Here we are again, hurtling face-up, eyes wide open, down the luge of life into the inevitability of the festive season, hoping we don't bash the sides too much on the way down. When I lived in London, I had a cleaner called Irina, who back in her native Poland had been a forester. For lunch, she ate sandwiches of rye bread, lots of butter and whole, raw garlic cloves. In short, she was nails. She'd arrive at my house every Tuesday morning and – any time after about June – she'd take off her heels, put on her slippers and say, “Soon be Christmas!”
We'd both laugh, in that shared-joke, I-guess-you-had-to-be-there sort of way. We laughed because here on the front line of domesticity, it never stops, does it?…
