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

'Brrrr — I'm cold.'

Margret replies

'Where?'

Our sink is blue and we're not talking about it. It happened over a week ago; I was leaning over the sink, brushing my teeth, when I noticed that there was a sort of lazuline patina that had seeped over most of the surface. Margret hasn't mentioned anything about this. Why she hasn't is that she's obviously tried to clean the sink with, well, I don't know, some fluid used for stripping entrenched cerriped colonies from the hulls of submarines or something (they were probably offering three bottles of the stuff for the price of two at Aldi). She is waiting for me to mention it. But I am a wily fox, and will be doing nothing of the sort. I'm no wet-behind-the-ears, naive youth anymore, not by a looooong way, and I can perfectly see the spiked pit the seemingly innocent words, 'Did you know the sink's blue' are covering. It would go — precisely — like this:

Me: Did you know the sink's blue?

Margret: Yes. I did. I used a jungle exfoliant produced by the Taiwanese military to clean it, and it discoloured the surface.

Me: Oooooooo. K.

Margret: Well maybe, just maybe, if you cleaned the sink once in a while…

You see what she did there? Now I'm facing a whole day of 'When did you last…?' Well, not this canny fellow — not this time, my friends.

Our sink is blue and we're not talking about it.

Because of my selfless desire to further the vocabulary of medical science, it would delight me to the toes if everyone could adopt the use of the phrase 'Margret's Syndrome'. This affliction being used to signify a condition characterised by a profound and chronic 'point blindness'. Allow me to give you a case study for diagnostic purposes:

I bought a mobile phone the other day. Yes, I'm aware that this revokes my human rights and I won't disgust you further by attempting any kind of wheedling justification. We all become what we hate (raising the disturbing possibility that one morning I'll awake to discover I'm Andie MacDowell, but let's avoid looking there) and so I've naturally mutated in that direction. Anyway, I spent the best part of an afternoon entering the names and numbers of people I know into the internal address book via the phone's keypad — an activity that's roughly as much fun as performing emergency dental surgery on yourself. The picosecond I'd finished, Margret walked into the room and said, 'Let's have a look at your phone.'

'Don't touch anything ,' I replied with sombre gravity.

About two minutes later, when I returned from the kitchen with a cup of tea, Margret glanced up at me and chattily asked, 'Can you get back things that you've deleted?'

My lips became the thinnest of lines.

Margret doesn't know what she's deleted, but does offer the solution, 'Tsk — you'll find out eventually if it's important.' I have to admit that this phrase would be rather good to recite repeatedly, singsong fashion, as I danced around a swirling bonfire in the centre of which Margret was staked. Now, had we handed out a simple questionnaire to the population of the Earth, almost everyone would have replied that the point — the point — of the argument that was now racing through volume levels was that Margret had deleted something, without even knowing what it was, after I'd spent hours setting up the phone and had specifically said not to touch anything. Margret's assessment, however, was this:

'You know what the trouble is? You're a gadget freak.'

Last Friday was Margret's birthday. I bought her this oriental, geisha-style pyjama thing (Margret — 'Hey! I could have a go at that massage they do; I could jump on your back.' Me — 'Walk , they walk on your back.' Close call there.) while I was down in London. She liked it. Simple. Clearly, I've been a fool and all I needed to do to get Margret a present she likes was make sure I asked nearly every single woman who works for The Guardian newspaper what the hell I should buy. It wasn't her favourite birthday present, though, not by a long way. There were almost tears of delight when her best friend turned up at the birthday party and surprised her with two bags full of horse manure. I mean, it seems so obvious now, of course.

The Terror Of Lids: Yes, the rewards are high, but it's a game where the price of defeat is savage. Sometimes Margret, after grunting with it herself for a collection of 'hnggh's, will hand me a bottle or a jar that has a screw top along with an impatient, 'Open that for me.' If the gods lie content in the skies above England at that moment, then what follows is a rapid flick of my wrist, a delightful 'click-fshhhh' gasp of surrender, and my handing the thing back to her FEELING LIKE A HERO OF NORSE LEGEND. Generally, though, what happens is that I strain for a while and strip the skin off the palm of my hands. Then I wrap the lid in a tea towel and strain some more to equal effect. At this point I'm on to using the jamb of the door as a vice to hold the lid while I twist at the container; Margret will be saying, 'Give it back here, you'll wreck the door,' and I'll be swearing and twisting and saying, 'I'll repaint that bit in a minute.' The fear is upon me. If it's a fizzy thing, you can sometimes puncture the lid to relieve the pressure and then get it open, but you're not often that lucky. 'Give it back,' Margret repeats, reaching around me, trying to take the item from my hands. I swivel away — 'Just a minute' — and desperately twist at the lid again, now not even attempting not to squint up my face as I do so. At last, though, Margret will manage to get the thing back. This is the darkest moment. If she tries again and it remains fastened, then I am saved. 'It's just completely stuck,' I'll say, 'It is. Stop trying now. Stop. Stop it.' However, there are times — and my stomach chills now, even as I write this — when she gets it back and, with one last satanic effort, manages to spin the lid free. A slight smile takes up home on her face.

'What?' I say.

'Nothing.'

'No — what ?'

' Noth ing.'

'I'd loosened it.'

'I didn't say anything.'

And I'll have to drag the tiny, damp shreds of my manhood away into the reclusive garage until the slight, slight smile disappears from her some thirty-six hours into the future.

Hanging Things. Margret simply cannot stop hanging things from every defenceless lampshade, rail or drawing pin-able piece of ceiling space. Mobiles built from small, wooden, peasant figures, baskets of plants or vegetables or toiletries, angular crystals or tiny, twirling shards of coloured glass, wind-chimes — oh, pale, waltzing Lord, the wind chimes. Not just those tubular bells that generate a sound like a modern jazz orchestra rolling biscuit tins of ball-bearings down a stairwell either. No, she actually found some evil outlet that sold her a suspended helix of hollow clay doves. This produces an arpeggio of dull, ceramics clungs when it's struck. And it's struck, many times a day, by my forehead, whenever I pass into the living room. My head is a Somme of wing-shaped indentations. Where does she get this Drive To Hang? Admittedly, I've sometimes looked at an empty bit of wall in my computer room in the attic and thought, 'Mmm… Winona Ryder would look good there.' Occasionally even, 'Mmm… A poster of Winona Ryder would look good there.' — but that's a hugely sensible distance from a compulsion to attach dangling bits of pointlessness to everything, house-wide. I have, for many years, tried to work out what lies behind her behaviour in this area, but it wasn't until recently that I was sure I'd found the reason for it. Thankfully, though, I have now identified its cause: She's nuts.