American actor in Samson and Delilah. “I had a wonderful time,” he said, and for a moment I was alarmed because I sensed the threat of an outpouring of emotion in the sheer confines of my Polo, but our mutual silence and the calming beauty of the Snake Pass saved us both from embarrassment. We did not risk saying anything else for the rest of the trip.

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I remembered all this after I switched off the TV on the dawn after referendum day, and returned to bed where my wife and daughter slept quietly next to each other, both oblivious to the fact that the Channel was growing wider by the minute, the border barriers across Europe were growing taller, the sterling was getting cheaper and a crack running from Marshall Meadows Bay to the Solway Firth was opening up as Scotland threatened to sail towards the Continent. I let them sleep. As the first light of day was breaking through the curtains, I thought how fifty years ago a young visiting student from a small Greek town, with rudimentary English, dark good looks and a predilection for Agatha Christie novels, had related to people in 1960s England, which had been a far stranger place to him than contemporary Britain was ever to me, and what a deep affection he had had for this country. I thought about his sensitivity, his enquiring mind, his observant eye – these supposedly artist’s qualities – which had allowed him possibly to come closer to understanding Britain in three months than I have in twenty-four years. I thought that perhaps we, artists, should start spending less time at our desks, in our studios, in festivals, perhaps we ought to spend less time in the company of people exactly like us – we should get out more.

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That would be an exit for which I would be happy to vote.