59

What Margret and I have, essentially, is a Mexican stand-off with love instead of guns. OK, yes, sometimes there are guns too. The important thing is the mindset, though. Sure, people can argue about important issues, that's fine, good luck to them I say. But where, I ask you, are those people when you take away the meaningful sources of disagreement? Lost. Utterly lost. Let me illustrate the common mistakes amateurs might make using something that happened the other week. You will need:

Margret.

Me.

A roast chicken.

We're having tea and on the table are the plates, a selection of vegetables and a roast chicken in an incredibly hot metal baking tray. Getting this chicken to the table (see — if you're a Mailing Lister and can — 'cloth taking-things-from-the-oven-thing', in the Thing-o-Matic archive) has been an heroic race that ended only fractions of a second short of a major skin graft. Due to this haste it is, however, not sitting precisely centrally on the coaster. Some kind of weird, hippie, neo-Buddhist couple might have failed even at this point and simply got on with eating the meal. Fortunately, Margret is there to become loudly agitated that radiant heat might creep past the edge of the coaster, through the table cloth, through the protective insulating sheet under the table cloth, and affect the second-hand table itself. She shouts and wails. I nudge the tray into the centre of the coaster, but, in doing so, about half a teaspoon of the gravy spills over the side onto the table cloth. Outside birds fall mute, mid-song. Inside, frozen in time, the camera swings around us sitting at the table, like in The Matrix.

'What the hell did you do that for? Quick, clean it up — quick,' insists Margret (where an amateur would have, say, shrugged).

'No,' I reply (at the moment when another amateur would have been returning from the kitchen with a cloth), 'I'm eating my tea. I'm going to sit here and eat my tea. Then I'll clean it up.'

'No, clean it up now.'

'No.'

'Yes.'

'No. I'm going to eat my tea first.'

'Clean it up now.'

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so a couple of semi-pros might have worked this up into a shouting match. But I am not about to stoop to childish name-calling. Instead I lift up the tray and pour some more gravy onto the table.

'OK?' I say, 'Now stop it. I'll clean it up after.'

'Clean it up now.'

I tip a little more gravy onto the table.

'I'm just going to keep doing it every time you say that. I'll clean it up later.'

'Do it now.'

More gravy.

'Now.'

More gravy.

This continues until we run out of gravy.

I must make it clear that my actions here seemed perfectly rational at the time. I've mulled them over since, of course, and am relieved to find that they still hold up to examination: it's pleasing to know I can make good decisions under pressure. Anyway, we eat the meal from a table awash with gravy. I am happy to have argued my point persuasively. Margret has a smile fixed to her face due to the belief (incorrect, yes, but it's only her enjoyment that matters) that I've clearly done something hugely stupid that she can bring up later in any number of arguments — possibly years from now. Everyone wins. We eat, united in contentment. I clean up the table.

Do you see? I want everyone to try this out at home and write me a report for next week.

60

This is what I have to do to get into trouble: stand there.

We went to hire a van last week. Margret had phoned and arranged everything and I was there simply because we arrived in one vehicle but had to return in two. As I think I've mentioned before, I am not interested in motor vehicles and know less about them than the average four year old child. If people ask me what car we've got I reply, 'A red one.' I can drive OK, just as I can operate a photocopier perfectly well but feel no need at all to be able to recognise the make of each one from a distance or to look at magazines full of pictures of the latest models. Margret, of course, has an encyclopaedic knowledge and will point excitedly at traffic and say stuff like, 'Hey, look — there's the new-style, five door Fiat Tampon,' or something while I sit unable to care less. So, anyway, we've gone to pick up this van and the bloke there — open shirt, riotous body hair, multiple gold chains — starts telling me about it. Starts telling me about it, despite the fact that Margret has gone in and begun the conversation, while I just shuffled along behind her. He keeps talking to me about stuff.

'Yeah, this is the 2 litre model…'

'Mmmm…' I nod, noncommittally, as I have no idea what he's talking about — ('2 litre'? What's that? The amount of petrol it can hold?)

'There is a 3 litre, V6 version, of course — but…' He laughs.

'Hahaha,' I echo his laugh weakly in response; my 'V' knowledge having stopped at the Nazi WWII rocket the V2.

Margret keeps cutting in with questions about technical things. He answers to me, without looking at her. I can feel her starting to sizzle. (The sole question I've been able to come up with has been 'Um… Eh… Has it got a radio?')

I'm completely innocent here. In fact, I'm terrified he's going to corner me by saying something like 'Do you favour ABS or not?' and I'll just burst into tears. I can see, however, that Margret is approaching the point where she's going to be unable to prevent herself from disembowelling him before standing over his torn body with her bloodied hands outstretched, howling to the sky. That's his problem, but I sense she also regards me as his tacit accomplice. I have to get Margret away before he sets her off and I get caught in the explosion.

As we were in a rush, I managed to get out of the office and put over 300 miles between Bloke and Margret as quickly as possible (I'd have liked to insert more distance, of course, but we were beginning to run out of Britain). Still, it's gnawed at her stomach for well over a week now and the only way it's been kept under control has been by constantly rerunning variations of:

Margret: 'He was talking to you. To you — it's unbelievable.'

Me: 'Yes, he was an idiot. Because he was talking to me. And I'm an idiot. He revealed his idiocy by talking to me, an obvious idiot. He was an idiot. Forget about him. The idiot. He was an idiot. That's right… just give me the fork now.'

61

At 2pm on Wednesday afternoon I went to the cinema with a friend of mine to see 'Battle Royale' (does Kinji Fukasaku know how to tell a love story or what?). Around 8.30pm I came downstairs from putting the kids to bed and started flicking through video cassettes. Margret, on the sofa, lowered the magazine she was reading on to her lap and asked suspiciously, 'What are you doing?'

'Trying to find a movie,' I said.

Margret sighed and shook her head. With a mixture of incredulity, anxiety and admonishment she replied, 'You've already seen one film today.'

Phew. Lucky we caught that habit before it spiralled out of control, eh?

Which reminds me; test your own self-control by reading this and seeing if you can resist the urge to draw any telling psychological insights from it:

Margret walked through the living room on Friday as I was watching 'Band Of Brothers'. Absently, she asked, 'Is this "Killing Private Ryan"?'

It's the nights I fear the most.