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

hospital.

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As you know, this page attracts idiots. We sit here in the gentle glow of thousands of work hours being burned away, and passing idiots are bewitched by the light. They fly towards us and peer in, only to become disorientated and upset. They attempt to enter, but succeed no further than repeatedly banging their poor, bemused little faces against the glass: trying, trying, trying… but never quite grasping the situation. These tiny, tragic creatures – who missed the English lesson that dealt with 'subtext' because they were at home shooting beer cans off a fence all that year and who can do no more than guess, in panic, that 'irony' is probably the name of a character in The Bold and the Beautiful – make many embarrassing mistakes. One such mistake – interestingly, one that brings together the otherwise disparate idiot types 'Teenage Girl' and 'Bitter Divorce' – is that I hate Margret. (I'd like to imagine that they also think Catch 22 is a pro-war book – because, you know, it's about the army – but I can't, as I have trouble with the bit where I try to imagine them reading a book.) Now, in the 'Mil Making An Effort To Care What They Think' project, the 'Idiots' are on hold right now, as I'm still working on 'Anyone At All'. So, I'm sad to say that I won't be replacing this page with 'Excellent Times My Girlfriend And I Have Had Together' or 'Syrupy And Unfunny Things That Are Great About My Girlfriend' any time soon. I am, of course, deeply sorry about this. However, a thing that came up this week simply begs to be said. But, let it be understood that saying this unambiguously positive thing about my girlfriend is in no way a capitulation to the opinions of idiots, nor does it represent a change of policy on this page. OK?

So, I got this invitation to a reception at Downing Street. (I'll wait here while you, understandably, go back to that a few times to make sure you've read it correctly.) OK, so it's not an evening with Tony or anything – it's a reception at 11 Downing Street. [For the America readers, the UK Prime Minister's official residence is 10 Downing Street – the Chancellor of the Exchequer lives at Number 11. Downing Street is in London; which is in England; which is part of Europe. Europe is a continent roughly three thousand miles east of Buffalo.] But, well, come on, eh? A letter flopping through my door, out of the blue, inviting me to a reception at 11 Downing Street simply howls 'CATASTROPHIC ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR', doesn't it?

They better discover their mistake pretty damn quickly, though – because otherwise I'm going. How can you turn down something like this? It's anecdote Nirvana. It'll be worth it if only to see, as I begin to stroll up Downing Street, every security man within half a mile frantically begin to speak up his sleeve.

Whatever. I skip downstairs and cast the invitation letter on to the table in front of Margret. She picks it up and reads it, sipping her coffee. She finishes without having said a word or changed her expression in any way at all. But then, her forehead wrinkles. She reaches across, opens her diary, glances at a page, and then closes it again. Her hand moves over to the invitation letter once more. She looks up at me, her finger tapping the page where it gives the date of the reception. 'You've already got a dentist's appointment on that day,' she says.

How could anyone not love this woman?

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What are things? Are what we think of as 'things' objective 'things' in their own right, or simply shadows, smudges or simulacra? Unknowables presented in some kind of intelligible form only through the snake oil mediation of our limited senses, prescribed understanding and imperfect vocabulary. In a way, I'm talking about solipsism, here. I'm talking about conceptualism. I'm talking about thinking that spans the philosophical alphabet, all the way from Aristotle to Wittgenstein. In a much more real way, however, I'm talking about arguing with Margret about the hoovering.

Margret, had gone out. (It doesn't really matter where as, irrespective of her stated destination, she'll come back carrying another bloody plant.) As she'd left, she'd seen that I was sitting in front of the computer. If Margret is leaving the house and, as she's doing so, she sees me sitting in front of the computer, she will say, 'Do the hoovering.' – there's no way she can stop herself: it's Pavlovian.

Her 'Do the hoovering' had been followed by the clunk of the front door, the soft rumble of the car pulling away and then nothing but a silence in which I sat, pensive.

I glanced around. OK, the carpets weren't immaculate, that was true. They were hardly in such a condition as to demand a hoovering, though. There's a clear point at which a carpet is ready for hoovering, in my opinion, and that point is 'when it's crunchy'. Even then, it's not what you'd call vital. In lots of the places I've lived, especially as a student, we never had a hoover at all. Sometimes, yes, walking across the landing required snow shoes – but no one ever died or anything. I glanced around some more.

A few hours later, Margret returns.

After unloading around seventy-five new plants from the car, she hunts me down; finding me, by a fluke, sitting in front of the computer.

'Have you hoovered?' she asks, her tone swaying unsurely between conversational and murderous.

'What do you think?' I reply. (Cleverly, here, I'm indignant yet inscrutable – only my disdain for the question is clear; I provide no clue at all of the answer to it.)

'Have you? Or not?'

'Well, what does it look like?'

'Just tell me whether you've hoovered.'

'No. That's not the point.'

'What? It's completely the point.'

'No, it isn't. You thought the house needed hoovering. If you think it looks OK now, then you're happy, right? Whether I've hoovered or not.'

'And what if I don't think it looks OK?' She pauses for a moment, then adds, 'Or if I smash your laptop to pieces with a tyre jack?'

'If I've hoovered, and you still think it doesn't look hoovered… then there's no point my hoovering, is there? Ever again.'

There's a degree of glaring goes on here, but I hold my nerve and continue. 'The only other possibility, as far as I can see, is that you simply can't tell whether I've hoovered or not. And, if you can't tell, then it doesn't matter – in any real sense – whether I've done it or not, does it?' I've one more card to play, but it's a great one. 'That is, not unless the thing that concerns you isn't whether the house has been hoovered, but only whether I've been sitting here enjoying myself all this time rather than slogging around with a vacuum cleaner. But I'm sure that's not it. I mean, you'd be happy for me to sit here idle for as long as I want, wouldn't you, if there's no need for me not to? It's about the hoovering, not about my sitting here idle, isn't it?'

Margret just stares at me.

I am triumphant. A choir sings. Cherubs circle my head, scattering petals. Shafts of golden light fan out from behind me. It's an intoxicating three seconds.

'Clean out the fridge,' says Margret.

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