Solid Citizens

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I like the Winter Festival.

Oh yeah, sure, it can be a complete pain in the rectum, and it’s really a time for the bought help. Still, there isn’t much to beat the simple pleasure of coming downstairs on that first Winter Festival morning, particularly if it’s cold and crisp and early, and seeing them all lined up waiting for their candles and dolls and little packets of holiday money, their innocent faces bright with the prospect of a whole five days’ skiving off work, rubbishing the master, stuffing themselves until they’re sick with rich food in the best dining room and generally behaving like a pig’s backside with total impunity. Or at least technically: any slave stupid enough to go over the top by, say, pissing in the ornamental pool or trying it on with the mistress in the linen cupboard deserves all he gets — even if he can’t be given it until after the party’s over for another year. Rome might let her hair down on occasion, but you don’t mess with her.

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