Department 62a

I've got it! Finally I understand why I have been struggling to understand Portugal, it has been secretly annexed. Squeezed-in alphabetically between Pay de Calais and Puy de Dome, France has a new department, number 62a - Portugal. It is remarkable that this has not been more widely reported especially as word on the streets has it that Marie le Pen is headed for the top job on the basis that Portugal is well used to having fascist leaning leaders in charge.

You doubt this is the case - I can present you with incontrovertible photographic evidence:

Renault 4's have all come here to die...

all public rooms have ancient TV's in the corner, usually blasting out day-time TV even when the room is empty

then there's the penchant for orange plastic furniture

the Gaulish retail take-over

with familiar stap-lines

an ageing Peugeot parked beneath smiling girls clutching vegetables....Vive La France!

Houses like you find in the Vendee - even the fire hydrant looks French!

and of course, strange attempts at la moderne on rond point

No wonder the place is crawling with French motorhomes, Their grey-haired owners are here for one of two reasons. The left leaning jaunty ones, clutching ipads and looking bookish, are touring around here instead of Maroc, because since Charlie Hebdo, they are nervous of travelling independently in Islamic countries.That leaves the majority who look glum and bored and stand about for hours chatting at mega-volume. My theory is that they are here because it looks French, has familiar stores - Intermarche, even Continente, but the wine is cheaper and cigarettes even more so. Furthermore, some of the camp site sanitary arrangements look distinctly pre 1968 and they can all pretend that in Department 62a that nasty M. Mitterand never came along and modernised everything. So if you yearn for France as used to be, come to Portugal, it's all still here, drainy smells, Renault 4s, rude shop-keepers and miserable looking, black-clad elderly people.