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

— When you see that Mil is playing a game online and is one point away from becoming Champion Of The World, Mil is racing out of the house to catch a train, Mil is in the middle of trying to put out a kitchen fire, etc.

— During the final minutes of a tense thriller Mil has been watching for the past two hours. Ideally at the precise point when someone has begun to say, 'Good Lord! Then the murderer must be…'

— Just at the moment, late at night, when Mil has finally managed to fall asleep.

— In the middle of having sex.

When Margret used to go shopping and she'd see, for example, a pair of jeans in a department store, do you know what she used to do? Try them on. I think you're all with me here, but just for anyone who's joined us late, I don't mean she'd go to the changing rooms and try them on . That would be a preposterous idea wouldn't it? No, she'd just get undressed there in the middle of the sales floor to try them on. It took me some considerable time to persuade her that this wasn't normal behaviour in Britain, despite what she might have seen on Benny Hill. Even then, she only stopped — amid much eye-rolling and, 'You and your silly social conventions,' head shaking — to humour me. It rubs a tiny circle from the misted-up window through which you can view the tormented, horizonless landscape that is My World to mention that I'd entirely forgotten about all this until someone sent me a email yesterday that accidentally exhumed the memory. With Margret this kind of thing just gets drowned out by the general noise. I wouldn't be surprised if, a few months from now, I'm here writing, 'Ahhh — that reminds me of Margret's role in the John Lennon shooting…'

Wherever I'm standing is where Margret needs to be standing, and vice versa. Doesn't matter where we are — the kitchen, the bathroom, Scotland — we each infuriatingly occupy the space where the other one wants to be, urgently. Over the years we've developed signals for this situation. Mine is to stand behind her and mutter under my breath. Margret's is to shoulder-charge me out of the way.

Margret flooded the kitchen last week. Turned the taps on, put the plug in the sink, and utterly forgot about it (because she'd come upstairs and we'd got involved in an unrelated argument). She goes back downstairs, opens the door and — whoosh — it's Sea World. The interesting thing about this is, if I'd flooded the kitchen, it would have been a bellowing, 'You've flooded the kitchen, you idiot !' and then she'd have done that thing where I curl up in a ball, trying to protect my head, and she kicks me repeatedly in the kidneys. As it was, however, there's a shout, I run downstairs and stand for a beat in the doorway — taking in the scene, waves lapping gently at my ankles — and she turns round and roars, 'Well, help me then — can't you see i've flooded the kitchen, you idiot ?'

There are certain verbal shortcuts to a lot of our arguments. Sure, we could ease into things, build up momentum slowly, but that's so wasteful when you can fit in three arguments in the time the slow-burn approach would take to brew only one. So, we often favour more of a dragster-style, zero-to-argument in 1 second approach. Thus, over the years, ways of ensuring a spitting, scratching row with just one sentence have been polished to a high shine.

For example, Margret once said to me, 'Am I your favourite woman in the world?' The world? I mean, really .

Other times she'll lay mines so we can explode into an argument later with the minimum amount of run-up. She'll go out and, over her shoulder as she closes the door, call, 'You can vacuum the house if you want.' I'll settle down on the computer for a couple of hours. When she returns she'll stomp up the stairs, crash open the door and growl, 'Why didn't you vacuum the house?' I, naturally, will reply, 'You said I could if I wanted to. And, after thinking about it, I decided I didn't. Obviously, it wasn't a decision I took lightly…' and we're already there.

Another dead cert is when I can't find something — the TV Guide, a shirt, my elastic band rifle, whatever, it doesn't matter — and the exchange goes:

'Gretch? Have you seen my sunglasses?'

'Have you looked for them?'

(Oooooooo, I, it, when, argggh! My teeth are gritted just typing that.)

Margret, of course, has done the ultimate and discovered a way of ensuring an argument using no words at all. The technique is this: She'll have one of her friends round and they'll be chatting away animatedly in the living room — until I happen to walk in, at which point Margret will abruptly and conspicuously stop what she's saying, mid-sentence… Yep, one of us is going to be sleeping in the spare room tonight.

Margret's four-hundred-and-fifty-second most annoying habit is to stealthily turn off the central heating (then light the gas fire in the room she's in, natch). I'll suddenly notice that, sitting typing at the keyboard, I can see my own breath while from the bedroom one of the kids will call out, 'Papa, I can't feel my legs…' And I'll shiver down the stairs to find the central heating set to 'Summer/Hypothermia/Cryogenic Suspension,' and Margret in the living room watching the TV in a door frame warping furnace.

A Few Concepts Margret Continues To Have Trouble Assimilating:

1. It's possible to stop buying plants.

2. Can you please leave me alone, I'm on the lavatory.

3. Ikea is just another shop.

4. I asked you if you wanted any, I asked you — now stop eating it off my plate .

5. One may have a thought and not say it. This does not make me insular, it merely separates me from you and that mad woman who's always shouting at the pigeons outside the supermarket.

6. They're just nail clippings . Nail clippings must be the most inert thing on the planet, how can anyone seriously have a problem with nail clippings? You might as well freak out with, 'Bleuuuurrggh — helium!' Really — just get a hold of yourself. So you've walked barefoot across the bathroom and you find this has resulted in a nail clipping or two sticking to the bottom of your foot; well, simply brush them off into the bin — they're just nail clippings.

Just for reference; if Margret returns from having her hair cut and says, 'What do you think?' and you reply, 'I'd love you whatever your hair was like,' well, that's very much The Wrong Answer, OK?

'Get your hands off me — you're freezing.'

A thing happened at this point that nearly stopped me ever updating this page again. You can read about it by clicking your mouse on the words you are now reading.

Yes, these words, you fool.

You may remember that one of the manifestations of Margret's basket of madnesses is an urge to fill our house with an internal Vietnam of plants. A compulsive disorder whose origins I can't even guess at.

On an unrelated note, we just got back from staying with Margret's folks in Germany. This is a picture I took, representatively, of the top of the stairs at their house:

Yes. It. Is.

If you've clicked on the 'Why I nearly stopped updating' link above, you'll know who Hannah is. But, of course, you won't have clicked on it because you felt it was too much of an effort, you Child Of The Internet, you. So, let me tell you Hannah is someone with whom I recently started to work — remotely, I've met her in person once, for about ninety minutes. You now have all the information you need. Phone me, I'll come round and scroll for you too, OK?