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

These tiny, tragic creatures – who missed the English lesson that dealt with 'subtext' because they were at home shooting beer cans off a fence all that year and who can do no more than guess, in panic, that 'irony' is probably the name of a character in
The Bold and the Beautiful
 – make many embarrassing mistakes. One such mistake – interestingly, one that brings together the otherwise disparate idiot types 'Teenage Girl' and 'Bitter Divorcé' – is that I hate Margret. (I'd like to imagine that they also think
Catch 22
 is a pro-war book – because, you know, it's about the army – but I can't, as I have trouble with the bit where I try to imagine them reading a book.) Now, in the 'Mil Making An Effort To Care What They Think' project, the 'Idiots' are on hold right now, as I'm still working on 'Anyone At All'. So, I'm sad to say that I won't be replacing this page with 'Excellent Times My Girlfriend And I Have Had Together' or 'Syrupy And Unfunny Things That Are Great About My Girlfriend' any time soon. I am, of course, deeply sorry about this. However, a thing that came up this week simply begs to be said. But, let it be understood that saying this unambiguously positive thing about my girlfriend is in no way a capitulation to the opinions of idiots, nor does it represent a change of policy on this page. OK?
    So, I got this invitation to a reception at Downing Street. (I'll wait here while you, understandably, go back to that a few times to make sure you've read it correctly.) OK, so it's not an evening with Tony or anything – it's a reception at 11 Downing Street. [For the America readers, the UK Prime Minister's official residence is 10 Downing Street – the Chancellor of the Exchequer lives at Number 11. Downing Street is in London; which is in England; which is part of Europe. Europe is a continent roughly three thousand miles east of Buffalo.] But, well,
come on
, eh? A letter flopping through my door, out of the blue, inviting me to a reception at 11 Downing Street simply
howls
'CATASTROPHIC ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR', doesn't it?
    They better discover their mistake pretty damn quickly, though – because otherwise I'm going. How can you turn down something like this? It's anecdote Nirvana. It'll be worth it if only to see, as I begin to stroll up Downing Street, every security man within half a mile frantically begin to speak up his sleeve.
    Whatever. I skip downstairs and cast the invitation letter on to the table in front of Margret. She picks it up and reads it, sipping her coffee. She finishes without having said a word or changed her expression in any way at all. But then, her forehead wrinkles. She reaches across, opens her diary, glances at a page, and then closes it again. Her hand moves over to the invitation letter once more. She looks up at me, her finger tapping the page where it gives the date of the reception. 'You've already got a dentist's appointment on that day,' she says.
     
    How could anyone
not
love this woman?

88
    What are things? Are what we think of as 'things' objective 'things' in their own right, or simply shadows, smudges or simulacra? Unknowables presented in some kind of intelligible form only through the snake oil mediation of our limited senses, prescribed understanding and imperfect vocabulary. In a way, I'm talking about solipsism, here. I'm talking about conceptualism. I'm talking about thinking that spans the philosophical alphabet, all the way from Aristotle to Wittgenstein. In a much more real way, however, I'm talking about arguing with Margret about the hoovering.
    Margret, had gone out. (It doesn't really matter where as, irrespective of her stated destination, she'll come back carrying another bloody plant.) As she'd left, she'd seen that I was sitting in front of the computer. If Margret is leaving the house and, as she's doing so, she sees me sitting in front of the computer, she
will
say, 'Do the hoovering.' – there's no way she can stop herself: it's