It's Margret's birthday soon. Now, historically, certain people
- let's call them 'women' - have harangued me for being a cloth-headed dullard
when it comes to getting presents for her. The accusation hurled into my startled
eyes is that I'd easily be able to surmise what she'd like to receive, if only
I were sensitive, and empathetic, and could create life in my womb rather than
endlessly starting wars. OK, then, armchair critics - if you're so emotionally
intelligent let's see you intuit this. I actually asked ('Ask'. verb.
Meaning to insist, repeatedly, against determined resistance, as though it was
a burdensome demand I was making of her rather than an attempt to fulfil her
wishes) Margret to write down what she wants me to get for her. You have until
the end of this Mail to make your guess as to what it was. If you guess correctly,
well done: give yourself a slice of Battenberg and a neck rub. If you don't:
shut up forever.
Moving on, I was watching a TV programme the other day. It touched on deadly
situations and the presenter - dug into a snow hole up a mountain and at this
point concerned with the important warning signs of fatal hypothermia - said,
"It's when you stop shivering that you should really start to worry."
"That," I thought, "is quite a good metaphor for my view of relationships."
(I also thought, "However, non-metaphorically, if I'm ever stuck in an
improvised, storm-punched, isolated and icy burrow high up a mountain, then
I reserve the right to start really worrying quite a bit earlier, thanks."
But that's another matter.) Surely complete tranquillity is terminal? All things,
if they're alive and vital, roil and retain inner tensions and probably have
bits where they shout at each other in a bathroom for forty-five minutes solid.
Still water is stagnant water: Margret and I, therefore, are merely 'extremely
well aerated.'
Fizzy, even.
Note the skill with which we maintain this state... Pensions were being mulled
over recently. Pensions annoy me. My pension, for example, is by far my biggest
monthly expense, well over twice the next greatest outgoing. And I have to continue
paying into it for multiple decades - decades - yet (increasing the amount
by 10 per cent a year; a maths bomb which means the figure rises fairly quickly
to the level of "Shall I make my pension payment this month? Or shall I
bail out a major car manufacturer instead?"). The reward for this is that,
if its value, based on the stock market, rises by 15 per cent a year
(hilariously unlikely), and if I can continue being able to afford the
payments (comprehensively impossible), then I'll get about £4,000 p/a (i.e.
enough to live in freezing, squalid poverty for the couple of years until I
die). An analogy might be 'Queuing for two weeks in the rain to get in to watch
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.'
Margret has a pension too. Because she has a proper job, hers is paid by her
employer and so it's no great burden. What's more, she'll probably end up drawing
it for years because it's quite likely that even death is scared of her.
However (and this is the public sector, where equality shines), its rules state
this: if you're a man and you die, then your wife gets your pension (or a significant
proportion of it); if you're a woman and you die, then your husband gets it
for a few months only - it then stops unless the husband can show he is "physically
or mentally incapable of work". This is one of those things that makes
me, on principle, want to hit someone really hard in the face with the spine
of a book.
Though, naturally, I have no personal stake in the above discrimination because
Margret and I aren't married. If there's no official husband (or wife - it's
the same with my pension), then all one can do is provide a 'nominated person'.
This person doesn't receive the pension, but instead receives a reduced one-off
payment if you die. So, when I get killed by lingual mucormycosis or several
leopards, then Margret will get a lump sum just about sufficient to buy a medium-sized
car and a selection pack of cheeses.
Anyway, that's the context in which Margret and I were sitting around one evening
recently imagining each other's sudden death. (We do have Pictionary, but it's
nowhere near as much fun and you're forever losing the pencils.)
"There's no way around it, Mil. They refuse to recognise anyone except
spouses as partners. So, if you suddenly, um..."
"Choke to death on a vole?"
"Choke to death on a vole, yes, or get your ear caught fatally in a wind
turbine, then we lose out. And the same if I..."
"Drunkenly pass out in a kiln."
"Yeah - that. You know..." Margret flicks piqued fingers at her pension
document, "You might have to marry me."
A cheery tut clicks from my teeth. "No... but I might have to marry someone
- someone with a better pension than you," I quip.
Mil: a quip.
Margret: Tunguska.
Really, you can't imagine the searing scale of her response to my charmingly
jocular throwaway comment; the Taliban would love her - she's apparently got
explosives strapped to the inside of her body. So, there's a tiny batrachomyomachia(1)
during which I am, ironically, too busy ducking and weaving to tell her that
she won't get even the small one-off payment from my pension if she's
the thing that kills me.
Now, I'm aware that some Americans read these Mails, and that absolutely every
one of those Americans is currently thinking, "Well, women yearn for marriage,
Mil. It's their/our central goal in life; the sole means by which they/we can
achieve true happiness, peace of mind, and validation. Plus God wants it. And
the bridesmaids will look adorable in coral." You therefore conclude
this was actually Margret's sincere, and possibly desperate, marriage proposal
- delivered via the vector of superannuation conditions. Nopey nope, colonists.
A lack of any pathological worship of weddings is one of the three ways in which
Margret isn't nuts. What it was, was this: "Are you thinking, even
abstractly, about another woman? One with artificially enlarged voluntary contributions
or with a brazenly 'Come and get it, boys' reversionary annuity?" It was
like I'd been caught peering down a barmaid's terms and conditions.
Leaving aside Margret doing her part to keep our relationship effervescent by
physically attacking me over a quip about retirement funds, though, there's
an intriguing issue here.
Suppose we did get married now, eh?
If interrogated by British or German officials, we'd have to answer honestly
that the sole reason for it was to stuff the pension companies. Would that fly?
Embarking on marriage entirely to gain the official status required for some
benefit - such as getting a passport, say - is legally naughty, isn't it? But
that would be the only reason; we have no desire for the specious endorsement
of a certificate otherwise. Against that, however, while many people judge Marriage-for-Nationality
to be wrong and unacceptable, is there anyone who regards 'To stuff a
pension company' as anything but a noble objective?
And that, Oprah, is how to keep a relationship fresh even after many years:
one partner should be compulsively flippant, the other should be dangerously
volatile, and together they should always retain the possibility of co-opting
anachronistic ceremonies for the purpose of inflicting wildcat justice on financial
institutions in both the public and private sectors. Or put another way, I've
never been a fan of the idea that 'couples should do things together', but maybe
I'll make an exception if the thing they're doing together is fraud.
Right - a couple of items of business before we finish. I hate mentioning stuff
I've done in any kind of positive way because it whiffs of self-promotion and
is thus horrid and un-British. However, I can do so with this one (and a future
thing I'll keep hidden in my secret shoe until the next Mail) as I'm merely
a single contributor to something larger and featuring far more splendid people.
"Paint
a Vulgar Picture: Fiction Inspired by the Smiths"
http://ThingsMyGirlfriendAndIHaveArguedAbout.com/l/?paint
It's out on the 28th of May and is a collection of short stories 'inspired'
by songs from Manchester's funky popsters. Some lovely authors have contributed
- Helen Walsh, Catherine O'Flynn, best-selling novelist Maria Beaumont's husband,
etc., etc. - so don't worry that by getting it you'd be breaking your solemn
commitment never to buy one of my books; this book is in no sense 'mine',
so you are free to enjoy it without feeling recreant or morally tainted.
Next, I'm doing an event at the Brighton Fringe Festival on the 12th of May.
http://ThingsMyGirlfriendAndIHaveArguedAbout.com/l/?brighton
(That's not me in the picture, obv., that's Mr Rankin. Though, I really should
get a hat, shouldn't I? You're not a proper novelist until you've got a hat.)
Yes, this one is fifty per cent me, I'm afraid, but I'll flag it up as it's
one the Brighton evenings arranged by a friend of mine - it's for her sake that
I'm waving it about. It should be a hoot, mind. And afterwards, it's everyone
back to her place for vol-au-vents and sensible drinking!
So... time's up, my adorable specials. Have you successfully tuned your present-guessing
dial into the mind waves of a slightly too tall, vastly too blonde German woman?
You have? A slap on the back for you, then, as you've obviously correctly deduced
that what she wants for her birthday is "A pair of Marigold rubber gloves
and a roll of insulation tape." Oh yes. And, let's be clear, these are
regarded as a single present; she doesn't want a pair of rubber gloves and also,
unrelatedly, a roll of insulation tape: no - they're desired together, as a
unit.
I don't want to boast, but I actually manage to sleep while someone who requests
a present like that is loose in the house.
Mil.
(1) Sorry. Sheer childish petulance. I'm currently itchy from
the amount of times words or references are removed from my Guardian columns
on the grounds that they're "too obscure". I apologise. Univocally.
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