I was watching Mission Impossible and it was making me uneasy. Tom Cruise was doing something - infiltrating, probably, you know what he's like - and he was continuously describing the situation to his distant support buddies via his headset radio. For a while, I naturally assumed that it was simply Tom Cruise's big nose that was unsettling me and tried, using soothing visualisations and breathing exercises, to move myself, mentally, to a place where it wasn't an issue. But then - the realisation freezing my arm and abruptly halting a crisp's journey from bag to mouth - I had a small epiphany: 'Lawks,' I thought, 'This is my girlfriend.'
"Margret, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to wander around constantly articulating precisely what it is that you're doing at that moment, as though relaying it to an unseen control team somewhere. Possibly, on an alien mother ship, secretly orbiting the Earth. For example."
She does this all the time. 'Get some eggs from the fridge... here's the butter... and now a frying pan... What's in the cupboard? OK, we've got oregano... some basil... I'll go for the mixed herbs... Now I need some scissors...' Who is she talking to? It's certainly not me: for one thing, I can see what she's doing - and, further, am not interested - and for another, I sometimes hear her doing this while she's alone in a room in another part of the house. And - though, admittedly, there's often a huge temptation to think she functions like this - I don't believe it's because she simply has no idea what she's going to do until it's actually occurring and I'm merely listening to her keeping her mind informed about what it is that her body appears to be doing right now. Sometimes we'll be sitting down watching TV and she'll get up and say, 'I'm going to the toilet.' Why would anyone say that? Does she think I'm keeping a log for research purposes? Is she intimating that she needs help? Does she have reason to expect that she may be abducted halfway up the stairs and thus wants me to at least be able to tell the police, 'Well, the last time I saw her I know she was on her way to the toilet.' What?
Surely, it can only be that she's an undercover member of the M.I. team. Every time a van is parked near our house now, I imagine Ving Rhames is in it; 'OK, the toilet's at the top of the stairs - it's unguarded, but has a slightly bent hinge...'
Oh, and the first person to say, 'Well, if she's doing an impossible mission, then that'd be 'living with you', Mil, wouldn't it?' gets a very slow handclap, OK?

The other possibility is that she's simply talking to the air. 'But that,' you say, 'would make her mad.' Yet, isn't there an idea that everything - water, rocks, fire, etc. - has a spirit, that everything is, in some way, 'alive'? Isn't that believed by some people? 'Yes,' you say, 'mad people.' Well, I certainly can't argue with you there (and don't wish to debate the theory with any Californians who are reading either, thanks), but I raise it as a possibility. Because, if we're looking for a mystic answer, she certainly regards the television as the Magic Box Full Of Tiny People Who Can Hear Her. If an actress says - as actresses seem highly prone to - 'I'm just going down into the cellar,' she'll often call out to her, 'Don't go down into the cellar!' Or she'll offer lengthy and detailed personal advice: 'No, don't send him that letter. He's just using you. Leave him and go back to Brian.'
I can watch a film many times. Margret thinks watching a film more than once (even worse - buying the DVD so that I can watch it whenever I want) is, well, I'm not sure there's a word to describe it. If she discovers me watching a film, says, 'Haven't you already seen this?' and I reply, 'Yes,' and continue to watch, she looks at me like I'd just confessed to being sexually aroused by livestock. A swirling mixture of incomprehension, contempt and with just a hint of, 'I knew it...' I realise now that this might be because she doesn't feel she's watching a film, but rather guiding the Tiny People through actual ordeals - a strain she doesn't want to have to endure twice.
I've tried telling her that TV doesn't work like that. That the people are just actors. But she just doesn't seem to get it. She throws back some nonsense about me compulsively sitting there, flooded with adrenaline, barking out the answers when University Challenge is on - clearly unaware that this is exactly what has made humankind so successful: the desire to test oneself against oceans, mountains, one's own deepest fears, or a selection of general knowledge questions. More disastrously, she also completely misses the point and starts going on about me shouting at the tennis on television or something. Incredibly, it seems she's unable to see the difference between her talking to actors, recorded on film, and my shouting, 'Go down the line!' while watching the television broadcast of a live match when, of course, in those circumstances there really is the possibility of my altering the course of play by vocalizing the sheer focussed power of my will. She still has an awful lot to learn about science, I'm afraid.

Margret was away with her friends the other weekend. It was a hen party thing. I hesitate to mention that, as English women on hen nights are quite the most repellent spectacle it's possible to encounter - if we happen across a group of hen night women when we're out together, Margret will invariably point at them and dare me to defend a culture that has incubated such an embarrassment. So, let me stress that, though it was technically a hen weekend, it wasn't the whooping, cackling, "Look! We have a huge inflatable penis and an openly desperate desire to have you think we're fearless unfettered rebels so don't let the fact that we clearly all work at a local building society and are trying way too hard!" kind of affair that you'll often see congoing through Brannigans in ill-advised skirts. It was still hen, though, there's no escaping that. I stayed here with the kids; if they asked where she was, I had planned - to avoid inflicting on them the psychological damage of knowing their mother was at a hen weekend - to say that she was simply away serving a short sentence for shoplifting.
Before she went, she asked me to record a couple of gardening programmes that were going to be on the TV. The first night she was there she rang me. She'd had a row with some bloke in a bar. He'd apparently pinched her bottom and then, when she responded, um, 'unfavourably' to this, had tried to smooth the waters by saying he couldn't resist as she was the best looking woman there - a point which Margret found really quite an insufficient reason for being pinched by somebody; she expressed this concept to him. Now, as I was a good two-hundred miles away and, in any case, had a big pile of ironing to do, there wasn't really very much I could do to support her. I did think of demonstrating that I shared her contempt for him by pointing out that the bloke was clearly also a calculating liar: 'There's no way you could have been the best looking woman there - I mean, what about Jo, just for a start?' Some tiny alarm rang deep in my head, however, and told me that not saying this would work out better for me in the long run. She continued to talk for a while, and finished by reminding me to video the gardening programmes.
The next day, right on cue, I forgot to video the gardening programmes.
I can't quite convey to you the icing I felt on my skin and the claustrophobic tightening of my chest that occurred when I idly glanced down at the clock on my taskbar and realised I'd forgotten to record them. I know you think I should have set the timer on the VCR, but I deliberately didn't. The timer on our VCR has poor self-discipline and vague life goals and will often fail to work, just for kicks. So, rather than risk giving the job to a recidivist video recorder, I decided it was far safer to do it manually. And to fill in the time until that point by going up on the computer, entering 'Fairuza Balk' in Google and, you know, just seeing where that led. It was obvious I was going to have to tell Margret what had happened and - although it was just 'one of those things', for which no one was really to blame - I knew very soon, and with a clarity of understanding that bordered on the spiritual, that the best time at which to inform her about the situation was while she was still two-hundred miles away from me. Therefore, I immediately texted her mobile - knowing she wouldn't have it switched on, because she never has it switched on, but that she'd see it before too long. Only, the second I'd sent the message, I began to worry. I'd assumed that letting her know now would give her a chance to cool down before she returned. But, equally likely, it would just give her a chance to work up a head of steam. And, if Margret's playing a, 'The trouble with Mil is...' riff, then the very worst place to ensure that it doesn't build and build is in the company of a load of exclusively female friends on a hen night. And she was in Manchester. Manchester. She was going to come back after a day and a half of, "...well, it's not for me to say, Margret, but if I were going out with Mil, then...", wired on crack, and carrying an Uzi.
That night, I slept under the children's bed.

We had an earthquake here the other week. Surprisingly, I'm not being metaphorical. I mean we had an actual earthquake: in the geological rather than the emotional sense. It happened at about one o'clock in the morning, we were pretty close to the epicentre, and it was 4.8 on the Richter scale. Now, I'm depressingly aware that all you Californians are right now glancing up from your crystals and pausing mid-mantra to snort, '4.8? Poh. That's not an earthquake, that's just someone slamming a door.' Well, yes, I suppose it's all relative, but here in England where tectonics is less brash and showy, 4.8 is easily vulgar enough to stand out.
The important thing is that just before 1 A.M. the whole house shook. Naturally, this woke us up. Cupboards rattled and banged, furniture shivered across the floor, the bed struggled like it was possessed by the spirit of a wild animal that was trying to get out. The instant it ended, Margret's freshly woken face slid in front of me. Her voice irritated and her eyes accusatively thin, she hissed, 'Was that you?'

I better note this down before I forget it again. I was reminded of it last week - apologies if you were around at the point when my memory was jogged but, before you start whining that you've heard me mention this observation already, may I just point out that anyone who's sitting around watching daytime TV probably oughtn't to get too captious, eh? So, Margret and I were having an argument (you'd think I'd have a shortcut key for that sentence by now, wouldn't you?). I can't remember what we were arguing about, but that doesn't matter here because in today's lesson we're focusing on style, not content. Say we were arguing about, oh, lettuce (even if we weren't, it's surely only a matter of time):
Margret: You haven't washed all the lettuce.
Mil: I've washed the bits I'm going to eat.
Margret: And left the rest for me to wash.
Mil: If you wash it all, it goes off quicker.
Margret: So, we'll eat it quicker, then.
Mil: I don't want to eat it quicker.
Margret: But I do.
Mil: Then wash it yourself if you're so bloody desperate to gorge on lettuce. What am I? Your official Lettuce Washer?
Margret: My last boyfriend was taller than you.
Etc.
Fairly standard stuff, clearly, but what you need to realise is something that I can't get across on the page. It's that, as the exchanges switched backwards and forwards between us, there was a kind of bidding war going on with the pitch. It's not just that each one of us upped the volume a little for our turn, but that we also changed the tone by raising our voices so that our reply was about a fifth higher than the one that the other person had just used. It was like two Mariah Careys facing off - pretty quickly, we were having an argument that only dogs could hear.
I've noticed that this often happens, and I reckon Margret secretly initiates it as a ploy. She raises her pitch, subconsciously luring me to respond. It's tactical. She knows it increases her chances of winning the argument because - when I come to deliver the final, logical coup de grace with great imperiousness and gravitas - I discover I'm doing so in the voice of Jimmy Somerville.

Margret bought a jacket. The purpose of this jacket, its raison d'etre, was not to provide warmth or woo the eyes or give employment to jacket makers. The purpose of this jacket was to demonstrate to me my place in the world. To provide a medium through which I might gain knowledge - much like the rustling of the leaves at the Oracle of Dodona being a means for discovering the will of Zeus. Only, you know, except with lots more polyester. Margret bought this jacket and placed it on a hanger in the hallway. Later that day, when she judged I had approximately 1,285 things I'd rather be doing, she commanded me to view it.
She takes it down from the hanger, puts it on and says, 'What do you think?'
'Well,' I say, 'if you like it...'
I hear the fire alarm go off and briefly glance up the stairs before realising that the noise is actually in my head.
'What's wrong with it?' asks Margret. Somewhat challengingly.
'Oh, you know, nothing in particular,' I shrug. This is factually correct. It is a comprehensively appalling jacket; no particular aspect of its extensive dreadfulness stands out as especially distressing.
'What... is wrong... with it,' Margret replies, filling in the spaces with facial expressions.
'Um, well, it's shapeless.'
'No, it isn't.'
'OK, then, it's cylinder-shaped. Which is not a good shape. For a jacket.'
'I like the shape.'
'Fair enough. Right, I'm going...'
'What else?'
'Did I say there was...'
'What else?'
'The material is unpleasant.'
'No it's not.'
'And the pattern is awful.'
'The pattern's nice.'
'And it doesn't appear to fit properly - look at the arms.'
'That's how it's supposed to fit.'
'Fair enough, then.'
'I like it. I'm going to wear it always.''
'OK.'
She places it back on the hanger, lets me know I'm a fool and we go on about our business.
The next day Margret's friend calls round to drop something off quickly. She drops it off (quickly), they (quickly) talk for four and a half hours, and then she has to dash. Coincidentally, I'm coming down the stairs when Margret is seeing her out. As Margret is by the door she says to her, 'Oh, look, I bought a new jacket. What do you think?'
'Well,' the friend replies, 'if you like it...'
Margret returns the jacket to the shop, immediately.
Immediately.

Margret: 'Mmm... Is anything in the world better than the feel of fresh bed sheets?'
Mil: 'Yes.'

Do you remember the thing about 'Shut up'? It's not on this page anymore but, if you're an old-timer (or, I suppose, on the Mailing List and have read through the stuff that's no longer here) you might recall it. Well, she's sort of at it again.
I was looking for something that should have been somewhere, and wasn't. I asked Margret where it was, and she said, 'It's in the bedroom.'
'No, it isn't,' I replied - having just come from searching in the bedroom for about ten increasingly tantrumy minutes.
'Yes, it is,' she repeated.
'It's not. I've looked there.'
An expression of amused indulgence came over her face the subtleties of which I can't quite convey, so I'll have to make do with the description of it as, 'absolutely bleeding infuriating.'
'How much,' she said, 'will you give me if I find it?'
OK, so this operates on two levels. The first is simple sadism. Margret knows the agony it would cause me if - after my prolonged, stomping insistence that it isn't there - she calmly walks over and places her hand immediately on it. Tauntingly, she knows that just the possibility of this happening is quite probably enough for my nerve to crack. She is well aware that if, just one more time, my frustrated raging of, 'The nail scissors aren't here. See? They're not bloody here. Do you understand? Not... Here... Look! Go on! You try to find them then! Go on! Where are they then? Eh?' receives the near-instantaneous reply, 'Here they are,' and a pair of nail scissors, then I'm simply going to have to run away to sea. Can you see the other level, the one which ties it in kind with the 'Shut up' affair, though? Have a think.
That's it, well spotted: monetary gain. If I've maintained that something isn't somewhere until I've had to jump up and down, hold my breath and squeal that she's not my real mom, then simple, human decency should compel Margret to say, 'Yes, you're right,' rather than go there and find it. Going there and finding it is what you'd expect a Colombian Death Squad to do. What separates Margret from a Colombian Death Squad - perhaps the only thing that does - is subtlety. She's awfully keen to make that bet about finding things, isn't she? Now... why could that be? Well, obviously, it's because she's rigged the deck. The reason I can't find what I'm looking for is that she's previously spotted what I'm looking for, and moved it.
I have innate positioning instincts, you see: like a salmon returning thousands of miles across unmarked oceans, right to the stream where it was born. In exactly the same way, when I've finished using it, I will place a screwdriver on top of a bedroom radiator and - when I need it again, perhaps eighteen months later - unerringly return to that spot to retrieve it. Frequently, to discover that Margret has, maddeningly, taken it upon herself to transfer it to somewhere else. My instincts, moreover, are incredibly precise. If I'm looking for a pair of trainers that my astonishingly accurate positional memory remembers putting down in the bottom left of a cupboard, then I'm not going to notice them if some fiend has moved them to the bottom right of the cupboard during the intervening four and a half years, am I? That'd be stupid. What's the point of having a gift for such specific location if your visual perception is so vague as to wander around all over the place? Eh? What's more, I place things logically. Where are you most likely to need carpet tacks and a hammer, for example? Precisely. So leaving them on the stairs is simple ergonomics.
However, for some reason, Margret is unable to respect my filing system. She spends her day roaming the house, wilfully moving things from where I've deliberately placed them. And that's why she's keen to make the bet. She's hidden my stuff, and now she wants me to pay for her to retrieve it. It's basically a form of extortion, isn't it? Let's call a spade a spade: Margret has kidnapped my stuff and is holding it for ransom. Really, ladies and gentlemen, it's a sad state of affairs when your girlfriend abducts your favourite underpants.

Simply odd. Odd. We're writing Christmas cards at the moment, and Margret asked if I'd print out a family photo to include with them. (I have many photos of us, taken during every season and in numerous different locations - all, however, show precisely the same pose: Margret - beaming smile; Mil - solemn resignation; First Born - looking down at a Game Boy; Second Born - tongue out at camera, fingers pulling up to expose inside of nostrils.) Now, I'm aware that including a family photo with a Christmas card is not at all unusual in America, and I don't want to appear to criticise this: I'm sure it's perfectly lovely when an American sends such a card to another American. It's simply a tradition and no more a cause for comment, in its context, than any other of the fine customs unique to that country, like... um... like pie eating competitions, say, or religious snake-handling. As an English person, though, the notion of sending out pictures of ourselves strikes me as narcissistically brash. I mentioned this to Margret and, though she had sympathy with the concept that (non-American) people who send out photos of themselves might reasonably be assumed to be utterly dreadful, she said she thought that sometimes it was nice to get a picture. She thought it was nice for a very specific reason. '...because then you can see what size they are.' Now, this is clearly nonsense - 'Oh, look - they're 8"-by-4".' - unless people are sending out photographs of themselves next to an item of known dimensions. A bit like those kidnap photos where the victim is holding the day's paper: Bill, Emma, Helen, Matt and Blackie ensure that they're posing by a regulation, roadside telephone CAB box, with their arms linked to avoid tricks of perspective. More pertinently, though - what the hell? 'So you can see what size they are'? What on earth does that mean? Am I expected to open a card, splutter out my mouthful of tea in shock and call out, 'Quick! Take Ted and Sarah off our list - I've just found out they're bleeding midgets!' It is, as I say, 'simply odd'.

I'm off to Germany for a few weeks. Apologies if my absence results in your doing any work.

Except, I have to pop back briefly to tell you what just happened. I'm about to cycle into town and Margret stops me as I'm setting off. 'Will you bring back that filing cabinet from Argos?' she asks. Can you, ladies and gentlemen, imagine a person cycling two miles through Christmas traffic on a mountain bike carrying a filing cabinet?
Margret can.
Right, I really must get packed for Germany now.

Right, I've just got back from Germany so I have a huge backlog of stuff to get sorted - the inevitable result of a short break away hissing around the Allgäu, past numberless gasping locals, all swooning, 'Incredible! He skis like some kind of god!' You'll be happy to know, however, that Christmas this year went very well. As I think we've established by now, providing Margret with Christmas presents that evoke joy - rather than massive, brutal retaliation - is something that must be bought at a terrible cost. The fearful, Faust-blanching price of this ability is to - quite literally - listen to everything that Margret says throughout the previous year. I mean, Kung Fu monks (according to the omniscient well of knowledge that is popular 1970s television) only had to do a decade or so of training then carry a red hot metal bowl for a couple of meters with their bare forearms. I have to listen to everything Margret says throughout the entire year. Endless, endless, endless hours of stuff about the comparative aesthetic merits of different Ikea storage units, just so I'm there - prickling with alertness - on those occasions when she slyly drops in a hint about what she might like as a gift when the trial of buying one for her confronts me again. As I say, though, last year, twelve months worth of intelligence gathering paid off. This Christmas morning she was so thrilled that she stared at me - literally unable to form her thoughts into words - for quite the longest time imaginable after unwrapping her presents of a barometer and one of those 'Make Your Own Will' kits.

Oh, as you ask, I had a pretty uneventful time over in Germany. Skiing, visiting friends, waiting for the figure to turn green at pedestrian crossing lights even though there quite plainly isn't any sort of moving vehicle within a mile and a half, being shown photographs of my girlfriend naked, etc., etc.
The Old Timers among you will be well aware that pretty much every household in modern Germany contains at least a couple of photographs of my girlfriend naked, and also that this is a) "Not sexual. Tch - what the hell's wrong with you?" and b) very much My Problem. So, I'm sitting in a living room and - after tea and cakes - out come the photographs of Margret naked. I hold one of the pictures in my hand and sit there, radiating heat. Alerted, perhaps, by the grinding sound I'm involuntarily making with my teeth, Margret looks across at me and lets out a long, weary sigh.
'Oh, for God's sake,' she tuts, 'OK - so I'm naked. But you can't see anything.'
I glance pointedly at her, pointedly at the photograph, and then back at her again - pointedly. She lets out an even wearier sigh and rolls her eyes.
'OK...' she shrugs, '...apart from that.'

In what I can only assume was an impromptu but gutsy attempt at the World Irony Record, the other day Margret started to lecture me on how I could become calmer. I mean, really, eh? It's like being pitched Al Qaeda's Little Book of Love. Her spontaneous proselytising was conjured from her now going to yoga one evening a week.
'It's really relaxing when I'm there,' she says.
'Yes, it is,' I reply. (You see what I actually meant there, right? Lord, but I'm arch.)
'Why don't you come to a session?'
There's a sucking, cultish gleam in her eye. The kind of, 'Join us! Join us - the spaceship awaits!' look that you see on the faces of Moonies or people who are telling you about homeopathy.
'No thanks.'
'But you really lose the tension.'
I consider mentioning that she always seems to find it again pretty quickly once she gets back - maybe she might think about getting a yoga instructor who 'loses her tension' by some method other than 'hiding it in our house', but I keep hold of this card for a while.
'I don't need to,' I say, 'I can achieve perfect relaxation by sitting here and watching a Buffy DVD.'
'That's not the same.'
'Yes it is.'
'No it isn't: when you're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' (I promise you these are her exact words that are coming up now), 'you're straining your mind.'
My face briefly collapses under the effort of trying to map the internal reasoning of a psychology that could incubate such a concept, but it's the logical equivalent of falling infinitely into the Mandelbrot set and I pull back, palsied and afraid. Instead, I reach for my ace.
'Well, whatever, the point is - this yoga is only relaxing you for the precise amount of time you're doing it. Once you get back home you're just the same. In fact, you've been moaning even more than usual for the last few weeks.'
'No I haven't.'
'Yes, you have.'
'No, no - I haven't been moaning,' she says, rolling her eyes and tutting. She reaches forward and ruffles my hair. 'I've just been moaning at you.' With that, she gets up and breezes from the room.
You know... I've been thinking about it for several days now, and I still can't figure out who won there.

Romance Masterclass.
It's Wednesday the 12th of February. It's early evening. Margret and I are sitting in the living room. Margret has asked me to do something the following day.
Mil: 'I can't, I'm afraid. I'm going into town.'
Margret: 'Why? What do you need to go to town for?'
Mil: 'Oh, I have to get some stuff.'
Margret: 'What stuff?'
Mil: 'Just some stuff... things.'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'Various things.'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'What does it matter?'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'It's not important what specific things, is it? I have to get things or I wouldn't be cycling into town, would I? All that's relevant here is that I have to go, not the details of the individual items I need to get - there's no point wasting time giving you a big list, when the only significant point is that I need to go to town.'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'Oh, for Christ's sake... Pizzas. I need to buy some pizzas, OK?'
Margret: 'We've got pizzas.'
Mil: 'We've got a pizza.'
Margret: 'So? How many do you need?'
Mil: 'Several. I want to have several in the fridge.'
Margret: 'Why?'
Mil: 'So that we have a stock of them.'
Margret: 'Why?'
Mil: 'So that we don't run out, obviously.'
Margret: 'What would happen if we ran out?'
Mil: 'I'd have to go to town.'
This flings itself out of my mouth while my higher brain is still racing along behind it frantically waving its arms and shouting, 'Wait! Wait!'
Margret responds with just the tiniest movement of her eyebrows. Absolutely minuscule. Sufficient in size, however, to make me wonder if I could get a UN resolution to have her bombed.
Mil: 'I have to get other things too.'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'What the bloody hell does it matter? Why can't I go to town if I want to, for God's sake?'
Margret: 'Why are you being secretive? What are you up to?'
Mil: 'I'm not up to anything.'
Margret: 'Yes you are.'
Mil: 'Like what?'
Margret: 'I don't know.'
Mil: 'Because there isn't anything.'
Margret: 'Yes there is - I can tell.'
Mil: 'There isn't.'
Margret: 'You bloody liar.'
Mil: 'You bloody mad woman.'
Margret: 'Tell me.'
Mil: 'Stop talking now.'
Margret: 'Tell me.'
Mil: 'I...'
Margret: 'Tell me.'
I think we've both risen to our feet by this point (it allows for better voice projection).
Mil: 'OK! OK! You want to know why I need to go up town, you relentless harridan?!'
Margret: ''Yes! You lying swine!'
Mil: 'So I can get your Valentine's Day card! So I can get your bloody Valentine's Day card and post it to here - so it'll arrive as a nice surprise through the post!'
A tiny flicker. It's the merest stutter of hesitation, though, then she's back on track before the beat is really lost.
Margret: 'You don't need to get me a bloody Valentine's Day card!'
(I can't imagine what makes her think she's going to get away with this move - she must be getting old.)
Mil: 'Too bad! Because I'm getting you a Valentine's Day card! And I'm posting it to you! Tomorrow! When I go to town!'
Margret: 'THERE'S NO BLOODY NEED!'
Mil: 'WELL IT'S GOING TO BLOODY HAPPEN - GET USED TO IT!'
And, indeed, I do go to town, buy her a card, and post it. Inside I write, 'Surprise!' She gets it on Valentine's Day and says, 'Thank you,' to me, through gritted teeth. (She gets me one too, by the way - it reads, "I'm not interested in a nice, normal relationship... I like ours better.")
Odysseus and Penelope? Pah - lightweights.

So, the thing was, I'd cut this picture of PJ Harvey out of a magazine (yes, the 'Lick My Legs' one, of course the 'Lick My Legs' one) and I was framing it to put on my wall here. 'Who's that?' asked First Born.
'That,' I replied, 'is PJ Harvey.'
'Who's PJ Harvey?' he said. (Bless.)
'She's a singer and a songwriter,' I explained. Adding, as I'm sure most people would, 'I used to go out with her. You know - years before Mama and I met.'
Now, you'll never guess what happened next. Incredibly, Margret goes through the roof. No, I'm not kidding - she goes through the roof and starts ranting that I shouldn't say I used to go out with PJ Harvey. Can you believe that? I mean, for one thing, I don't tell her that she can't watch gardening shows on the TV or go swimming or whatever, so how come I can't tell people that I used to go out with PJ Harvey? There has to be give and take in a relationship, right? The main issue, though, is why on earth she should object in the first place. Surely, if anyone is well placed to take issue with my going around saying that I used to go out with PJ Harvey, then who is that person? Damn right. It's PJ Harvey. And her record company, maybe. Also, possibly her legal representatives have good grounds to intervene, perhaps in a manner that leads, ultimately, to some kind of court order against me. So, yes, all those people seem to be perfectly justified in stepping in - but my girlfriend? God - it's getting so I can't do anything.

Now, this is slightly scary and unsettling. I know I'm inclined to say that quite a lot, but what am I supposed to do about it? This is slightly scary and unsettling. You're going to get to the end of this and say, 'Ooo - that's slightly scary and unsettling, Mil,' that's just the simple fact of the matter. OK?
The other evening we had some friends round. We were all sitting in the living room and I was recounting something Margret had done a couple of days previously. Unfortunately, I can't remember what this thing was now, but I do recall it had happened in the car. So, given Margret and I stepping into a car together immediately invalidates our insurance (a Zen branch of homologous algebra states: Mil + Margret + Car = Small Child + Hammer + Land Mine), it could have been pretty much anything up to and including some kind of western movie-style showdown where - instead of being atop a train - Margret and I scrambled for control of a Colt .45 on the roof of our Vauxhall Corsa, as it careered, driverless, down the A5. As I say, I can't remember. Anyway, whatever it was, it was certainly (a) utterly outrageous and (b) utterly down to Margret. This is borne out by the look of numb, stunned disbelief that trembled on our friends' faces when I'd finished telling them the story. One of them turned to Margret and, incredulous, gasped, 'Did you really do that?'
'Yeah,' Margret laughed back, with a shy, 'you know how it is' shrug. Then she became pensive and her nose twisted a little in thought. 'But,' she continued, half to herself, 'I don't know if I'd have done it in real life.'
"In real life"?
What?
WHAT?
You're going 'Ooo - that's slightly scary and unsettling, Mil' now, aren't you?

A question I get asked a lot is... Um, actually, a question I get asked a lot is one I get asked by those Litigations R Us-style firms - the ones that encourage you to sue everyone you've ever met so they can have a share of the settlement. Every single time I walk through town one of their salespeople will leap out in front of me:
'Hello. I'm trawling for business on behalf of a parasitic company that happily feeds the special and delightful sense of greedy, self-centred victimhood that so elevates contemporary society. You can be confident of my noble legal stature because - look - I'm wearing a corporate waterproof jacket.'
Hold on, let me start that again. I think I may have edged, just slightly, into editorializing.
OK. Fact: I cannot walk through town without one these people heading me off. Their eyes shine the moment I stumble into their line of sight - they'll push other shoppers out of the way just to get at me. What does that say? What kind of lift to your self-confidence does that provide, eh?
Salesgit: 'Excuse me. Have you had an accident within the last three years?'
Me: 'No. I always look like this.'
I mean, it's basically someone coming up to you and saying, 'Hi - you appear to be the result of some terrible catastrophe,' isn't it?
Maybe I should reassess my haircut or something.
Anyway, as I was saying before you set me off on that tangent, a question I get asked a lot is 'What's the most frequent argument you have?' I can't imagine why people ask me things like this. That is, I can't imagine why people ask me this - why don't they ask other people? If you want to ask about arguments, then ask an argument expert. I can't claim to be an expert, because I lack the vital aspect of depth - I can't provide a balanced answer, because I've simply no experience of what it's like to be in the wrong. I'd like to have that experience, obviously. In some ways I even feel vaguely cheated by my consistent rightness but, well, we have to play the hand we're dealt, right?
However, though I can't really say what the most frequent argument is, I can have a stab at the definitive one. This argument illustrates a fundamental theme - a core issue. Because of that, it can be used in all kinds of situations. The details are unimportant; the following example may be 'about' domestic chores, or shopping arrangements, or 'sorting out of children', or any number of things. Below those superficial, ephemeral points is the true heart of the matter. The argument goes:
Margret: 'I cannot believe that you didn't do it.'
Mil: 'You didn't ask me to do it.'
Margret: 'Why should I have to ask you to do it?'
Mil: 'So I know you want me to do it.'
Margret: 'But I have to ask you to do everything.'
Mil: 'But I do everything you ask me to.'
Margret: 'But I have to ask you to do everything.'
Mil: 'But I do everything you ask me to.'
Margret: 'No - listen - the point is, I have to ask you to do everything.'
Mil: 'Yes - and I do everything you ask me to.'
[Some hours later....]
Margret: 'I... have to ask.... you... to do everything.'
Mil: 'And I... do everything... you ask me to.'
Margret: 'Arrgggh! Listen! I...'
And so on. You see the problem, yes? The problem is that, for some reason, Margret is completely unable to grasp point that I do everything she asks me to. You'd think that'd be a simple enough concept, wouldn't you? Tch.

I'm not even going to try to dissect this. Why tie up both our mornings on a futile hunt for understanding, eh? I'm surely not going to be able to pick out anything - my searching fingers are now too callused, from running them along Margret's reasoning in an attempt to identify the scar where it's been imperfectly welded to reality. So, here we go, then.
I shuffle into the living room. It's first thing in the morning; I'm still in my night clothes, the children are circle-eyed and oval-mouthed - their faces distorted by the gravitational pull of the television screen - Margret is opening some post. I flop down on to the sofa.
Margret glances over at me. 'Have you got butter in your ear?' she asks, casually, before returning to her letters.
Briefly, I wonder if this is dream... too close to call, I decide - may as well just press on regardless.
I reach up and touch the side of my head. My finger returns with some shaving foam.
'It's shaving foam,' I reply.
Without looking up, Margret nods. 'Oh, right. It's so early - I didn't think you'd had time for a shave already.'
She thinks it's too early for me to have had a shave, everyone, yet easily late enough for me to have butter in my ear.
Move along, now. Nothing more to see here.

The pre-eminently captivating thing that Conan Doyle hit upon with Sherlock Holmes was, as you know, Holmes's ability to infer a rich world into existence using only the tiniest piece of evidence. A chipped fingernail, a certain blend of tobacco or the uneven wear on a heel would be enough for England's finest consulting detective to arrive at an irrefutable and revealing conclusion. Margret is rather like that. She too can pick up a minuscule detail and tease a many-layered story from it. In fact, the only real difference at all between Margret and Sherlock Holmes is that all of Margret's deductions are complete bollocks.

What do you mean, you want an example? I thought we had a relationship based on trust, here?

OK, OK.

For example, let's take a look at an incident that occurred just the other day...
We are sitting around talking with some friends. The topic is 'Yet another injury Mil has sustained through doing something profoundly unwise on his mountain bike'. (I'm drawn to ill-considered mountain bike actions with almost blurring frequency.) 'You know why this is, Mil,' my friend Mark says, grinning. 'It's your mid-life crisis.' Everyone laughs, but through the noise Margret adds, 'No - Mil had his mid-life crisis last year.' Glancing at her, I see that she means it.
Now, I don't recall having a mid-life crisis last year and, you know, you'd think I would, wouldn't you?
So, understandably, I stare at her in confusion and ask, 'What the hell are you talking about?'
'You had it last year,' she shrugs, casually.
'No I didn't.'
'Yes you did.'
'Didn't.'
'Did.'
'Never.' (How can I have had a mid-life crisis when I've so clearly not yet breached the adolescence barrier?') 'No. No. I so did not have a mid-life crisis last year.'
'You did...' Margret draws a breath at this point, before sweeping on into the explanation - I wait; anxious fascination keeping me unbalanced on the front of my chair. 'You started wearing T-shirts. You never used to like T-shirts,' she says.
And that's it, everyone. T-shirts. There's no 'Well - the first sign was...' here. There's no 'Looking back now, it's obvious that this was the start of the road that ended with Mil running naked through the woods, his body smeared with pork fat and his raw, feral voice howling, "I am Man and my seed is yet vital!".' No, no, no - the thing, entirely, is 'T-shirts'.
Now, call me picky, but I think with this Margret might be extrapolating beyond the point where even a Freudian would begin to feel they were pushing it. In the total absence of any supporting evidence, her whole case appears to rest completely on wearing a T-shirt being widely acknowledged as 'a crisis', right? And I'm not entirely sure that it is. I've never seen a newspaper lead on a front page filled with nothing but a photo above the stark headline "Elbows!". Mad as he undoubtedly is, I can't imagine even GW Bush issuing at executive order for a Delta Force extraction team to be sent into Central America where - the CIA has reported - a US citizen has been seen wearing cap sleeves.
"You started wearing T-shirts." Jesus. Good job I didn't buy a pair of unusual shoes or anything - Margret would probably have been straight on the phone and I'd have woken up restrained and sedated in a secure hospital.

As you know, this page attracts idiots. We sit here in the gentle glow of thousands of work hours being burned away, and passing idiots are bewitched by the light. They fly towards us and peer in, only to become disorientated and upset. They attempt to enter, but succeed no further than repeatedly banging their poor, bemused little faces against the glass: trying, trying, trying... but never quite grasping the situation. These tiny, tragic creatures - who missed the English lesson that dealt with 'subtext' because they were at home shooting beer cans off a fence all that year and who can do no more than guess, in panic, that 'irony' is probably the name of a character in The Bold and the Beautiful - make many embarrassing mistakes. One such mistake - interestingly, one that brings together the otherwise disparate idiot types 'Teenage Girl' and 'Bitter Divorcé' - is that I hate Margret. (I'd like to imagine that they also think Catch 22 is a pro-war book - because, you know, it's about the army - but I can't, as I have trouble with the bit where I try to imagine them reading a book.) Now, in the 'Mil Making An Effort To Care What They Think' project, the 'Idiots' are on hold right now, as I'm still working on 'Anyone At All'. So, I'm sad to say that I won't be replacing this page with 'Excellent Times My Girlfriend And I Have Had Together' or 'Syrupy And Unfunny Things That Are Great About My Girlfriend' any time soon. I am, of course, deeply sorry about this. However, a thing that came up this week simply begs to be said. But, let it be understood that saying this unambiguously positive thing about my girlfriend is in no way a capitulation to the opinions of idiots, nor does it represent a change of policy on this page. OK?

So, I got this invitation to a reception at Downing Street. (I'll wait here while you, understandably, go back to that a few times to make sure you've read it correctly.) OK, so it's not an evening with Tony or anything - it's a reception at 11 Downing Street. [For the America readers, the UK Prime Minister's official residence is 10 Downing Street - the Chancellor of the Exchequer lives at Number 11. Downing Street is in London; which is in England; which is part of Europe. Europe is a continent roughly three thousand miles east of Buffalo.] But, well, come on, eh? A letter flopping through my door, out of the blue, inviting me to a reception at 11 Downing Street simply howls 'CATASTROPHIC ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR', doesn't it?
They better discover their mistake pretty damn quickly, though - because otherwise I'm going. How can you turn down something like this? It's anecdote Nirvana. It'll be worth it if only to see, as I begin to stroll up Downing Street, every security man within half a mile frantically begin to speak up his sleeve.
Whatever. I skip downstairs and cast the invitation letter on to the table in front of Margret. She picks it up and reads it, sipping her coffee. She finishes without having said a word or changed her expression in any way at all. But then, her forehead wrinkles. She reaches across, opens her diary, glances at a page, and then closes it again. Her hand moves over to the invitation letter once more. She looks up at me, her finger tapping the page where it gives the date of the reception. 'You've already got a dentist's appointment on that day,' she says.
How could anyone not love this woman?

What are things? Are what we think of as 'things' objective 'things' in their own right, or simply shadows, smudges or simulacra? Unknowables presented in some kind of intelligible form only through the snake oil mediation of our limited senses, prescribed understanding and imperfect vocabulary. In a way, I'm talking about solipsism, here. I'm talking about conceptualism. I'm talking about thinking that spans the philosophical alphabet, all the way from Aristotle to Wittgenstein. In a much more real way, however, I'm talking about arguing with Margret about the hoovering.
Margret, had gone out. (It doesn't really matter where as, irrespective of her stated destination, she'll come back carrying another bloody plant.) As she'd left, she'd seen that I was sitting in front of the computer. If Margret is leaving the house and, as she's doing so, she sees me sitting in front of the computer, she will say, 'Do the hoovering.' - there's no way she can stop herself: it's Pavlovian.
Her 'Do the hoovering' had been followed by the clunk of the front door, the soft rumble of the car pulling away and then nothing but a silence in which I sat, pensive.
I glanced around. OK, the carpets weren't immaculate, that was true. They were hardly in such a condition as to demand a hoovering, though. There's a clear point at which a carpet is ready for hoovering, in my opinion, and that point is "when it's crunchy". Even then, it's not what you'd call vital. In lots of the places I've lived, especially as a student, we never had a hoover at all. Sometimes, yes, walking across the landing required snow shoes - but no one ever died or anything. I glanced around some more.
A few hours later, Margret returns.
After unloading around seventy-five new plants from the car, she hunts me down; finding me, by a fluke, sitting in front of the computer.
'Have you hoovered?' she asks, her tone swaying unsurely between conversational and murderous.
'What do you think?' I reply. (Cleverly, here, I'm indignant yet inscrutable - only my disdain for the question is clear; I provide no clue at all of the answer to it.)
'Have you? Or not?'
'Well, what does it look like?'
'Just tell me whether you've hoovered.'
'No. That's not the point.'
'What? It's completely the point.'
'No, it isn't. You thought the house needed hoovering. If you think it looks OK now, then you're happy, right? Whether I've hoovered or not.'
'And what if I don't think it looks OK?' She pauses for a moment, then adds, 'Or if I smash your laptop to pieces with a tyre jack?'
'If I've hoovered, and you still think it doesn't look hoovered... then there's no point my hoovering, is there? Ever again.'
There's a degree of glaring goes on here, but I hold my nerve and continue. 'The only other possibility, as far as I can see, is that you simply can't tell whether I've hoovered or not. And, if you can't tell, then it doesn't matter - in any real sense - whether I've done it or not, does it?' I've one more card to play, but it's a great one. 'That is, not unless the thing that concerns you isn't whether the house has been hoovered, but only whether I've been sitting here enjoying myself all this time rather than slogging around with a vacuum cleaner. But I'm sure that's not it. I mean, you'd be happy for me to sit here idle for as long as I want, wouldn't you, if there's no need for me not to? It's about the hoovering, not about my sitting here idle, isn't it?'
Margret just stares at me.
I am triumphant. A choir sings. Cherubs circle my head, scattering petals. Shafts of golden light fan out from behind me. It's an intoxicating three seconds.
'Clean out the fridge,' says Margret.

Before I start, I feel I ought to mention how sad it is that the Texan readers are no longer with us. As you know, the notoriously irresponsible Supreme Court has seen fit to tear down the safety barrier protecting society and thus Texas is now like a ghost state. Machinery lies idle; offices are silent; the streets of Dallas shimmer motionless in the summer sun. No one goes to work nor chats with friends nor watches television nor even browses the Internet. Because, whooping atavistically that the police are now powerless to stop them, the entire population of Texas has, since last week, been ceaselessly engaged in endless consensual homosexual sex in private so as to bring about the extinction of the vital institution of marriage.
Oh, and let me make it clear that I'm not just some dull-witted, homophobic idiot here by saying, "it's the children I'm concerned about".
But anyway - my girlfriend is always trying to take photos of me naked.
I don't mean that she walks around naked (though, God knows, that's true too), I mean that she keeps trying to take photos of me when I'm naked. Now, I'm sure that all the women reading this are thinking, 'Well, that's reasonable, Mil. You do, after all, have a languorous sex appeal that frightens and yet, somehow, still enthrals me - and your body would clearly have been immortalised in marble many times by now were this ancient Greece.' Also, quite possibly, a fair few of the men are quietly turning pictures of their wives face down on their desks, biting their lips and secretly wishing, 'Oh... if only Mil and I were in Texas...' But I have to tell you that you're mistaken. Incredible though it may seem, in the flesh I'm cadaverous to the extent of almost appearing to be on the point of actual disintegration - becoming sexually aroused by the sight of me naked is a form of paraphilia. So why does Margret, say, keep lunging into the room with a camera when I'm in the bath? The answer, of course - for those of you who apparently must have dropped into this page from nowhere about five sentences ago and have thus read not a single one of the previous entries - is that Margret is some kind of lunatic.
Cut to: The back garden of our house. It's one of the three days a year in England when it's not raining and thus a Super Soaker water fight has broken out between First Born/Second Born and me: a full-on and appallingly ruthless conflict which I'm ashamed to say I provoked. First Born - having five years more tactical experience than his brother - is organising their attacks in such a way as to turn Second Born into his shield. I, however, have the advantages both of height and of preparedness (having surreptitiously arranged a series of barricaded, defensible positions before strolling over to First Born, casually saying, 'Guess what?' and then immediately shooting him in the back on the head from eighteen inches away - a slightly ungentlemanly tactic that gave me an early advantage, but which means I now dare not allow them to take me alive). Anyway, in a turn of events that no one could have foreseen, thirty minutes later all three of us are utterly, utterly sodden. Squelching is a phase looked back on with misty affection; everything we have on is now so saturated it permanently streams water from every trailing edge. To avoid flooding the house, I hang the children's clothes over the line and then send them inside to find some fresh ones and think about the important lesson I've taught them this day. After that, I also strip off and (Poof! - like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn) Margret appears with a camera. Fortunately, I've still got my underpants on, but - unfortunately - they are soaked and clinging and are doing obscenely little to preserve my modesty. 'Standing in the back garden in nothing but dripping wet underpants' is never going to be a particularly good look, is it? But it doesn't affect Margret, who snaps away excitedly until I manage to escape her probing lens by running off into the house.
So far, then, pretty much an average run of events.
But, about two weeks later, I'm lying on the sofa and Margret glides into the room. She is grinning broadly, so I know that, whatever's going on, something has happened that's going to depress me.
She hands me a letter. It's from the company who develop her photographs and it apologises that, due to some internal mix-up, the pictures have accidentally been sent out to someone else: they are attempting to track them down.
While I try to make myself breathe, Margret sits down by me and argues the case for this being the funniest thing in the history of the world.

If there's a disagreement in a relationship you should bring it out into the open: discuss the problem and how you both feel about it, reach an understanding - through compromise and negotiation - and thus resolve it so it will never be an issue again.
Ha! People actually say stuff like that, you know? Get paid to say stuff like that, in fact. Presumably their thinking is, 'Hey - it always works on The Cosby Show.'
Well, I have far more respect for the honest intensity of Margret's feelings than to think I could ever sing them to sleep with the shrill, monotonous voice of Reason and, for my part, I'm well aware that 'compromise' is nothing but Machiavellian shorthand for my cleaning the toilet sometimes. No, a good argument is immortal. Something to be dug up time and time again over the years. Something to be practised, embellished and refined. (What if the first two people who ever played chess said, 'Well, white won... no point ever doing this again,' eh?) Not only is this the way real life works, it's also a moral responsibility.
We have a disposable society; a society addicted to faddism, transience and waste. Do you think that couples in small, poor, sub-Saharan villages are constantly fed with new things to argue about? No television. No car. No bathroom. No .mp3 player that, yes, I do mean I "needed" it, actually - it's a removable media storage device, so I can use it for transferring important files - and it was on offer, very cheap... very cheap... "very" "cheap", OK? No, not £5 - don't be stupid; it's 128MB, flash-upgradeable and multi-file format - how could you possibly get an .mp3 player like that for £5? Yes, more than £5... yes, less than £500. No, no - oh no you don't. I'm not going to tell you whether it was more or less than that. Well, because, if I keep answering 'more than or less than' questions then eventually you'll get the exact figure, won't you? Doing that is effectively my simply telling you the price of it, and I am not going to do that because, as I've said, that is not the issue. No, it isn't. No - it isn't. Now, that's just insane - what do you mean "hiding it from" you? That's... I was not... I was simply keeping it there so it didn't get damaged, that's all... I don't know - a few weeks, maybe... I can't remember - "a few weeks", that's all I... I am not going to say whether it was more or less than that, so you can stop asking, OK? It's a removable media storage device that I bought so I can transfer important files and... like, say, drivers and work data and... well, yes, it's got nothing but Nickelback on it now - that's not the issue. God damn it! See, I knew you'd be like this, that's precisely why I... No... No, I wasn't going to say "why I hid it"... I wasn't... I wasn't... I was going to say... that's... precisely... why I love you.... See? I say I love you and you say I'm a lying git - I just can't win, can I?

No.

The couples in our small, poor, sub-Saharan villages aren't.

It's time we accepted that we are a very privileged minority, and throughout most of the world people have to adapt to their environments and recycle: in parts of Asia couples have as little as three distinct subjects to argue about per year, and yet somehow manage to row just as much as the Baltimore wife who can draw on such elaborate luxuries as 'an underlying feeling of nonspecific dissatisfaction which is somehow made all the more bitter on the tongue by the objective all-round and comprehensive good fortune of her life' and her husband who's been wondering whether he could pass it off as a joke if she explodes when he suggests they might try a threesome with this woman he's met in an AOL chat room. Thus, my friends, as a display of solidarity with those on our planet who are less fortunate than us, we are absolutely compelled to repeat arguments over and over again. If ever you are tempted to resolve a long-term disagreement, just picture your mother chiding you at meal times and remember: "There are people in Africa who'd be glad of that."

Which brief preamble brings me to the point. I know I've mentioned Margret hoarding things before, but I was tidying up the other day and I found a whole mass of receipts. Receipts that are years old - and for things for which it makes no sense at all to keep the receipts. I mean, for God's sake, there was one for the admission to Anglesey Sea Zoo in 1998. Never mind the fact that she'd brought this the well over one-hunded-and-fifty miles back to our house, never mind that - that's in the past - let's just focus on what you could possibly do with a credit card receipt slip dating back to 1998. Are you really going to telephone Anglesey Sea Zoo and say, 'Hello. Look, I've been thinking about it for six years now, and I've finally decided that the tank of rays you had wasn't really all that impressive. I'd like a refund, please... Yes, I do have the receipt, in fact.'? Gah.

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