I'm looking for is that she's previously spotted what I'm looking for, and moved it.
I have innate positioning instincts, you see: like a salmon returning thousands of miles across unmarked oceans, right to the stream where it was born. In exactly the same way, when I've finished using it, I will place a screwdriver on top of a bedroom radiator and – when I need it again, perhaps eighteen months later – unerringly return to that spot to retrieve it. Frequently, to discover that Margret has, maddeningly, taken it upon herself to transfer it to somewhere else. My instincts, moreover, are incredibly precise. If I'm looking for a pair of trainers that my astonishingly accurate positional memory remembers putting down in the bottom left of a cupboard, then I'm not going to notice them if some fiend has moved them to the bottom right of the cupboard during the intervening four and a half years, am I? That'd be stupid. What's the point of having a gift for such specific location if your visual perception is so vague as to wander around all over the place? Eh? What's more, I place things logically. Where are you most likely to need carpet tacks and a hammer, for example? Precisely. So leaving them on the stairs is simple ergonomics.
However, for some reason, Margret is unable to respect my filing system. She spends her day roaming the house, wilfully moving things from where I've deliberately placed them. And that's why she's keen to make the bet. She's hidden my stuff, and now she wants me to pay for her to retrieve it. It's basically a form of extortion, isn't it? Let's call a spade a spade: Margret has kidnapped my stuff and is holding it for ransom. Really, ladies and gentlemen, it's a sad state of affairs when your girlfriend abducts your favourite underpants.
Simply odd. Odd. We're writing Christmas cards at the moment, and Margret asked if I'd print out a family photo to include with them. (I have many photos of us, taken during every season and in numerous different locations – all, however, show precisely the same pose: Margret – beaming smile; Mil – solemn resignation; First Born – looking down at a Game Boy; Second Born – tongue out at camera, fingers pulling up to expose inside of nostrils.) Now, I'm aware that including a family photo with a Christmas card is not at all unusual in America, and I don't want to appear to criticise this: I'm sure it's perfectly lovely when an American sends such a card to another American. It's simply a tradition and no more a cause for comment, in its context, than any other of the fine customs unique to that country, like… um… like pie eating competitions, say, or religious snake-handling. As an English person, though, the notion of sending out pictures of ourselves strikes me as narcissistically brash. I mentioned this to Margret and, though she had sympathy with the concept that (non- American) people who send out photos of themselves might reasonably be assumed to be utterly dreadful, she said she thought that sometimes it was nice to get a picture. She thought it was nice for a very specific reason. '…because then you can see what size they are.' Now, this is clearly nonsense – 'Oh, look – they're 8'-by-4'.' – unless people are sending out photographs of themselves next to an item of known dimensions. A bit like those kidnap photos where the victim is holding the day's paper: Bill, Emma, Helen, Matt and Blackie ensure that they're posing by a regulation, roadside telephone CAB box, with their arms linked to avoid tricks of perspective. More pertinently, though – what the hell? 'So you can see what size they are'? What on earth does that mean? Am I expected to open a card, splutter out my mouthful of tea in shock and call out, 'Quick! Take Ted and Sarah off our list – I've just found out they're bleeding midgets!' It is, as I say, 'simply odd'.
I'm off to Germany for a few weeks. Apologies if my absence results in your doing any work.
Except, I have to pop back briefly to tell you what just happened. I'm about to cycle into town and Margret stops me as I'm setting off. 'Will you bring back that filing cabinet from Argos?' she asks. Can you, ladies and gentlemen, imagine a person cycling two miles through Christmas traffic on a mountain bike carrying a filing cabinet?
Margret can.
Right, I really must get packed for Germany now.
Right, I've just got back from Germany so I have a huge backlog of stuff to get sorted – the inevitable result of a short break away hissing around the Allgau, past numberless gasping locals, all swooning, 'Incredible! He skis like some kind of god!' You'll be happy to know, however, that Christmas this year went very well. As I think we've established by now, providing Margret with Christmas presents that evoke joy – rather than massive, brutal retaliation – is something that must be bought at a terrible cost. The fearful, Faust-blanching price of this ability is to – quite literally – listen to everything that Margret says throughout the previous year. I mean, Kung Fu monks (according to the omniscient well of knowledge that is popular 1970s television) only had to do a decade or so of training then carry a red hot metal bowl for a couple of meters with their bare forearms. I have to listen to everything Margret says throughout the entire year. Endless, endless, endless hours of stuff about the comparative aesthetic merits of different Ikea storage units, just so I'm there – prickling with alertness – on those occasions when she slyly drops in a hint about what she might like as a gift when the trial of buying one for her confronts me again. As I say, though, last year, twelve months worth of intelligence gathering paid off. This Christmas morning she was so thrilled that she stared at me – literally unable to form her thoughts into words – for quite the longest time imaginable after unwrapping her presents of a barometer and one of those 'Make Your Own Will' kits.
Oh, as you ask, I had a pretty uneventful time over in Germany. Skiing, visiting friends, waiting for the figure to turn green at pedestrian crossing lights even though there quite plainly isn't any sort of moving vehicle within a mile and a half, being shown photographs of my girlfriend naked, etc., etc.
The Old Timers among you will be well aware that pretty much every household in modern Germany contains at least a couple of photographs of my girlfriend naked, and also that this is a) 'Not sexual. Tch – what the hell's wrong with you?' and b) very much My Problem. So, I'm sitting in a living room and – after tea and cakes – out come the photographs of Margret naked. I hold one of the pictures in my hand and sit there, radiating heat. Alerted, perhaps, by the grinding sound I'm involuntarily making with my teeth, Margret looks across at me and lets out a long, weary sigh.
'Oh, for God's sake,' she tuts, 'OK – so I'm naked. But you can't see anything.'
I glance pointedly at her, pointedly at the photograph, and then back at her again – pointedly. She lets out an even wearier sigh and rolls her eyes.
'OK…' she shrugs, '…apart from that.'
