“First, we must clean very well the lounge”, he says, “and clean the pictures”.

“Oh God!”, I reply.

But, I don’t mind really. Milan is on holiday tomorrow. Italy is on holiday on Thursday and Friday most people have a ‘bridge day’. So it’s a very long weekend. He is, it seems, quite excited about putting up the tree and decorating it but, like everything in his life, the flat has to be thoroughly cleaned beforehand.

To me that would be putting the hoover over and a quick dust. For him it includes all the pictures on the wall and, I’m sure, the complete cleansing of every surface.

He brought a bag over last night. “There’s some nice things in here”, he says.

Later we look. There’s some ‘smelly’ stuff. There’s some of the disinfectant he uses for CD covers (probably for the pictures) and then there’s some insecticide spray.

“What have you got this for?”, I ask.

“I like it”, he replies, adding, “it’s for the sofa”.

He has to explain that one. “We never clean it properly”, he says, “and this will kill the little animals”.

I suppose I could have got upset that he should think the place has bugs or fleas (he asks, from time to time, if the dogs have ‘little animals’ – and is reassured when I say that I dose them every month for exactly this reason and that, no, they don’t) but I’m not. It’s his ‘thing’. It’s OK. It makes me laugh, especially when he calls them ‘little animals’ since I’ve never really thought of bugs or fleas as animals but, rather, insects.

And so I laugh instead.

I am sure everything will be taken down and cleaned and dusted, all corners will be swept and washed. everything will be done ………. by which time I will be far too exhausted to be bothered with putting up the tree!

Sigh.