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.