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

'I think,' she replies, 'that you should go and speak to him.'

And there it is. There is only one specific type of occasion when Margret feels I should 'go and speak to' one of the children, and that's when they have done something forehead-slappingly idiotic. The implication she is making is that Idiocy is my area. That only I can speak to the children when they've done something comprehensively crackbrained because, unlike her, I can speak The Language Of Fools. 'Maybe you can get through to him,' she's saying, 'Because you know how the asinine mind works.'

I drop the newspaper with a sigh, resigned, now, to the fact that I'll never get to find out what Kevin Spacey's favourite pasta dish is, and plod into the other room. Jonathan is happily drawing a picture at the table.

'Jonathan?'

'Yes?'

'Don't do stuff like that. Your hair looks stupid.'

I see his eyes flick, for the briefest moment, up to my hair. I'm dead in the water and we both know it.

'I like it,' he says.

'Oh, you like it, do you?' I laugh. 'So, it doesn't matter that everyone else in the world thinks it looks stupid? You like it? That's… Um, that's really good, actually. That's good.' I ruffle (what's left of) his hair.

Margret walks in behind me. Quickly, I furrow my eyebrows and point a sharp finger at Jonathan.

'So? Is that clear?'

'Yes,' he replies.

I walk out past Margret. 'Let's not say another word about this, then.'

Of course, next week he'll probably get into homemade tattoos, and his defence will begin, 'Well, Papa said…'

I have my bags packed ready.

57

We have shower issues. Today I had a shower and she's put out some kind of weird cosmetic soap. I flinch at the idea of guessing how much this soap must have cost because it's utterly rubbish, which is usually a good indication of knee-buckling expense (Cotton fla

Margret has cold showers first thing in the morning. How unsurprising is that? In fact, I could have just left the rest of this page blank and merely put at the top 'Margret has cold showers first thing in the morning' and everyone reading would have been able to infer the rest. I, it won't surprise you to learn, don't like mornings to begin with, and definitely don't want to find a cold shower lurking anywhere in them. Today, then, I stumbled sleepy-eyed into the shower, wrenched it on, and was immediately hit by a roar of icy water travelling at twelve-hundred miles an hour. My 'O'-eyed, bared-teeth face is going to be stuck like this for a week. Then, once I'd scrambled the settings back to within human limits, I got to cover myself in grease.

Words will be exchanged.

58

It's getting worse. I've mentioned this, in passing, before, but it's getting worse. We were watching Ha

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 begi

[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 a

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 begi

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.