Remember in “The Beach” when they go to the outside to buy rice? Here in Spain we do something similar, but instead of going “outside” we go to Gibraltar, and we don’t buy rice we buy sausages. Yes I know what goes into them, and I know they’re hardly the healthiest thing to eat, but if I see my stash getting low I get twitchy. To be honest there are other things I *need* from Morrisons in Gibraltar (orange and grapefruit shower gel, Thai red curry paste), but mostly its sausages.

Yesterday we decided to do a sausage run. Getting over the border into Gib’ can take hours, because of the political situation the Spanish side tend to hold things up and make life difficult for Brits going through. As we got close I could see a queue of about sixty or eighty cars waiting, it wouldn’t take long to get in. We edged forward and were soon at the Spanish passport control. The two Guardia were more interested in their cigarettes than us and didn’t even look at our passports, we drove through. The other Mr. Andaloo was driving and was doing that “thinking” thing that BadAunt does so well. He claims he didn’t see the British passport control. As we accelerated whistles were blown and a barrier was pulled across the road to stop us. I put on my sun glasses and slumped down in my seat, EVERYBODY was watching us.

“Can you explain sir why you didn’t stop?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you”.

“And the stop sign?”

“I didn’t see that either”.

“Well sir, you see it’s important to stop so that we can check your passport. For all I knew you could have been Russians”.

“I see. I’m sorry”. With that we drove off trying to work out what was so bad about being Russian.

We knew if we wanted to beat the rush out of Gib’ we had about an hour to do the sausage thing and get back to the border. As we drove back to the border to get out there were no queues. We sailed through the British side, no problem. Then, believe it or not the other Mr. Andaloo drove straight past the Spanish passport control. More whistles, he reversed back.

“What’s your rush?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you”

“Hmm, anything to declare?”

“No, nothing”.

“Open the boot please”. At this point I had visions of them slashing open all eight kilos of sausages to look for drugs. Instead the woman smiled, “you know we do make sausages in Spain too?” Not sure what to say I did what I’m famed for and said the first thing to come into my head. “We’re having a barbeque”. She doubled up laughing and waved us through. Just how much stupidity can you fit into three hours!