Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About by Mil Millington Page A

are
incredibly
precise. If I'm looking for a pair of trainers that my astonishingly accurate positional memory remembers putting down in the bottom left of a cupboard, then I'm not going to notice them if some fiend has moved them to the bottom
right
of the cupboard during the intervening four and a half years, am I? That'd be stupid. What's the point of having a gift for such specific location if your visual perception is so vague as to wander around all over the place? Eh? What's more, I place things logically. Where are you most likely to need carpet tacks and a hammer, for example? Precisely. So leaving them on the stairs is simple ergonomics.
    However, for some reason, Margret is unable to respect my filing system. She spends her day roaming the house, wilfully moving things from where I've deliberately placed them. And
that's
why she's keen to make the bet. She's hidden my stuff, and now she wants me to pay for her to retrieve it. It's basically a form of extortion, isn't it? Let's call a spade a spade: Margret has kidnapped my stuff and is holding it for ransom. Really, ladies and gentlemen, it's a sad state of affairs when your girlfriend abducts your favourite underpants.

75
    Simply odd. Odd. We're writing Christmas cards at the moment, and Margret asked if I'd print out a family photo to include with them. (I have many photos of us, taken during every season and in numerous different locations –
all
, however, show precisely the same pose: Margret – beaming smile; Mil – solemn resignation; First Born – looking down at a Game Boy; Second Born – tongue out at camera, fingers pulling up to expose inside of nostrils.) Now, I'm aware that including a family photo with a Christmas card is not at all unusual in America, and I don't want to appear to criticise this: I'm sure it's perfectly lovely when an American sends such a card to another American. It's simply a tradition and no more a cause for comment, in its context, than any other of the fine customs unique to that country, like… um… like pie eating competitions, say, or religious snake-handling. As an English person, though, the notion of sending out pictures of ourselves strikes me as narcissistically brash. I mentioned this to Margret and, though she had sympathy with the concept that (non-American) people who send out photos of themselves might reasonably be assumed to be utterly dreadful, she said she thought that sometimes it was nice to get a picture. She thought it was nice
for a very specific reason
. '…because then you can see what size they are.' Now, this is clearly nonsense – 'Oh, look – they're 8"-by-4".' – unless people are sending out photographs of themselves next to an item of known dimensions. A bit like those kidnap photos where the victim is holding the day's paper: Bill, Emma, Helen, Matt and Blackie ensure that they're posing by a regulation, roadside telephone CAB box, with their arms linked to avoid tricks of perspective. More pertinently, though – what
the hell
? 'So you can see what size they are'? What on earth does that
mean
? Am I expected to open a card, splutter out my mouthful of tea in shock and call out, 'Quick! Take Ted and Sarah off our list – I've just found out they're bleeding midgets!' It is, as I say, 'simply odd'.

76
    I'm off to Germany for a few weeks. Apologies if my absence results in your doing any work.
     

77
    Except, I have to pop back briefly to tell you what just happened. I'm about to cycle into town and Margret stops me as I'm setting off. 'Will you bring back that filing cabinet from Argos?' she asks. Can you, ladies and gentlemen, imagine a person cycling two miles through Christmas traffic on a mountain bike
carrying a filing cabinet
?
    Margret can.
    Right, I really must get packed for Germany now.

78
    Right, I've just got back from Germany so I have a huge backlog of stuff to get sorted – the inevitable result of a short break away hissing around the Allgäu, past numberless