Things my girlfriend and I have argued about (online version)

by Mil Millington

  Words will be exchanged.

  58

  It's getting worse. I've mentioned this, in passing, before, but it's getting worse. We were watching Hannibal on DVD the other week, and Margret was sitting beside me, looking at the screen, right from the moment I hit 'play'. This, incidentally, is because before we watch any DVD or video we have this ritual.

  Mil — 'Are you ready?'

  Margret — 'Yes.'

  Mil — 'No you're not, you're clearly not. Sit down here.'

  Margret — 'I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm just cutting out this magazine article and putting the kids toys away in an order based on the psychological warmth of their respective colours and making a cup of tea and wondering if we should move that mirror six inches to the left, but I'm ready — go ahead, start the film.'

  Mil — 'No. I'll start the film when you're sitting here. If I start the film now, you'll sit down in three minutes time and say, "What's happened?" and I'll have to do that thing with my mouth. Not going to happen. You sit here right from the beginning.'

  [Margret makes an injured pantomime of dragging herself over to the sofa and sitting down beside me.]

  Mil — 'Thank you.'

  [I press 'play'. The FBI copyright warning comes up and, knowing full well it won't work, I repeatedly try to fast forward through it for the annoying amount of time — precisely long enough for me to fully hate the FBI and the entire motion picture industry — it takes to fade. A logo swirls around the screen. Darkness. A single, threatening, bass note rumbles low. Swelling in volume as the first image seeps into life.]

  Margret — 'I've just remembered, I need to phone Jo.'

  Mil — 'Arrrrggghhheeeiiiiiieeeeerrrrgghhhhhhhhgkkkkk-kkk-kk-k!'

  Margret — 'I only need to ask if she has a text book — carry on.'

  Mil — 'No. Make the phone call. I'll wait.'

  [Three hours later. Margret returns; I am still on the sofa, remote control poised in my hand, but now visibly older and covered in a light film of dust.]

  Margret — 'OK, done.'

  Mil — 'Right.'

  [I wind back four or five seconds to have the moody intro again, Margret complains we've already seen this bit and — as it's getting late now — there's no need. I reply it's important for setting the mood, she thinks it's a stupid thing to do, the exchange degenerates into a twenty minute row about foreplay, and then we finally begin to watch the film.]

  So, that's what happens, every time, and thus on this occasion as with all others, Margret has been sitting beside me since the very beginning of the film. Which, casting your mind back, you'll recall is Hannibal.

  Titles. Silence. A face appears.

  Margret — 'Who's that?'

  Getting worse. I was watching the Davis Cup on TV and, as the players are sitting down for a of change ends, the camera idly pans round the crowd, pausing on a woman eating an ice cream. Margret says?… Louder — I can't hear you… Yes, yes she does.

  I'm here to make an appeal for the population of the Earth to wear name tags at all times, three tags if you're an actor: your character's name, your real name and a list of things you've been in before. Please, do it. They only cost a few pence — please don't make me beg.

  59

  What Margret and I have, essentially, is a Mexican stand-off with love instead of guns. OK, yes, sometimes there are guns too. The important thing is the mindset, though. Sure, people can argue about important issues, that's fine, good luck to them I say. But where, I ask you, are those people when you take away the meaningful sources of disagreement? Lost. Utterly lost. Let me illustrate the common mistakes amateurs might make using something that happened the other week. You will need:

  Margret.

  Me.

  A roast chicken.

  We're having tea and on the table are the plates, a selection of vegetables and a roast chicken in an incredibly hot metal baking tray. Getting this chicken to the table (see — if you're a Mailing Lister and can — 'cloth taking-things-from-the-oven-thing', in the Thing-o-Matic archive) has been an heroic race that ended only fractions of a second short of a major skin graft. Due to this haste it is, however, not sitting precisely centrally on the coaster. Some kind of weird, hippie, neo-Buddhist couple might have failed even at this point and simply got on with eating the meal. Fortunately, Margret is there to become loudly agitated that radiant heat might creep past the edge of the coaster, through the table cloth, through the protective insulating sheet under the table cloth, and affect the second-hand table itself. She shouts and wails. I nudge the tray into the centre of the coaster, but, in doing so, about half a teaspoon of the gravy spills over the side onto the table cloth. Outside birds fall mute, mid-song. Inside, frozen in time, the camera swings around us sitting at the table, like in The Matrix.

  'What the hell did you do that for? Quick, clean it up — quick,' insists Margret (where an amateur would have, say, shrugged).

  'No,' I reply (at the moment when another amateur would have been returning from the kitchen with a cloth), 'I'm eating my tea. I'm going to sit here and eat my tea. Then I'll clean it up.'

  'No, clean it up now.'

  'No.'

  'Yes.'

  'No. I'm going to eat my tea first.'

  'Clean it up now.'

  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so a couple of semi-pros might have worked this up into a shouting match. But I am not about to stoop to childish name-calling. Instead I lift up the tray and pour some more gravy onto the table.

  'OK?' I say, 'Now stop it. I'll clean it up after.'

  'Clean it up now.'

  I tip a little more gravy onto the table.

  'I'm just going to keep doing it every time you say that. I'll clean it up later.'

  'Do it now.'

  More gravy.

  'Now.'

  More gravy.

  This continues until we run out of gravy.

  I must make it clear that my actions here seemed perfectly rational at the time. I've mulled them over since, of course, and am relieved to find that they still hold up to examination: it's pleasing to know I can make good decisions under pressure. Anyway, we eat the meal from a table awash with gravy. I am happy to have argued my point persuasively. Margret has a smile fixed to her face due to the belief (incorrect, yes, but it's only her enjoyment that matters) that I've clearly done something hugely stupid that she can bring up later in any number of arguments — possibly years from now. Everyone wins. We eat, united in contentment. I clean up the table.

  Do you see? I want everyone to try this out at home and write me a report for next week.

  60

  This is what I have to do to get into trouble: stand there.

  We went to hire a van last week. Margret had phoned and arranged everything and I was there simply because we arrived in one vehicle but had to return in two. As I think I've mentioned before, I am not interested in motor vehicles and know less about them than the average four year old child. If people ask me what car we've got I reply, 'A red one.' I can drive OK, just as I can operate a photocopier perfectly well but feel no need at all to be able to recognise the make of each one from a distance or to look at magazines full of pictures of the latest models. Margret, of course, has an encyclopaedic knowledge and will point excitedly at traffic and say stuff like, 'Hey, look — there's the new-style, five door Fiat Tampon,' or something while I sit unable to care less. So, anyway, we've gone to pick up this van and the bloke there — open shirt, riotous body hair, multiple gold chains — starts telling me about it. Starts telling me about it, despite the fact that Margret has gone in and begun the conversation, while I just shuffled along behind her. He keeps talking to me about stuff.

  'Yeah, this is the 2 litre model…'

  'Mmmm…' I nod, noncommittally, as I have no idea what he's talking about — ('2 litre'? What's that? The amount of petrol it can hold?)

  'There is a 3 litre, V6 version, of course — but…' He laughs.

  'Hahaha,' I
echo his laugh weakly in response; my 'V' knowledge having stopped at the Nazi WWII rocket the V2.

  Margret keeps cutting in with questions about technical things. He answers to me, without looking at her. I can feel her starting to sizzle. (The sole question I've been able to come up with has been 'Um… Eh… Has it got a radio?')

  I'm completely innocent here. In fact, I'm terrified he's going to corner me by saying something like 'Do you favour ABS or not?' and I'll just burst into tears. I can see, however, that Margret is approaching the point where she's going to be unable to prevent herself from disembowelling him before standing over his torn body with her bloodied hands outstretched, howling to the sky. That's his problem, but I sense she also regards me as his tacit accomplice. I have to get Margret away before he sets her off and I get caught in the explosion.

  As we were in a rush, I managed to get out of the office and put over 300 miles between Bloke and Margret as quickly as possible (I'd have liked to insert more distance, of course, but we were beginning to run out of Britain). Still, it's gnawed at her stomach for well over a week now and the only way it's been kept under control has been by constantly rerunning variations of:

  Margret: 'He was talking to you. To you — it's unbelievable.'

  Me: 'Yes, he was an idiot. Because he was talking to me. And I'm an idiot. He revealed his idiocy by talking to me, an obvious idiot. He was an idiot. Forget about him. The idiot. He was an idiot. That's right… just give me the fork now.'

  61

  At 2pm on Wednesday afternoon I went to the cinema with a friend of mine to see 'Battle Royale' (does Kinji Fukasaku know how to tell a love story or what?). Around 8.30pm I came downstairs from putting the kids to bed and started flicking through video cassettes. Margret, on the sofa, lowered the magazine she was reading on to her lap and asked suspiciously, 'What are you doing?'

  'Trying to find a movie,' I said.

  Margret sighed and shook her head. With a mixture of incredulity, anxiety and admonishment she replied, 'You've already seen one film today.'

  Phew. Lucky we caught that habit before it spiralled out of control, eh?

  Which reminds me; test your own self-control by reading this and seeing if you can resist the urge to draw any telling psychological insights from it:

  Margret walked through the living room on Friday as I was watching 'Band Of Brothers'. Absently, she asked, 'Is this "Killing Private Ryan"?'

  It's the nights I fear the most.

  62

  Margret is sitting at this computer (which is in the attic room, incidentally) typing something. I'm flopped in a chair close by with a paper and pad, scribbling away at a bit of work.

  I pause and say to her, 'Tortoise and turtle is the same word in German, isn't it?'

  She stops typing, reaches over, pulls off one of my Birkenstock shoes, throws it down through trapdoor (I hear it thud below, then flip-flop down the stairs) and returns to her typing. All in a single, silent movement.

  Your guess is as good as mine, frankly.

  63

  Have you seen 'Good Will Hunting'? Of course you have. I was watching it with Margret the other day and she squeezed my arm and said, 'That's how I'd like you to look.'

  'Ahhh,' you're all sitting there saying, 'But Mil, you're already practically Ben Affleck's double.' True enough. But Margret was talking about Robin Williams. Aged 45. With a beard. Kill me.

  64

  Relatedly — in the sense that the rest of the world's thought process is here, while Margret's is standing just over there — we had some friends round at the weekend. They'd just been on a skiing trip and took a digital camera with them. Many of you will know what the first thing you do with a digital camera is. Well, let's put that aside; you can go off to the newsgroups if you want to look at that kind of thing. The second thing you do with a digital camera, though, is take pictures of just everything. You know you're not going to have to pay to get the photos developed, so you snap away constantly. Our friends had taken loads of pictures. Huge vistas of oscilloscope-trace mountain ranges misting into the distance, people hissing down the piste at precarious speeds, glistening snow settled into creamy piles on the aching branches of trees, and so forth.

  Margret is leafing through the photos when she stops abruptly. 'Wow! That's beautiful…' Her eyes as big and as shiny as CDs, she turns the picture round to show me. It's the inside of a chalet. 'Just look at that kitchen!' she breathes. Sometimes I have to reach forward and touch her, just to check that my hand doesn't pass straight through — 'Ah-ha! She's a hologram generated by an invading alien race — I knew it.'

  65

  The other day someone asked me, 'Is there anything you and Margret don't argue about?'

  I stared up at the ceiling and patted my lips with my index finger, thoughtfully. A clock ticked. It snowed. The light began to fade. Eventually, I had to go out to buy more milk.

  However, just when I was about to give up and resign myself to addressing another one of the backlog of thoughts I have to deal with, I light-bulbed, 'Ah-ha! Money! We don't argue about money!' and was tremendously pleased with myself for the five or six seconds it took to realise that this was demonstrably untrue. Oh, we don't have the standard, 'What the hell are you doing? We're behind on the mortgage and you've gone out and spent all our money on beer!' rows. In fact, Margret doesn't drink all that much nowadays. We have, however, found others.

  One of them flows from the fact that Margret asks me how much everything I've bought for myself has cost. Now, I'm not one for the high life: I don't own a car, I'm not interested in holidays in the sun, my favourite meal is a Pot Noodle and the leather jacket I'm currently wearing I bought while I was still in the Sixth Form.

  (All this doesn't make me bohemian and fascinating, by the way; people don't happen upon me and exclaim to each other, 'My! Imagine how intriguing he must be on the inside.' That kind of thing only happens in movies. In real life… well. Well, I was walking through the city centre a while ago and Margret called me on my mobile. With all the noise of people and traffic, it was hard to hear so I sat down with my back against the wall of McDonald's, bowed my head and, with the phone in one of them, cupped my hands over my ears to try and listen properly. As I sat there — I swear to you this is true — someone who was walking past looked down at me and threw change. But anyway, back to the point…)

  So, I'm hardly what you'd call extravagant. Sometimes, however, very, very practical demands mean I need to buy a digital camera, say, or another guitar. I'll try and sneak it into the house (Margret will discover it eventually, of course, and say, 'Where did this come from?' but I'll be able to reply, 'Oh, I've had that for ages,' which — one day, I'm sure — will be the end of the discussion), but often I'll get caught.

  'How much did that cost?'

  'It was on offer.'

  'For how much… I'm just asking.'

  'Look — it has a built-in clock!'

  She simply won't give in until she's made me feel like she and the children have looked up from their eighth consecutive meal of lard to see me stride in with a handful of magic beans. But recently the shoe swapped feet. Margret bought a sideboard. A second-hand sideboard that cost at least twice what I'd ever pay for a graphics accelerator card for my PC.

  'How much did that cost?' I asked.

  'It's an antique. Well… not a proper antique. But I think it was made in Poland.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  I take the moral high ground. From where I purchase the Buffy Series 3 DVD set. Outrageously expensive, yes, but a thing that, under the circumstances, I am not at all afraid to reveal to Margret. (I revealed it via the column I write in The Guardian, knowing she couldn't say anything because of the sideboard.) (Surprisingly, I was wrong.)

  The other money-related argument is about cash. That's cash, specifically. Despite the fact that Margret's earning power is comfortably twice mine, she never has any cash. If you can conveniently pay by cheque or credit card, that's fine, but otherwise it's
, 'Miiiiiiiil — have you got any cash? Only, I haven't and I need to go to the hairdresser's/pay a builder/have The Mob carry out a hit for me.' Every time — Every. Time. — I go to the cashpoint she'll appear within minutes with her nose wrinkled up pleading, 'Got any cash?' I'm just a courier; cash is only ever in my wallet for the walk back home from the bank — I think that the second I key my PIN number into the ATM machine it texts her phone. The result of this is that now I never have any cash, because Margret has it. Except, she doesn't. Margret is chronically cashless to the size of two people.

  66

  If I'm sitting on the sofa reading a book and Margret enters the room she will say this: 'What are you doing?' If I'm peeling potatoes in the kitchen when she happens upon me, or pushing batteries into one of the children's extensive range of screeching toys, or writing on the side of a video cassette I've just pulled out of the recorder, the same thing: 'What are you doing?' I mean, a fellow likes to feel he's a bit enigmatic now and then, a tad mysterious and deep, but how can a person see me, for example, screwing a new bulb into a light fitting and not be able to see immediately and with huge, reverberating, chill clarity precisely what it is that I'm doing? It's like living with Mork. It's not even as if I can use these moments to exercise my impressively sardonic (yet, at the same time, profoundly attractive and alluring in a deeply sexual way) wit either. Because, as previously mentioned, Margret regards large sections of what we on Earth call humour as nothing but shameless mendacity.