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

gasping locals, all swooning, 'Incredible! He skis like some kind of god!' You'll be happy to know, however, that Christmas this year went very well. As I think we've established by now, providing Margret with Christmas presents that evoke joy – rather than massive, brutal retaliation – is something that must be bought at a terrible cost. The fearful, Faust-blanching price of this ability is to – quite literally –
listen to everything that Margret says throughout the previous year
. I mean, Kung Fu monks (according to the omniscient well of knowledge that is popular 1970s television) only had to do a decade or so of training then carry a red hot metal bowl for a couple of meters with their bare forearms. I have to
listen to everything Margret says throughout the entire year
. Endless, endless,
endless
hours of stuff about the comparative aesthetic merits of different Ikea storage units, just so I'm there – prickling with alertness – on those occasions when she slyly drops in a hint about what she might like as a gift when the trial of buying one for her confronts me again. As I say, though, last year, twelve months worth of intelligence gathering paid off. This Christmas morning she was so thrilled that she stared at me – literally unable to form her thoughts into words – for quite the longest time imaginable after unwrapping her presents of a barometer and one of those 'Make Your Own Will' kits.

79
    Oh, as you ask, I had a pretty uneventful time over in Germany. Skiing, visiting friends, waiting for the figure to turn green at pedestrian crossing lights even though there quite plainly isn't any sort of moving vehicle within a mile and a half, being shown photographs of my girlfriend naked, etc., etc.
    The Old Timers among you will be well aware that pretty much every household in modern Germany contains at least a couple of photographs of my girlfriend naked, and also that this is a) "Not sexual. Tch – what the hell's
wrong
with you?" and b) very much My Problem. So, I'm sitting in a living room and – after tea and cakes – out come the photographs of Margret naked. I hold one of the pictures in my hand and sit there, radiating heat. Alerted, perhaps, by the grinding sound I'm involuntarily making with my teeth, Margret looks across at me and lets out a long, weary sigh.
    'Oh, for God's sake,' she tuts, 'OK – so I'm naked. But you can't
see
anything.'
    I glance pointedly at her, pointedly at the photograph, and then back at her again – pointedly. She lets out an even wearier sigh and rolls her eyes.
    'OK…' she shrugs, '…apart from
that
.'

80
    In what I can only assume was an impromptu but gutsy attempt at the World Irony Record, the other day Margret started to lecture me on how I could become calmer. I mean,
really
, eh? It's like being pitched
Al Qaeda's Little Book of Love
. Her spontaneous proselytising was conjured from her now going to yoga one evening a week.
    'It's really relaxing when I'm there,' she says.
    'Yes, it is,' I reply. (You see what I actually meant there, right? Lord, but I'm arch.)
    'Why don't you come to a session?'
    There's a sucking, cultish gleam in her eye. The kind of, 'Join us! Join us – the spaceship awaits!' look that you see on the faces of Moonies or people who are telling you about homeopathy.
    'No thanks.'
    'But you really lose the tension.'
    I consider mentioning that she always seems to find it again pretty quickly once she gets back – maybe she might think about getting a yoga instructor who 'loses her tension' by some method other than 'hiding it in our house', but I keep hold of this card for a while.
    'I don't need to,' I say, 'I can achieve perfect relaxation by sitting here and watching a Buffy DVD.'
    'That's not the same.'
    'Yes it is.'
    'No it isn't: when you're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' (I promise you these are her
exact
words that are coming up now), ' you're straining your mind .'
    My face briefly collapses under the effort of trying