This morning Maureen said: “I am going to live in Germany. That fleabag Boris Johnson should be arraigned for lying to the public. The whole thing stinks.  I won’t live next to people who supported this…”

“Can I come?” I said. “Are we doing this together?”

“You will have to share the cost of the apartment so we can each have a separate workspace….”

I guess that was a Yes.

Maureen thinks she will eventually get a residence permit if and when the UK leaves the Union. She also thinks Amanda might be able to opt for a German citizenship because she was born there and one parent was German. “But it’s really complicated,” she said. “Unsnarling those rules is like doing sudoku.”

“Nationality should be liquid. It should be where you happen to be registered, like a ship’s flag of convenience.”

One of the first things I did was look and see how I would get to see Hadley and Jake. Easily. The journey from Dusseldorf to Paris takes just under four hours and costs less than $200.

“Shall we keep the house in the village?”

“I can’t afford to share the cost of two properties…but it’s there for you if this doesn’t work out.”

Maureen has been looking on the internet to get an idea of what is available. “I visualise an apartment with a workroom for each of us, plus a spare room for guests. Quite central, with a nearby park. On two floors with an attic room preferably. Look out for ‘Dachgeschoss’ in the descriptions.”

In fact all the property descriptions had a Translate option.

I am thinking about what Maureen said about nationality….

Germany, faced with the recent errors of its history, is a country with a certain degree of modesty.  A better basis on which to prepare for the future, perhaps.

We’ll see.