'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.

57

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.

58

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.'

[Margret makes an injured pantomime of dragging herself over to the sofa and sitting down beside me.]

Mil — 'Thank you.'

[I press 'play'. The FBI copyright warning comes up and, knowing full well it won't work, I repeatedly try to fast forward through it for the annoying amount of time — precisely long enough for me to fully hate the FBI and the entire motion picture industry — it takes to fade. A logo swirls around the screen. Darkness. A single, threatening, bass note rumbles low. Swelling in volume as the first image seeps into life.]

Margret — 'I've just remembered, I need to phone Jo.'

Mil — 'Arrrrggghhheeeiiiiiieeeeerrrrgghhhhhhhhgkkkkk-kkk-kk-k!'

Margret — 'I only need to ask if she has a text book — carry on.'

Mil — 'No. Make the phone call. I'll wait.'

[Three hours later. Margret returns; I am still on the sofa, remote control poised in my hand, but now visibly older and covered in a light film of dust.]

Margret — 'OK, done.'

Mil — 'Right.'

[I wind back four or five seconds to have the moody intro again, Margret complains we've already seen this bit and — as it's getting late now — there's no need. I reply it's important for setting the mood, she thinks it's a stupid thing to do, the exchange degenerates into a twenty minute row about foreplay, and then we finally begin to watch the film.]

So, that's what happens, every time, and thus on this occasion as with all others, Margret has been sitting beside me since the very beginning of the film. Which, casting your mind back, you'll recall is Hannibal.

Titles. Silence. A face appears.

Margret — 'Who's that?'

Getting worse. I was watching the Davis Cup on TV and, as the players are sitting down for a of change ends, the camera idly pans round the crowd, pausing on a woman eating an ice cream. Margret says?… Louder — I can't hear you… Yes, yes she does.

I'm here to make an appeal for the population of the Earth to wear name tags at all times, three tags if you're an actor: your character's name, your real name and a list of things you've been in before. Please, do it. They only cost a few pence — please don't make me beg.