Margret: 'You know what.' [Tsk — she's flailing now. Endgame, she's in a corner with only a rook for protection and she thinks I'm going to be distracted by an exchange of queens? Amateur stuff.]

Mil: 'No, I don't. I have no idea what you're talking about.' [I've won.]

Margret: 'I'm talking about the inside of the microwave. [No, hold on. I've lost.]

Mil: 'What about it?' [Perhaps she might be referring to something other than the fact that, I now remember, a sausage exploded all over the inside of it when I was cooking it earlier in the day. You never know.]

Margret: 'Why didn't you clean it?'

Mil: 'I did.' [I'm aware that for this reply to succeed, even in a tactical sense, it needs the addition of a careering petrol tanker crashing through the front of the house, rupturing instantly and causing a fiery, shattering explosion which kills both of us before another word can be uttered. (I glance quickly out towards the road, hopefully — damn.) It's only left my mouth as a panicky substitute, you see. My reflex was to reply — with great self-recrimination — how I'd intended to clean the microwave, I really had, but I'd become caught up in the work I was doing and — regrettably — forgotten all about it. I'd wave a weary hand at the vast pile of editing that's slumping like the weight of a dead man on the computer screen in front of me. Except that, as my lips were about to start down this road, I happened to notice that the computer screen in front of me was actually displaying this: [5] and a string of emails to my mate Mark, all of which had the subject line 'Waaaaaaaahhhhhh!']

I hold my head up for a couple more seconds, but then collapse and slope off to get the Mr Muscle. And she'll watch me clean it now, too. Which means it will never end — I won't get away with just cleaning up this specific thing; it'll be an unceasing progression. Like when I'm spotted clearing away a little splash of milk in the fridge, and get badgered into wiping the whole shelf. Then the entire fridge. And so on until, the next thing I know, it's two days later and I'm repainting the spare bedroom.

And it all begins for me with 'Oh – Miiiiiiil…'

Brrrrrrrr.

THE END

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Frequently Asked Questions

I get asked various questions about the Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About page, and quite a few of those questions I get asked frequently. So I've made an inspirational leap. Here's a page where you may find the biting hunger of your thirst for knowledge satisfied. Hold on - 'hunger', 'thirst', that's not right. Damn. (Supportive Inner Voice: "Quick, Mil - keep going and no one will notice.) I am not trying to indicate 'Now, stop bothering me with your emails, OK?' here, no, I'm always happy to hear from anyone who doesn't have their bowels in their head. I'm merely providing a service, that's all. I give. That's what I do. I love you all. Send money.

WHERE THE HELL HAS MOST OF THE PAGE GONE?

Well, if you're a regular visitor, you might be asking this and the answer is 'I've offloaded it.' It was simply getting too big. Hugely pleasing as a thing that scared the semi-literate, but a bind for everyone else who had to wait ages for it to load. I didn't want to split it over several pages. Why? Um - because I'm quirky, what can I say? If you're not a regular visitor, then you're probably asking 'This is only a bit of the total page? Oh my wheezing Lord!' Well, yes. You should have turned up earlier, shouldn't you?

Update:

I've now made the removed Things available, but only to those people on the Mailing List. This is because, for technical reasons, I want to keep down the number of hits it gets. Oh - and also to ostentatiously slight the casual page visitors who are, of course, just a bunch of lightweights.

So, the book is the things on this site, in book form, then?

NO, NO, NO, NO. Nothing that's in the book has ever appeared on this site - the book's a novel.

How did you and Margret meet?

Yes, I get asked this an awful lot. And here's the thing... there's no movie-script story to it. She didn't crash a truck into my house, we weren't matched by a War Games-style 'computer dating' computer that had spontaneously gained sentience and was now pursuing its own agenda, it wasn't some kind of Stockholm Syndrome affair where I fell for her after she held me hostage during a bank heist gone wrong. Really, it was all very low-key. Perhaps I'll cover it in one of the Mailing List mails one day, maybe.

Are you and Margret still together?