The earth is flat, therefore my flat is the earth?

Wherefore I have gone over the top. But it is well good.

So I was about to sign up to live with an anorexic and an unctuous business man (O Tony Baglioni, did I not learn anything from living with thee??), when I saw paper fingers of phone numbers tickling the breeze. I called, I ran - up 5 stairs, with no light, feeling the walls like a blinky on braille - and the door is opened by about 8 people simultaneously. Oh and they are young and smiling and not anorexic or business men and it is like a film. Actually it is like a film. Exactly like a film. Auberge Espanol. But do not see it, it pretends to be happy but it is depressing and sad and I don't think you'll like it.

But back to flat. The walls are yellow, and the sun terrace is red, with a plastic table and muscly cactuses, and sketched mountains in the distance. The kitchen is clean with denim blue cupboards and there is a wooden thing with tall jars of jammy tarts and tins of sweetcorn and balsamic vinagre.

My bedroom has a cold grey marble floor and high ceilings. Josephine Baker dances on my wall, Charles and Di kiss, and they are joined by a new picture of Huevos con chorizo in a fatty breakfast smile. I bought very inexpensive bedclothes from a chino (trans: chinese shop but also chinese man) which have turquoise circles and scratch me. And I will buy a lamp too, because you can never have too much light.

But I like it here. There are the italians - Simone and Gabriella, who come from the stiletto heel of Italy's boot and are beautiful architecture students - the Spaniard - Omar who is very clever and in a metal band called Dilemma - and a French girl who I haven't met but is called Amelie so is obviously going to be great.

We eat together off brown glass plates, mountains of chicken prepared by Mama Tullia. We drink together in featherlight plastic glasses, vino Don Simon, patron saint of street drunkards, 80 centimes the litre. The italians give me their accent for my Spanish, I give them the art of the braaaaappp. And gun hands. (They use both when we play Trivial Pursuit; it is not the time or the place, but how are they to know?)

And this weekend we are coaching, as a team, to Cadiz carnival where we have no accommodation and will have to cultivate Vodk-coats to survive the night. We shall dress as Puta Madres. Hos wielding babies. They have yet to let me know whether these babies will be dolls or whether we have to secure a real one... Shouldn't be too hard either way; those pesky registers don't bother me when I'm on the continent!