Welcome to a new roadblock.

It's fake democracy.

Welcome back to Cake Watch. Episode 71, after a very long break, the podcast about Brexit and about post-Brexit, the EU's relationship with the UK, the UK's relationship with the EU. I'm Chris Kendall. I am a working EU official, but I podcast in a strictly personal capacity. And my podcast buddy, Steve, Steve Bullock, is currently

in semi-retirement, but I've come back to the podcast with an old friend of the podcast, Garvin

Walsh.

Garvin, hi. How are you doing?

Hello, how are you?

Well, this is very surreal. I haven't done this for a good six months.

I'm completely out of practice and it all feels very strange.

But there's so much been going on that I felt the need to vent and how better to vent than on a podcast with you.

So where are you at the moment?

I'm in Brussels.

I'm doing some working from home, some working from the office, trying to get a bit of variety back into life.

Yeah, I see you in a little sort of booth somewhere.

We have a booth here, which is for, you know, sort of mini studio for calls and all kinds of things.

So that's well set up.

No, it's going to be, in audio terms, it's not going to be the very best podcast we've ever done

because I left all my audio gear back in my flat in Brussels when I left.

When I last came back to the UK from Brussels, I had no notion that it was going to be a six-month break.

I did not expect to be going into lockdown that quickly. So I basically

came back and left all my gear, all my clothes, all my knitting, everything in Brussels, and it's all

been sat there gathering dust and being eaten by the mouth. Yeah, we haven't been, you haven't been to

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