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

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.

50

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.

51

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.

52

One of the many things I love about Margret is her zest. You probably won't have picked up on this, but in actual fact I am a sullen, cynical kind of character (honestly, it's true), while Margret hisses with energy and finds taut excitement in everything that passes through her field of vision. Perhaps this is why, in a Garden Centre, I just shuffle around sighing, 'Red pot, blue pot; whatever you want – can we go home now?' yet Margret only has to walk through the doors at Sainsbury's Homebase to achieve orgasm.

Anyway, this whippy outlook of hers can sometimes be a bit wearing. As an example, yesterday, her brow creased with anxiety, she said, 'I need a haircut, urgently.'

Now, I just can't imagine a world where people need a haircut urgently. Quite possibly, this explains a lot – those of you who have looked elsewhere on the site will surely have thought, 'Christ! There's a man who needs a haircut URGENTLY!' – but let's not confuse understandable alarm with imperativeness. When Margret said this, it was about eleven o'clock at night, and she really did look like she expected me to dash to the phone right away. 'Hello? Shapes? Prepare a chair, we'll be there in two minutes. Yes, it looks bad. I… Oh my God, it's frizzing! Clear!'

Tch – wear a hat until the weekend.

53

The quality with which I am identified most closely is probably fairness. There's an almost breathless speed about my disposition, when appropriate, to say, 'Margret, I am clearly in the wrong here. Please smash up my stuff.' However, there are times when the Shield Of Justice gleams on my arm and all of Margret's shouted accusations merely strike it and fall, lifeless, to the ground. Averted eyes and a slowly shaking head tell that I am in a place where she cannot touch me. Yes, as you ask, I am thinking of something specific.

You don't know me, right? You're aware, perhaps, that my hair's bright red, you know I've got some Web space, you have a certain suspicion that in quiet moments I speculate on what it must be like to be rubbed all over with a Nastassja Kinski – but that's it. It's not like, say, we've being going out with each other for something over sixteen years and have had two children and decorated a landing together. Given that, let me place before you a scenario: You are leaving the house to go shopping for a number of hours. Just before you go, you poke your face towards me (I, hunched and unblinking, am playing a computer game of the most frantic and intricate kind) and say, 'If it starts to rain, get the washing in off the line.'

Now, you know what's going to happen, don't you? You've never even met me, and yet you know what's going to happen. So if Margret, with whom I've lived for well over a decade and a half, doesn't bother to employ painfully basic foresight to see what's obviously going to happen… well, the shield of justice is mine, i reckon.

54

When I'm driving the car, Margret reaches across and operates the indicator. How annoying is that, ladies and gentlemen? At the distance from the turn that she considers to be appropriate, she'll lean over and flick the indicator lever on. Be honest now, would any one of you prefer to be in a car with someone who did that over, say,