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Continental Europe calling. Well, with all the social agitation I realise nobody has written much about Jean Claude lately. To be honest the last time I saw him was a while back when we were hiding in a cupboard trying not to laugh while Michel B tried to keep some UKIP chappies, Digby and Woolfie, from the door. That was the time when they were trying to woo Michel with some typical British products, you know, a tinned Fray Bentos pie, a dog eared copy of Boris's Winston Churchill, some out of date Mr Kipling's fondant fancies and a pickled egg. Products which were worth it just for the look on Michel's face, especially when he opened a jar of Marmite and looked like someone who has just opened a tin of Surstromming the tinned Swedish fish that you can smell from here and one of the lesser known advantages of the freedom of movement within the EU. 

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Spain calling. Everyone's favourite escapee here. I've just written to the Disgraced Dr Liam Fox asking him how his morning has been. Mine was spent trying to find the right department dealing with my nationality change. The first place said the equivalent of no, that they had moved office and I could find the new one in the Plaza Cervantes. There a very nice policeman addressed me as 'miss' and feeling a bit Dick Emeryish I was tempted to reply 'Madam', but that didn't feel right so continued with my peregrinations. I found myself in an office where the woman told me that I needed to go to the room next door. In the room next door another woman told me the same, to go to the room next door. I looked her in the eye and asked her how long she and her colleague intended to keep this up and she sighed, stopped filing her nails and stubbed out the cigarette hanging from her mouth and escorted me to the room next door. In the room next door the original pen pusher told me no, that I had to go to the police station. I continued like a perambulating corn dolly and found myself at the back of the police station standing under a sign emblazoned FOREIGNERS ( that's me!). I asked the bureaucrat if I needed to take a number and she sneered and said 'what for' and I told her 'to speak with your worship'. She blushed and after some time she called the good cop over who couldn't have been nicer when she told me I will have to get back to the embassy and get a certificate of concordance to show that I am who I say I am and not someone else, you know, not some impostor . Onward and upward! Chin chin fucking Brexiteers! It's great fun if you don't weaken!

BREXIT BULLSHIT

Bonsoir! Everyone's favourite enemy of the state here. As a British citizen you will lose voting rights in local and European elections next year if you live in the EU. To avoid this I filled out my paperwork to change my nationality at the council. Spanish bureaucracy involves being sent to various departments until you go mad and book yourself into a lunatic asylum but can also involve a history/geography lesson explaining to the civil servant why Ireland wasn't England or in the United Kingdom and something called 'the sea' and pleading with her not to change my nationality from British to Northern Irish and then the redoing of the whole thing as she managed to changed my nationality from British to British leaving me feeling a bit like Al Pacino in Godfather Three ( 'just when ya think you got out, they pull ya right back in...'). When I asked her when would I find out if I can have the right to vote she looked a bit vague and replied that it could be three weeks, two days, five months, ten years,who knows, whenever. I offered to speed things up by taking the paperwork to the other office and for a moment she seemed keen as it meant she wouldn't have to do it herself but then her eyes flickered suggesting she didn't want to get involved with anything that had a whiff of corruption about it, what with the present climate and everything. I had all this sorted seventeen years ago. I still have to do all the necessary changes with health, work, etc etc. Thanks for nothing fucking Brexiteers!

BROKEN BREXIT BRITAIN BREEDS BUFFOONS

Hola! Everyone's favourite rootless cosmopolitan here. When I travel throughout continental Europe people often stop me in the street and ask 'Ana Maria, who is that man? You know, the one who is always on the British TV, is he your Prime Minister?' and I realise they are talking about the one whose name we never mention. The one whose mother had him christened with the initials that chime with those of the National Front. The one who has appeared on Question Time more than the PM herself or the Foreign Secretary or the leader of the opposition. He is seen in many parts as the Face of Britain, AKA the turd that will not flush. A wasp at the window. He has tried to get the Irish on board with his breathtaking gall. The one who ought to have been a Tic-Tac man at the races but ended up everywhere beginning sentences with 'believe you me'. The one that once Britain leaves the EU will be out of a job and have nothing to whinge about so is now carving a niche for himself in the States. Failing that he will, with Tommy Robinson and Katy Hopkins appear in panto or start presenting his version of The Real Deal or perhaps start his own programme The Malignant Narcissists. Like so many from his crew he is for sale. A grande horizontale. The state of British politics.

LITTLE KNOWN PUB FACTS. PART ONE OF MANY.....

I used to prepare the Private Eye lunches upstairs at the Coach and Horses Soho.

I get a mention of sorts in Keith Waterhouse's play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, set in the Coach.

I got barred from the Coach along with many others for showering journalists with sweets.

Due to the exodus down the road to the French House and loss of takings at the Coach we were invited back within a week.

I slept upstairs at the Coach but was unable to get to the bar on account of the laser beam across the doorway.

I helped Paul the barman carry Jeffrey Bernard into the pub.

Norman Balon the landlord chased me round the bar with a broken hoover part demanding to know who broke it.

Coming down the stairs of the Coach one morning with a heavy tray a la Mrs Overall I overheard the three Irish barmen talking about women. I heard one of them ask what the others thought about me. I nearly dropped the tray when I heard Brian say 'I bet she's a little demon in bed'.

WONDERS WILL NEVER CEASE

One of my Facebook posts mysteriously disappeared. It was about the Catholic charity opposite which has been set up to help and house pregnant women at risk from 'social exclusion' which hasn't seen a soul pass through its doors since its inauguration six months ago and the brothel next door which has been doing a roaring trade since it opened about a year ago and how I couldn't help thinking there was some kind of connection. Well, there has been a development. I noticed something the other day as I looked up from my book, Secret Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition. There was someone at the window of the institution. I squinted in the hope they wouldn't squint back but saw it wasn't a person and that a poster had been put up on the wall of one of the rooms. At first it looked like one of those teenage posters of pop stars but had a sort of seventies feel about it, maybe David Essex or the better looking one in Sparks but once the glasses were on it was something quite different. A religious poster of Mary Mother of God and child. I gather they are preparing for the imminent arrival of a mother kicked out of wherever she was staying. Maybe it's the second coming, or the first whichever way you look at it. There are after all only 281 days until Christmas.

EBB TIDE

Dear friends. Hopefully you are all well and keeping the rug firmly under your feet despite all trying to pull it from under you. Me? Well things are always a bit hectic here. H has decided to take up a hobby. Fencing if you please. I wouldn't mind if he was sticking bits of wood in the ground but no, I've just seen him lunging, foil in hand towards a policeman who called him 'an aggressive little fucker' which I thought was a bit rich. I know my betrothed is not as lofty as some of his fellow countrymen but I wouldn't describe him as little. Aggressive yes. A fucker certainly but I am not sure there is anything diminutive about him. Anyway this is only the half of it. He's coming back now as I write, shouting 'touche!' and carrying what looks like.............

To be continued.