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

So, as I was saying, 'insomnia'. The thing with insomnia is you never know when to give in. Do you stay there, trying to get to sleep, or do you give in and say, 'Well — not going to get to sleep anyway: might as well get up and do something.' It's a tricky one and no mistake. When I get insomnia, I generally try all the standard things: I try to relax, I try to clear my mind, I try to think of something pleasant (often this turns out to involve Courteney Cox and, in the 'encouraging a condition where sleep is likely' stakes, backfires massively). If none of these works, I'll quietly get up, go downstairs and read Pinter until insomnia's spirit breaks. What I don't do is turn to Margret and, at intervals precisely judged to be 'just long enough to have allowed the other person to have got to sleep again', keep saying, 'I can't sleep' and, 'I can't sleep' and, 'Really, I just can't sleep' and, 'I'm still awake, I just can't sleep' and, 'Pheeeeeeeeeeeeee — I can't sleep' and, 'I don't know what it is; I'm tired, but I can't sleep' and, 'I can't sleep' and, 'I can't get to sleep' and, 'I'll be so tired in the morning — look at the time. But I can't sleep'. Because that's the kind of behaviour that can lead… to… someone… snapping.

First Born cut his hair on Friday morning. Apparently the casual notion that his fringe was too long and didn't look sufficiently wicked strolled through his head, so — without the use of anything as lame as a mirror, naturally — he got a pair of scissors and cut his own hair; he now looks like a tiny Howard Devoto. Except blond. And without the spectacles. («So, not very much like Howard Devoto at all, then. Also, we were born in 1987 and have entirely no idea who Howard Devoto is.» — Everyone.)

Now, Margret and I don't do that widespread thing of transferring ownership of the children depending on the situation; ' My son is a neurosurgeon,' ' Your son has just poured byriani behind the radiator,' that kind of thing. We do another thing. Margret, who is the one to spot Jonathan appears to be the first seven-year-old to be suffering from male pattern baldness, marches into the room where I'm sitting, reading the paper, and, looming over me with her arms knotted tightly across her ribs says:

'Jonathan's cut loads of his hair off.'

I look up at her and, after a few moments of thought, naturally reply:

'Tsk.'

She's unable to find herself entirely satisfied with this.

'So, that's it then, is it? You're all parented out now?'

'What am I supposed to do?' I ask, bewildered. 'He's cut the hair off. Do you want me to wrap it in frozen peas and race to the hospital to see if they can do an emergency weave?'

'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.

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 flannel — 50p, Skin-lacerating wad woven from dried bark and nasal hair by Amazonian tribeswomen who will use whatever money they make from the sale to buy cotton flannels — Ј12.50). This soap did not wash, but instead covered me in an iridescent film of grease — and, sadly, I'd made a last minute change of plans and decided to spend today sitting in front of the TV rather than swimming The Channel. Tch — irony, eh? Anyway, I had to have another wash to remove this oleaginous soap from me. This was the Third Thing. I'll come to the Second Thing in a moment, but the First Thing is the ferocity of our shower. British showers are risible, this is a fact. Most people's noses run faster than the average British shower and one of Margret's longest held desires has been to get a shower like those in Germany. Thus, she got one fitted when we moved to the new house here and it is, indeed, German. Now, as much as I'm against the feebleness of British showers, I must ask if it's entirely necessary that a shower should hurt ? This thing has a setting called 'massage' and it's not a massage. A massage involves relaxation, the soft, enquiring hands of a 22-year-old Scandinavian woman, and possibly an exchange of cash. The setting on this shower ought more accurately to be labelled 'Jumped By Thugs', you could mount the thing on top of a truck and use it to crush riots. This is all the more horrific when we approach the Second Thing. Because not only does Margret leave our shower set to maim, she also leaves it on cold.

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.

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.'