Mon dieu! Our French residency permits have arrived

For EU nationals living in Britain and wanting to legally remain after Brexit, a letter or an email was enough to clinch it. It would have been churlish then for France not to reciprocate by relaxing its almost hallucinatory bureaucratic requirements for the British in France, allowing them to do the same. And to the astonishment of all, it did relax them.

Catriona made an initial attempt to obtain a residency permit three years ago. She went for an exploratory interview at the nearest prefecture. A long wait in a squalid, packed waiting room, followed by the vituperative rudeness of the functionary traumatised her. Never again, she said. Sod that. And as recently as six months ago, an English friend who has lived in France for more than 30 years carried to the prefecture a file of documentation an inch thick and was still denied.

Just a week before Brexit Day, however, word went round that an email answering a few very basic questions would be enough for the British living in France to be given a number which could then be attached to our passports as proof of pre-settled or settled status.