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

by Mil Millington

  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.

  90

  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.

  91

  When you have two languages within a single relationship there are always going to be moments of unfortunateness. Such as the fact that, after she came to live in England, it took me about ten months of pointing out her error — time and time again — until Margret finally sorted out in her head which way round the meanings of 'orgasm' and 'orgy' were. Ten months, I may add, during which she made an awful lot of friends. For my part… well — in German you often make a plural by adding 'en': ear/Ohr — ears/Ohren, republic/Republik — republics/Republiken, etc. So, it's perfectly natural, then, that I would assume the plural of 'Bus' (bus) was 'Busen'. OK, so, yes 'Busen' does mean something else entirely — that is NOT MY FAULT.

  However, there are times when, far from being assaulted by language-based misunderstandings, I actually close my eyes, knit my hands and call on a succession of gods to pleeeeeease make what I just heard be, genuinely and completely, simply an Anglo-German semantic quirk.

  Would you like me to give you an example, or are you impatient to go straight to the Guestbook and write, "this is just, like, sad n stuff, like, y dont u just split up n stuff if u dont get along????????!!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!?! :-( ~~tammy~~ idaho"? Are you sure? Okey-dokey, let's do the example first, then.

  I was in the kitchen the other day, making myself a cup of tea as a break from the intense and demanding effort of having worked on a script for a full forty minutes before my mind meandered away into counting the holes in the ventilation grille on the front of my computer, playing tunes by slapping the sides of my face while varying how open my mouth was and, ultimately and inevitably, wondering if Alyson Hannigan, wherever she was now, was naked. As I fished out the teabag and made one, final effort to come to a decision regarding the Alyson Hannigan thing, Margret returned home from work. She dumped various bits of her day about the place until she had only a carrier bag left. From this bag she pulled a plate of cold, cooked meat covered with cling film and moved over to put it in the fridge. Before she did so, however, she peeled back the film and folded a slice into her mouth. She offered me the plate — I took a slice too. She made to turn to the open fridge once more, but then offered me the plate again in a 'Before I put it away?' fashion. I took another slice. She then put the meat away and closed the fridge door. As I stood there chewing, she swept off towards the living room, saying — distractedly, without looking back — "Eat it whenever you fancy. It's Pam's husband."

  Yes, you read that correctly.

  92

  Do you watch CSI at all? No? Well, in a nutshell, it's this: William L. Petersen does the wonderful Manhunter in 1986, has a miserable run for the next fourteen years, and then returns as the head of a Vegas-based Crime Scene Investigation unit with very watchable results. (One imagines his agent weeping tears of frustration throughout the latter pa
rt of the 80s and the whole of the 90s before leaping into the air in 2000, phoning his client at 2am and whooping, 'Bill! Bill! It's forensics, Bill! That's what we've been missing. I'm calling Jerry Bruckheimer right now.')

  So anyway, in CSI you are presented with the aftermath of an incident and you have to identify the guilty party or parties. Are you up for trying this yourself? Now? OK, then.

  Suppose there are three people in your house: your partner (urbane, sophisticated — think 'David Niven in a Banana Splits T-shirt') and two smallish children (blond, elusive, cunning). Your partner is sitting in the dining room reading a book, your children are in the living room playing a game called 'Scatter every single toy we possess across the floor and then go upstairs to jump on the bed'. After a few minutes, you wander into the dining room, sigh at the chaos and tidy up. You then go off to do something else. When you return to the living room a short time later you discover that the children have strewn the place with toys yet again.

  You are William L. Petersen and you must apportion blame. Do you:

  A) Get the children downstairs and tell them that if they haven't tidied up the living room within the next ten minutes then you're sending them to be raised on a farm in Iowa.

  B) Go into the dining room, stand in front of your partner with your arms threateningly akimbo and roar, 'The children have messed up the dining room — again… and you're sitting there reading a book!'

  Eh? What is it to be, William?

  If you chose 'A' award yourself two points. If you chose 'B', award yourself 'insane'.

  Now, the thing is — and, if you'll forgive me, I'll relate this to Margret a little here — one might easily put this kind of thing down to 'poor targeting'. One might think that the discrepancy between whoever is responsible for something and the person she's actually shouting at about it is merely the artifact of some kind of loss of footing on her mental walk from the crime to the culprit. The flaw in that notion, however, is that she always ends up shouting at me . If it were poor targeting, then — occasionally — it'd hit someone else, right? But, nope, that's not the case. If Margret had been in charge of the invasion of Iraq, every single missile would have struck me in the face. In fact, Margret is probably the only person to have attended both pro and anti-war rallies in the run up to the conflict. If you examine press photographs, you can sometimes pick her out — off to one side, holding a banner that reads 'Bomb Mil'.

  The irony being, of course, that this still makes her policy less ill-considered and asinine than the one that actually advised the invasion of Iraq.

  Ack — just lost the whole of the Midwest there. And I was doing so well up to that point, wasn't I?

  OK, I'm off on holiday, shortly. Well, I say 'on holiday', but we're going to the west coast of Ireland, so I probably mean 'to get thoroughly soaking wet and wind-blasted'. In any case, do not expect an update until I return. You'll all just have to do some work, I'm afraid.

  ………

  93

  Everyone been productive in my absence? Yep, that's what I thought, and I'm proud of you. See? You can do it. Don't use me as a crutch — you have great reserves of indolence within if only you have the courage to tap them. Go up to your boss/supervisor/team leader/capo today and say in an unwavering voice, 'I am on a sponsored slack, and you're paying, and the charity is me.' You just need to believe in yourself. Let go of my hand… and fly! Nothing is beyond the power of love! Etc.!

  Right, now that I've healed everyone's spirit, let me tell you about my holiday and, flowing from it, the Doctrine of Proportionality. I know many of you are high school graduates, or read the Daily Mail, or have that copy of Encarta that came with your computer somewhere in the house, and so you are perfectly familiar with the selection of notions that first began to be assembled under the heading of the Just War Doctrine by St Augustine. So, please, don't think that I'm being insulting if I explain what I'm talking about a little. It's merely to bring the stragglers up to speed — some of whom might be very young, were exposed to high concentrations of lead in the womb, or be running a large country. Basically, the DoP is a very old principle of Just War which states that acts must not be out of proportion to the provocation or the needs of the situation. A very fine concept, I know you'll agree. And how do I know you'll agree? Because you're not Margret, that's how.

  I'm walking up a gravel track leading away from a beach in Ireland when I'm called back down by First Born. 'Mama's crashed,' he shouts after me — loudly, but strangely without alarm or surprise. And, indeed, crashed she has. A car was parked on the beach, and she's run into the side of it. It's the only other vehicle on about two miles of near-deserted sand. Given the desperate situation in Ireland right now (because the Americans aren't visiting since September the 11th), it's probably not far off being one of only four or five vehicles in the whole of County Kerry: and Margret's managed to hit it. Quite frankly, the precision of this makes landing a man on the moon seem very small beer indeed.

  There's a dent in the door of the car, but it's nothing drastic. There's no one around, however, so, rather than risk leaving a note with our details under the windscreen wipers on a very windy beach, we start searching for the owners. Eventually we find Man, Woman and Small Girl.

  Man is shirty and annoyed. 'How on earth did you manage to hit it?' he snaps, 'there was enough room.' He clearly isn't familiar with the philosophical concept of 'The bottle is already broken' as applied to my girlfriend. The more pensive of us there are calm because we are aware that, the moment that construction of a vehicle pretty much anywhere in the world is complete and it comes off the production line, then it's going to be driven into by Margret. The only question is "When?" Anyway, I'm not very taken with Man; as with all of you, I'm sure, the two things that I find very unattractive are bad manners and a superficial grasp of aetiology. He appears to have the the arrogant belief that Margret crashed into his car, specifically — rather than Margret crashed into his car simply because it was there. What state are we going to be in if everyone Margret crashes into takes it personally, eh? Thus, because Margret is offering to pay for the damage, and apologising profusely, and it's only a very, very minor dent, and, well, Margret is my girlfriend, I'm standing there trying to support her and meet his graceless display with quiet gravitas.

  'Mil,' you may well be saying, 'you pretty much lost the option of playing the "quiet gravitas" card the day you dyed your hair fire engine red.' However, that's actually a minor issue in this case. My failure is far more spectacular. The reason I was walking back, rather than travelling in the car, was that the beach was good for surfing so I'd been body-boarding all afternoon and I am wearing a wet suit. No one, my friends, can pull off gravitas while wearing a wet suit. The simple fact is, there are only two occasions when one can be completely naked except for a black, skintight neoprene outfit into which (as everyone is unspokenly aware) you have peed several times in the past few hours — partly because a person has to pee, but also, as one must admit when one truly looks into one's soul, because (as everyone is unspokenly aware) of the delightful rush of warmth that surges throughout the suit when you do so. One of these occasions is a party at a particular private members club in London which is well-known to the police, and the other is when surfing.

  My gravitas is way out at sea, frankly: and I'm left standing there trying to impose my dignity on an angry motorist while looking like the opening act at a gay disco.

  Fortunately, however, there's Small Girl. One's children may be thought of as a person's only chance at immortality and, vicarious and tiny as it is, such a thing still comes at a terrible price. Man is pointing at scratches on his car, which are within a foot or so of the impact point, but quite clearly date back to the twentieth century. He's trying his luck, basically. 'Erm… I think those scratches were probably there already,' says Margret. Man sucks in air between his teeth. He's solemn and resolute. 'Oh,' he sighs heavily, 'I don't think so.'

  At which point Small Girl tugs on hi
s trousers and chirps up helpfully, 'Oh, yes they were, Daddy! Those have been there for ages!' He glares at her, trying — without uttering a word — to speak directly into her brain using the mystic power of parental horror. She smiles back sweetly. I see that, behind his eyes, he collapses.

  The point of all this is that, at no time, do I so much as tut at Margret for driving into the side of one of only ten cars presently in Ireland. I inwardly note that the cost of the holiday has probably just doubled, but there's nothing to be done about that so there's no sense dwelling on it.

  A couple of days later Margret provokes an episode that, I believe, ran something like this:

  Margret: 'Ah, Second Born, you appear to be a very young and notoriously excitable child and, additionally, you are standing above a broad expanse of utterly unforgiving igneous rock… Here — let me give you your father's brand new digital camera to play with.'

  I wasn't there when this took place, as Margret had ordered me to clean the shower. However, she came sheepishly into the room, and I almost instantly knew what had happened. 'Sheepish' is a look so foreign to Margret that the mere sight of it announced a truly catastrophic event had taken place: I hoped for a second that she'd accidentally poisoned to death six or seven of my friends, but deep down I knew I was clutching at straws and that really what had happened was that my brand new digital camera had been broken. She handed it to me and I held it tenderly in my hands. Its lens was wrenched off to one side at an ugly angle — like a broken neck. Like the broken neck of some delicate, beautiful bird that had shiny silver plumage, a smooth body containing both internal and SD card memory and a 4x optical zoom beak, or something.