Relations between Britain and Russia hit an all-time low

Hubski's sausage has been seized.

Let me explain. Twice a year, my mother-in-law comes to visit us from the Russian north (where incidentally, snow has yet to fall this year for the first time in living memory). Approximately four fifths of her small suitcase contains much-missed foodstuffs from hubski's childhood. Sausage features large.

Nostalgia can be the only justification for consuming something which, thanks to various dyes, additives and mysterious processes, stopped resembling meat long ago. The smell penetrates not only soft furnishings and cupboard walls, but one's very soul.

When mother-in-law came to visit us in France, hubski could usually pull strings at CDG airport to get her escorted from the plane. When she arrived at Heathrow last week, a polite official approached her and asked if she was arriving from St Petersburg. Thinking this was her welcoming committee, she trotted gratefully behind him to a table, onto which the polite official tipped the contents of her suitcase. He rummmaged through her neatly patched sweaters, jars of homemade pickles, bags of dried parsley (she thinks Western parsley is inferior), and confiscated 3 kgs of 'meat products' (I disloyally punch the air, no more smell and 3 kilos less lard to fur up hubski's arteries).

Mother-in-law (babushka to us), was incandescent. I would have been - that much sausage must have cost her half her pension. She gave the customs man a piece of her mind, all in Russian of course, and he responded by handing her a leaflet explaining about foot and mouth disease, featuring a picture of a side of ham, and a quizzical looking fish, with crosses through them.

Fortunately, babushka considers herself either too old for, or above politics (any mention of politicians is greeted with a dismissive wave of the hand and decisive turning away of the head). So the subject of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and worsening Russian-British relations has not been broached during her visit. Our family has been through enough choppy water recently, and there seems no sense in further rocking the boat. Hubski and I no longer bother with furious, wine-fuelled rows about who really won the Second World War or if the Russian mafia are pussy cats compared to Western corrupt bosses.

Which is just as well, because I haven't yet mentioned that my sister-in-law is also visiting us at the moment. She's a world authority on every subject, including (the latest example) religious education in English schools. 'Why do you teach propaganda in your schools?', she demanded (herself a veteran of the Soviet system and former Komsomol president), as if I work as a personal advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Laugh? I almost bit my tongue off.

If you think you're hard enough...

This week I discovered something quite liberating. I've become immune to the little ways British people let each other know they are stepping out of line. The Look, the Tut, the Headlight Flash, or the Eye Roll, no longer make me blush to the roots of my hair. Nothing scares little me anymore.

After spending years almost constantly engaged in warring with people, through the medium of car horns, customer services call centres (I wonder how many of my calls to Crédit Lyonnais were used for training purposes?), weirdos on buses, employers who refused to pay up or issue contracts, the Mairie de Levallois which once informed me that my son did not exist (that's another post), barnacle-like insurance companies who refuse to accept that I no longer require their services (when will I ever get rid of MAAF?), it takes a hell of a lot to impress me.

This was brought home to me while parking the family Ford Fiesta (we have gone down in the world, in car terms, since moving) in the market square of the Oxfordshire town of V, town not of my birth but of my adolescence. As I eased my way into one of the coveted slots just in front of Woolies, my light was blocked by an imposing Range Rover which pulled up alongside. Its lady driver made a gesture to me, and if that gesture had a voice, it would have said, 'Shove alorrng now, member of the lower orders. I require more space to reverse in behind you. Skitter!' I declined the order with a shrug (not a Gallic one mind, a sheepish one).

Mrs Range Rover revved up her engines and did a remarkable job of parallel parking, at speed, in behind me. She didn't quite scrape me, but I could tell she wanted to. She shut her car door more forcefully than was strictly necessary (can you feel me quaking?), flounced past me, still sitting in my Fiesta, and then pointedly turned, and delivered a .... Look.

For the first time on British soil, I used my favourite tactic to deal with irate Parisian taxi drivers (while safely behind the wheel of my car). I blew a kiss. She stomped off, leaving me doubled up over the steering wheel with not very mature laughter.

With impeccable timing, we arrived back at our cars simultaneously, and there was a hilarious kind of 'tum-ti-tum, I'm ignoring you while wanting to tear you limb from limb', moment while we fumbled with our keys, got into our cars, and drove off in perfect unison, her Range Rover breathing unpleasantly down my neck. It was sooo nice not to have to fumble for my angry French vocabularly, for had we been in France, that would have undoubtably merited a slanging match.

I must own up though. After I got out of my car, I clocked the fact that there was about a metre of free space in front of me, and I could have legally budged up after all. But I decided to deploy another tactic I learned across the Channel.

Never apologise.

Land of extremes (of hot and cold)

Every so often, hubski reveals his French side to me, built up over 15 years of overhearing people in restaurants whingeing at length about the shade of their tights or the noise of the air-conditioner. Which reminds me, of course, what a very good move it was to bundle him out of there before he started buying French pop-music in a non-ironic way, or two lambswool jumpers at once (one for wearing, one for shoulder-draping and believing oneself the apogée of BCBG chic). Or voting for Le Pen.

He's on the phone from Germany, where, in his cute, newly-naturalised French way, he's being sorely tested by the German penchant for making up rules and then sticking to them ('Hitler had an easy job with this lot'). The conversation moves to our new house. He wants to know where the water meter is (does he expect me to know that?). By the way, he asks, all casual-like, does the bath have one tap or two? I say, two, I think. One for hot, and one for cold.

Hubski switches to English for dramatic effect. It's to let me know that he is displeased and I should prepare for a telling off. 'Oh no, Francesca. (weighty pause) That is bad. Veery, veery bad.' I can feel that I'm expected to apologise. But what for? Why should I be blamed for my country's indifference to mixer taps? That I come from the land of freezing right buttocks and scalded left buttocks? I refuse to take responsibilty. Noone consulted me. Blame Mr Amitage Shanks.

Our new house, although I love it, has rotten window panes, no central heating and no room in the kitchen for a dishwasher. But he doesn't care about that, oh no. We didn't move early enough. And now I have to live with the fact that my husband is too French to stir the bath water with his bare hands.