'What?' I say.
'Nothing.'
'No –
what
?'
'
Noth
ing.'
'I'd loosened it.'
'I didn't say anything.'
And I'll have to drag the tiny, damp shreds of my manhood away into the reclusive garage until the slight, slight smile disappears from her some thirty-six hours into the future.
51
Hanging Things. Margret simply cannot stop hanging things from every defenceless lampshade, rail or drawing pin-able piece of ceiling space. Mobiles built from small, wooden, peasant figures, baskets of plants or vegetables or toiletries, angular crystals or tiny, twirling shards of coloured glass, wind-chimes – oh, pale, waltzing Lord, the wind chimes. Not just those tubular bells that generate a sound like a modern jazz orchestra rolling biscuit tins of ball-bearings down a stairwell either. No, she actually found some evil outlet that sold her a suspended helix of hollow clay doves. This produces an arpeggio of dull, ceramics clungs when it's struck. And it's struck, many times a day, by my forehead, whenever I pass into the living room. My head is a Somme of wing-shaped indentations. Where does she get this Drive To Hang? Admittedly, I've sometimes looked at an empty bit of wall in my computer room in the attic and thought, 'Mmm… Winona Ryder would look good there.' Occasionally even, 'Mmm… A poster of Winona Ryder would look good there.' – but that's a hugely sensible distance from a compulsion to attach dangling bits of pointlessness to everything, house-wide. I have, for many years, tried to work out what lies behind her behaviour in this area, but it wasn't until recently that I was sure I'd found the reason for it. Thankfully, though, I have now identified its cause: She's nuts.
52
One of the many things I love about Margret is her zest. You probably won't have picked up on this, but in actual fact I am a sullen, cynical kind of character (honestly, it's true), while Margret hisses with energy and finds taut excitement in everything that passes through her field of vision. Perhaps this is why, in a Garden Centre, I just shuffle around sighing, 'Red pot, blue pot; whatever you want – can we go home now?' yet Margret only has to walk through the doors at Sainsbury's Homebase to achieve orgasm.
Anyway, this whippy outlook of hers can sometimes be a bit wearing. As an example, yesterday, her brow creased with anxiety, she said, 'I need a haircut, urgently.'
Now, I just can't imagine a world where people need a haircut
urgently
. Quite possibly, this explains a lot – those of you who have looked elsewhere on the site will surely have thought, 'Christ! There's a man who needs a haircut URGENTLY!' – but let's not confuse understandable alarm with imperativeness. When Margret said this, it was about eleven o'clock at night, and she really did look like she expected me to dash to the phone right away. 'Hello? Shapes? Prepare a chair, we'll be there in two minutes. Yes, it looks bad. I… Oh my God, it's frizzing! Clear!'
Tch – wear a hat until the weekend.
53
The quality with which I am identified most closely is probably fairness. There's an almost breathless speed about my disposition, when appropriate, to say, 'Margret, I am clearly in the wrong here. Please smash up my stuff.' However, there are times when the Shield Of Justice gleams on my arm and all of Margret's shouted accusations merely strike it and fall, lifeless, to the ground. Averted eyes and a slowly shaking head tell that I am in a place where she cannot touch me. Yes, as you ask, I am thinking of something specific.
You don't know me, right? You're aware, perhaps, that my hair's bright red, you know I've got some Web space, you have a certain suspicion that in quiet moments I speculate on what it must be like to be rubbed all over with a Nastassja Kinski – but that's it. It's not like, say, we've being going out with each other for something over sixteen years and have had two children and decorated a landing together. Given that, let me place before you a scenario: You are leaving the house to go shopping for a number of hours. Just before you go, you poke your face towards me (I, hunched and unblinking, am playing a computer game of the most frantic and intricate kind) and say, 'If it starts to rain, get the washing in off the line.'
Now,
you
know what's going to happen, don't you? You've never even met me, and yet
you
know what's going to happen. So if Margret, with whom I've lived for well over a decade and a half, doesn't bother to employ painfully basic foresight to see what's
obviously going to happen
… well, the shield of justice is mine, i reckon.
54
When I'm driving the car, Margret reaches across and operates the indicator. How annoying is that, ladies and gentlemen? At the distance from the turn that she considers to be appropriate, she'll lean over and flick the indicator lever on. Be honest now, would any one of you prefer to be in a car with someone who did that over, say, being trapped under rubble for four days with a person who writes the verses for greetings cards? It's rumoured, in fact, that certain people are working on the
Being In A Car With Margret Experience
so that it can be recreated in the punishment wing of Alabama jails.
That's not to say that she's a bad driver. She's a better driver than I am, certainly. But a better driver in, um, well, by the 'male' definition of better, let's say. If we were in a rally, Margret would leave me in the dust. She is never more alive than when reversing into a tight space. Gears
matter
to her. However, I've only had one crash, and that was indisputably not my fault (someone drove through a red light into the side of me). Margret has hit countless things. Hit them in England. Hit them in Germany. (I was in a car with Margret in Germany once, when she'd been back and forth between there and England quite frequently. She's racing along the centre of a country road. A car appears heading straight for us, and Margret shouts at me, 'Which side should I be on!?' A nice moment. If I'd been out to score points I'd have remarked that, if you're asking that question, then perhaps
slowing down at all
might be a thing to do also. I didn't say anything, however, as at that point I was busy finding religion.) Margret has hit stationary things – bollards, a public electricity exchange, walls – and moving things – other cars, an ambulance. (
Yes
, 'honestly'.)
One time we hired a car to drive up to Scotland. Margret doesn't so much ignore speed limits as have trouble with them conceptually – 'What? There's a speed limit
here
too?' She drove from Birmingham to Carlisle (about 200 miles) flat out. And I mean 'flat' 'out', her foot was on the floor the whole way. The hire company obviously expected their cars to be driven by the sane, and it just couldn't cope. The temperature gauge strained against the end of the scale and Margret eventually pulled over to let it cool down for a few minutes. But the wind coming through the radiator grille due to our forward motion was the only thing that had kept it going. When she pulled over
every single electrical wire in the engine
melted away. Fortunately, there was rescue cover so we were picked up and given a replacement car. Margret, clearly humbled, said, 'Oh brill! This one's got a cassette player!'
So, Margret's a better driver than I am, and a better map reader too, incidentally. I get there eventually and can operate my own indicators, thanks very much… but I am, sadly, far less likely to make my fortune endorsing airbags.
55
Insomnia. The thing with – hold on, before I start, look at this:
[4]
. Guess which one of us hung
that
up at some point on Friday, and which one of us walked into the bedroom sometime later and said, 'Wow, that's really good. I've often thought how not at all irritating it would be to have a bunch of feathers dangling just in front of my face all night, and I've also frequently been overcome with a sudden sadness that I had no means of a casual arm wave as I slept somehow entangling itself in ribbons and a suspended hoop so as to bring a halogen lamp crashing down onto my sleeping face. Yet, I've
never thought of bringing the two together
– now,
that's
genius.'
Apparently, it needs to be hung over our bed – rather than, say, outside, on a tree, in front of somebody else's house – as it's a dreamcatcher. And there I was thinking that, once I logged off the Net, I was safe. That, in my own bed, I was beyond the sinister reach of Wacky Californians – what is it with you people? What did I ever do to you? OK, apart from that. (By the way, if you're a Wacky California who was all set to write me an email suggesting some kind of family therapy pioneered by another Wacky Californian, but who finds yourself now
even more
compelled to write one beginning, «In fact, the dreamcatcher is an old Native American tradition. Nokomis, the grandmother, was watching a spider…» then can I ask that you just don't, OK? In fact, as a general rule, I tend not to take advice – 'consider the source', right? – about life from people who choose to live on a massive earthquake faultline.) As an aside, Wacky Californians, there was a tiny piece in last week's Metro newspaper, which I found interesting. I emailed the editor to ask if I could put a scan of it up here but, unfortunately, he said no – as he's perfectly entitled to do, of course – but the gist was that a couple had their application to adopt refused because they don't argue enough. Maybe Margret and I should give classes or something.
So, as I was saying, 'insomnia'. The thing with insomnia is you never know when to give in. Do you stay there, trying to get to sleep, or do you give in and say, 'Well – not going to get to sleep anyway: might as well get up and do something.' It's a tricky one and no mistake. When I get insomnia, I generally try all the standard things: I try to relax, I try to clear my mind, I try to think of something pleasant (often this turns out to involve Courteney Cox and, in the 'encouraging a condition where sleep is likely' stakes, backfires massively). If none of these works, I'll quietly get up, go downstairs and read Pinter until insomnia's spirit breaks. What I
don't
do is turn to Margret and, at intervals precisely judged to be 'just long enough to have allowed the other person to have got to sleep again', keep saying, 'I can't sleep' and, 'I can't sleep' and, 'Really, I just can't sleep' and, 'I'm still awake, I just can't sleep' and, 'Pheeeeeeeeeeeeee – I can't sleep' and, 'I don't know what it is; I'm tired, but I can't sleep' and, 'I can't sleep' and, 'I can't get to sleep' and, 'I'll be so tired in the morning – look at the time. But I can't sleep'. Because that's the kind of behaviour that can lead… to… someone… snapping.
56
First Born cut his hair on Friday morning. Apparently the casual notion that his fringe was too long and didn't look sufficiently wicked strolled through his head, so – without the use of anything as lame as a mirror, naturally – he got a pair of scissors and cut his own hair; he now looks like a tiny Howard Devoto. Except blond. And without the spectacles. («So, not very much like Howard Devoto at all, then. Also, we were born in 1987 and have entirely no idea who Howard Devoto is.» – Everyone.)
Now, Margret and I don't do that widespread thing of transferring ownership of the children depending on the situation; '
My
son is a neurosurgeon,' '
Your
son has just poured byriani behind the radiator,' that kind of thing. We do another thing. Margret, who is the one to spot Jonathan appears to be the first seven-year-old to be suffering from male pattern baldness, marches into the room where I'm sitting, reading the paper, and, looming over me with her arms knotted tightly across her ribs says:
'Jonathan's cut loads of his hair off.'
I look up at her and, after a few moments of thought, naturally reply:
'Tsk.'
She's unable to find herself entirely satisfied with this.
'So, that's it then, is it? You're all parented out now?'
'What am I supposed to do?' I ask, bewildered. 'He's cut the hair off. Do you want me to wrap it in frozen peas and race to the hospital to see if they can do an emergency weave?'
'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.