Mil's Mailing List Mail #44

It's a Christmas flavour for this 'If we did the work we're being paid for instead of just reading random nonsense the second our employers look away, then what use would Alt+Tab be?' Mail, dearest Listers. Not for any pressingly vital reason, but merely because I fancied you might want your indolence themed for a change.

First, as has now become traditional, I pass on to you - my extended family - the Christmas card I sent to my flesh friends and relatives.

http://ThingsMyGirlfriendAndIHaveArguedAbout.com/l/?xmas2007

Fröhliche Weihnachten.

Next, for all of you who've contacted me with variations of, "When's your next book out, Mil - I'd like to get it as a Christmas present for my husband/girlfriend/dentist/AA sponsor/Alyson Hannigan?" the reply is, "What? No, no - it's not coming out until July 2008. Publishing moves at a stately speed, my webby young friends." So, you should buy (deep breath, Louisiana) another book instead. May I recommend Gerard Donovan's Schopenhauer's Telescope, which is lovely.

Finally: presents.

This year Margret's present is 'The RHS Encyclopedia of Gardening'. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Eh? Encyclopedia? Encyclopedia? Surely, before sitting down to write 752 pages, a person should check how to spell 'encyclopaedia'? Or is the Royal Horticultural Society, perhaps, based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, now? Tch." Skinning the heels of this thought is, I assume, a reflexive, visceral hatred for me. What kind of contemptuous beast, you ask, buys someone an encyclopaedia of gardening as a present? You might as well simply walk in on Christmas morning and slap them in the face.

Well, while you, I, and the majority of the human race would regard an encyclopaedia of gardening in the same light as, say, 'The CD Box Set of Telephone Dial Tones', Margret actually decided on this present herself. It's what she wants, OK? It was demonstrably best she chose it herself, because, of course, there's no way on earth it would ever have occurred to me to get that for her. I'm easy to buy for: I'm getting Resident Evil 4 for the Wii. Anyone, buying for anyone, is surely going to be able to come up with a universally-welcomed gift like Resident Evil 4 without too much strain, right? (Though, admittedly, I did get it myself and merely hand it to Margret for wrapping - but that's only because it's Margret: the alternative was the very real possibility of my impatiently tearing through brightly-coloured paper on the 25th, only to then find myself holding the RHS's 'Pruning & Training'.) Buying presents for Margret is impossible; unless you're Margret. I will prove this by illustration. (This took place some months ago, but the universal message is clear, I feel. Christmases, birthdays, random whenevers - it doesn't matter.)

I'm sitting in front of my computer, toiling. It's mid-morning and (for some reason she isn't at work*) Margret strides in carrying a bag of shopping and one of her faces. I peer even more intently at the screen and put on a 'Please don't interrupt me. Especially with senseless piffle' expression. As always, Margret takes no notice of this - experience brings me to doubt she can even see it, actually; I suspect that, to her, it's as I would find the sound of a dog whistle or those electro-magnetic auras that can only be sensed by sharks.
"I've bought these shoes," she begins. (You never want to hear those opening words, do you? They're pretty much on a level with listening to a stewardess come on the aeroplane tannoy and say, "Um, would you please make yourself known to a member of staff if you can fly a plane, and didn't have the fish.") "I've bought these shoes, but I couldn't decide, so… I got the red pair..." She holds up a red pair. "...and I got the black pair..." She holds up - well, you're ahead of me already, yes? I flatter myself that I know how to prioritise efficiently, so I'd been careful to lose interest before she held up the first pair of shoes; she proceeds, however. "...but... -sigh- ...now I think about it, I reckon green would have been the best colour, don't you?"

Honesty is the key to a successful relationship.

"I don't care," I reply.
"Because," she continues, "for one thing, a green pair would go better with my trousers." She twists her lips. "Don't you think? I got the black, and the red… but it's a green pair I need really, isn't it?"
She leaves the room. But returns around every twenty minutes - "See? Red. See? Black. Green's the pair, though - yes?" - for the next six hours.
At about four p.m. I break.
You need to realise, by the way, that these aren't designer shoes that cost more than the combined education budgets for half a dozen African nations; they're the cheapest, least must-have trainers available anywhere in the northern hemisphere. Five quid. Five. Quid.
Four p.m., having suffered this all day, I break. I get up, pull out a five pound note, and thrust it into her hand.
"There," I shout. "There - there's the money from my own pocket: make this stop. Keep the red, keep the black: take this five pounds that I'm giving to you and go, right now, and buy yourself the green as well. OK? It ends here. Go. Go and buy the pigging green!"
She looks at me from under a wrinkling forehead. Astonished. Uncomprehending.
"The green?" she says. "They don't sell them in green."

I keep a pillow just for screaming into, by the way.

Right, I ought to leave you now. There's not much longer before you have to stop work for the holidays, so I'm aware that you need to buckle down if you're to watch all the Flash animations you've been forwarded before then. I retreat quietly: we will, sweetest Listers, meet again in 2008.

Mil.

*Though I'm not about to tell you what it is, so don't bother asking, Margret's job is not only (as I've said previously) more highly paid than mine, it's also much more respected, more useful, and just all round more 'worthy'. (If you want an idea of the situation, imagine that Rosalind Franklin, the pioneering biophysicist who contributed vastly to our understanding of the structure of DNA, was the partner of Dave, a bloke who gathers and collates all those 'Last checked by...' forms from the toilets in McDonald's.) I mention this because we went to a parents' evening at Second Born's school recently. Sitting on a tiny, tiny chair looking through his exercise books with my knees up by my chin, I saw that his teacher had, at one point, set the class the task of writing My Home pieces - little outlines of where they were, the family members, what they were like, etc. Under the 'My Parents' heading, Second Born had written simply this:
"My father is a writer, and my mother is German." [back]