Dave1258
New member
and this is what we argued about!
The best way to hang up washing.
Those little toothpaste speckles you make when you brush your teeth in front of the mirror.
I eat two-fingered Kit-Kats like I'd eat any other chocolate bars of that size, i.e., without feeling the need to snap them into two individual fingers first. Mandy accused me of doing this, 'deliberately to annoy her'.
Which way - the distances were identical - to drive round a circular bypass (this resulted in her kicking me in the head from the back seat as I drove along).
The amount of time I spend on the computer. (OK, fair enough.)
First Born's name (Steven). Then, when that was settled...
How to pronounce First Born's name.
Our telephone number.
Which type of iron to buy (price wasn't an issue, it was the principle, damnit).
Where to sit in the cinema. On those occasions when we a) manage to agree to go to the cinema together and, b) go to see the same film once we're there. (No, really).
Whether her cutting our son's hair comes under 'money-saving skill' or 'therapy in the making'.
Shortly after every single time Mandy touches my computer, for any reason whatsoever, I have to spend twenty minutes trying to fix crashes, locked systems, data loses, jammed drives, bizarre re-configurations and things stuck in the keyboard. There then follows a free and frank exchange of views with, in my corner, 'It's your fault,' and, in hers, 'It's a curious statistical anomaly.'
Mandy enters the room. The television is showing Baywatch. Mandy says, 'Uh-huh, you're watching Baywatch again.' I say, 'I'm not watching, it's just on.' Repeat. For the duration of the programme.
She wants to paint the living room yellow. I have not the words.
Mandy doesn't like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on - let me make sure you've got the inflection here: Mandy doesn't like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I narrate the entire bleeding film to her. 'Who's she?', 'Why did he get shot?', 'I thought that one was on their side?', 'Is that a bomb' - 'JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF GOD, JUST WATCH IT!' The hellish mirror-image of this is when she furnishes me, deaf to my pleading, with her commentary. Chair-clawing suspense being assaulted mercilessly from behind by such interjections as, 'Hey! Look! They're the cushions we've got.', 'Isn't she the one who does that tampon advert?' and, on one famous occasion, 'Oh, I've seen this - he gets killed at the end.'
Mandy thinks I'm vain because... I use a mirror when I shave. During this argument in the bathroom - our fourth most popular location for arguments, it will delight and charm you to learn - Mandy proved that shaving with a mirror could only be seen as outrageous narcissism by saying, 'None of the other men I've been with,' (my, but it's all I can do to stop myself hugging her when she begins sentences like that) 'None of the other men I've been with used a mirror to shave.'
'Ha! Difficult to check up on that, isn't it? As all the other men you've been with can now only communicate by blinking their eyes!' I said. Much later. When Mandy had left the house.! /forums/images/icons/wink.gif
The TV Remote. It is only by epic self-discipline on both our parts that we don't argue about the TV Remote to the exclusion of all else. It does the TV Remote a disservice to suggest that it is only the cause of four types of argument, but space, you will understand, is limited so I must concentrate on the main ones.
1) Ownership of the TV Remote: this is signified by its being on the arm of the chair/sofa closest to you - it is more important than life itself.
2) On those blood-freezing occasions when you look up from your seat to discover that the TV Remote is still lying on top of the TV, then one of you must retrieve it; who shall it be? And how will this affect (1)?
3) Disappearance of the TV Remote. Precisely who had it last will be hotly disputed, witnesses may be called. Things can turn very nasty indeed when the person who isn't looking for it is revealed to be unknowingly sitting on it.
4) The TV Remote is a natural nomad and sometimes, may the Lord protect us, it goes missing for whole days. During these dark times, someone must actually, in an entirely literal sense, get up to change the channel; International Law decrees that this, "will not be the person who did it last" - but can this be ascertained? Without the police becoming involved?
See if you can spot the difference between these two statements:
(a) "Those trousers make your backside look fat."
(b) "You're a repellently obese old hag upon whom I am compelled to heap insults and derision - depressingly far removed from the, 'stupid, squeaky, pocket-sized English women,' who make up my vast catalogue of former lovers and to whom I might as well return right now as I hate everything about you."
Maybe the acoustics were really bad in the dining room, or something.
I get accused of hoarding things by Mandy, now, this is entirely unfair - electrical items never die, you see, I am merely unable to revive them with today's technology. In the future new techniques will emerge and, combined with the inevitably approaching shortage of AC adapters and personal cassette players, my foresight will pay off and the grateful peoples of the Earth will make me their God. Anyway, never mind that now, because the real point is that it's Mandy who fills our boat with crap. And I'm not talking about doing so by the omission of crap-throwing-away here, but by insane design. While sorting out the stuff in the boxes, these are some of the things I've discovered that Mandy actually packed away at our last house and brought to our boat
A dentist's cast of her teeth circa 1984.
Empty Pringles tubes.
Rocks (not 'special ornamental rocks', you understand, just 'rocks' from our previous garden).
Old telephone directories.
Two carrier bags full of scraps of material.
Those little sachets of salt and sugar you get with your meal on planes.
Some wooden sticks.
Last year's calendar.
And yet, were I to throw her from a train, they'd call me the criminal.
Look, if you don't understand the rules of Robot Wars by now then I'm just not going to continue the conversation, OK?
Damn, damn, damn washing up. Now, in the normal course of things I do all the cooking and washing up. (This is partly due to a tactical error I made in an argument many years ago. You know when you're so angry you start blurring the line between masochistic hyperbole and usefully hissing threat? 'Well, maybe I'll just microwave all my CDs - look, look, there goes my Tom Robinson Band - feel better now?' Been there? Splendid. So, several years ago we're having this argument and somehow I found myself inhabiting a place where saying, 'OK, OK, OK - I'll do all the cooking and all the washing up all the time, then!' seemed like a hugely cunning gambit. In fact, though, this is not too bad a deal. You see, if Mandy is cooking turkey (unstuffed, three-and-a-half-hours) and oven chips (20 minutes, turn once), then she'll begin putting them in the oven at precisely the same time. If Mandy's preparing tea, then its style will be her variation on Sweet 'n' Sour that runs Burnt Beyond Recognition 'n' Potentially Fatal.) Can you remember what I was saying before I opened those brackets? Hold on... ah, right - washing up. Now, the thing is, if you're an English male, what you do when you leave home is go to the shop nearest to your new place, buy a Pot Noodle (Chicken and Mushroom), feast on its delights slumped on the sofa in front of the TV, swill out the plastic carton it came in, then use this carton for all your subsequent meals until you get married. There's a beauty of economy to it. Thus, when I cook a meal for four, the aftermath left in the sink as I carry the gently steaming plates to the table is a single saucepan and, if I've pulled out the all stops to dazzle visiting Royalty, perhaps a spoon. Mandy cannot make cheese on toast without using every single saucepan, wok, tureen and colander in the house. Post-Mandy-meal, I walk into the kitchen to discover a sink teetering with utensils holding off gravity only by the sly use of a spätzle glue.
'How the hell did you use all these to make that?'
'It's just what I needed.'
'What? Where did the lawnmower fit in?'
Arguments. There are many arguments we have over arguments. 'Who started argument x', for example, is a old favourite that has not had its vigour dimmed by age nor its edge blunted through use. Another dependable companion is, 'I'm not arguing, I'm just talking - you're arguing,' along with its more stage-struck (in the sense that it relishes an audience - parties, visiting relatives, Parent's Evenings at school, in shops, etc.) sibling, 'Right, so we're going to get into this argument here are we?' An especially frequent argument argument, however, is the result of Mandy NOT STICKING TO THE DAMN ARGUMENT, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. Mandy jack-knifes from argument to argument, jigs direction randomly and erratically like a shoal of Argument Fish being followed by a Truth Shark. It's fearsomely difficult to land a blow because by the time you've let fly with the logic she's not there anymore. A row about vacuuming gets shifted to the cost of a computer upgrade, from there to who got up early with the kids most this week and then to the greater interest rates of German banks via the noisome sexual keenness of some former girlfriend, those-are-hair-scissors-don't-use-them-for-paper and, 'When was the last time you bought me flowers?' all in the space of about seven exchanges. 'Arrrrrrgggh! What are we arguing about? Can you just decide what it is and stick to it?'
What this is really all about /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
Mandy flooded the galley last week. Turned the taps on, put the plug in the sink, and utterly forgot about it (because she'd come upstairs and we'd got involved in an unrelated argument). She goes back downstairs, opens the door and - whoosh - it's Sea World. The interesting thing about this is, if I'd flooded the kitchen, it would have been a bellowing, 'You've flooded the kitchen, you idiot!' and then she'd have done that thing where I curl up in a ball, trying to protect my head, and she kicks me repeatedly in the kidneys. As it was, however, there's a shout, I run downstairs and stand for a beat in the doorway - taking in the scene, waves lapping gently at my ankles - and she turns round and roars, 'Well, help me then - can't you see I've flooded the kitchen, you idiot?'
Regards Dave
P.S. We don't argue all the time.....honest!
<hr width=100% size=1> A man should have two things in life, a boat and a wife willing to let him have one.
The best way to hang up washing.
Those little toothpaste speckles you make when you brush your teeth in front of the mirror.
I eat two-fingered Kit-Kats like I'd eat any other chocolate bars of that size, i.e., without feeling the need to snap them into two individual fingers first. Mandy accused me of doing this, 'deliberately to annoy her'.
Which way - the distances were identical - to drive round a circular bypass (this resulted in her kicking me in the head from the back seat as I drove along).
The amount of time I spend on the computer. (OK, fair enough.)
First Born's name (Steven). Then, when that was settled...
How to pronounce First Born's name.
Our telephone number.
Which type of iron to buy (price wasn't an issue, it was the principle, damnit).
Where to sit in the cinema. On those occasions when we a) manage to agree to go to the cinema together and, b) go to see the same film once we're there. (No, really).
Whether her cutting our son's hair comes under 'money-saving skill' or 'therapy in the making'.
Shortly after every single time Mandy touches my computer, for any reason whatsoever, I have to spend twenty minutes trying to fix crashes, locked systems, data loses, jammed drives, bizarre re-configurations and things stuck in the keyboard. There then follows a free and frank exchange of views with, in my corner, 'It's your fault,' and, in hers, 'It's a curious statistical anomaly.'
Mandy enters the room. The television is showing Baywatch. Mandy says, 'Uh-huh, you're watching Baywatch again.' I say, 'I'm not watching, it's just on.' Repeat. For the duration of the programme.
She wants to paint the living room yellow. I have not the words.
Mandy doesn't like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on - let me make sure you've got the inflection here: Mandy doesn't like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I narrate the entire bleeding film to her. 'Who's she?', 'Why did he get shot?', 'I thought that one was on their side?', 'Is that a bomb' - 'JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF GOD, JUST WATCH IT!' The hellish mirror-image of this is when she furnishes me, deaf to my pleading, with her commentary. Chair-clawing suspense being assaulted mercilessly from behind by such interjections as, 'Hey! Look! They're the cushions we've got.', 'Isn't she the one who does that tampon advert?' and, on one famous occasion, 'Oh, I've seen this - he gets killed at the end.'
Mandy thinks I'm vain because... I use a mirror when I shave. During this argument in the bathroom - our fourth most popular location for arguments, it will delight and charm you to learn - Mandy proved that shaving with a mirror could only be seen as outrageous narcissism by saying, 'None of the other men I've been with,' (my, but it's all I can do to stop myself hugging her when she begins sentences like that) 'None of the other men I've been with used a mirror to shave.'
'Ha! Difficult to check up on that, isn't it? As all the other men you've been with can now only communicate by blinking their eyes!' I said. Much later. When Mandy had left the house.! /forums/images/icons/wink.gif
The TV Remote. It is only by epic self-discipline on both our parts that we don't argue about the TV Remote to the exclusion of all else. It does the TV Remote a disservice to suggest that it is only the cause of four types of argument, but space, you will understand, is limited so I must concentrate on the main ones.
1) Ownership of the TV Remote: this is signified by its being on the arm of the chair/sofa closest to you - it is more important than life itself.
2) On those blood-freezing occasions when you look up from your seat to discover that the TV Remote is still lying on top of the TV, then one of you must retrieve it; who shall it be? And how will this affect (1)?
3) Disappearance of the TV Remote. Precisely who had it last will be hotly disputed, witnesses may be called. Things can turn very nasty indeed when the person who isn't looking for it is revealed to be unknowingly sitting on it.
4) The TV Remote is a natural nomad and sometimes, may the Lord protect us, it goes missing for whole days. During these dark times, someone must actually, in an entirely literal sense, get up to change the channel; International Law decrees that this, "will not be the person who did it last" - but can this be ascertained? Without the police becoming involved?
See if you can spot the difference between these two statements:
(a) "Those trousers make your backside look fat."
(b) "You're a repellently obese old hag upon whom I am compelled to heap insults and derision - depressingly far removed from the, 'stupid, squeaky, pocket-sized English women,' who make up my vast catalogue of former lovers and to whom I might as well return right now as I hate everything about you."
Maybe the acoustics were really bad in the dining room, or something.
I get accused of hoarding things by Mandy, now, this is entirely unfair - electrical items never die, you see, I am merely unable to revive them with today's technology. In the future new techniques will emerge and, combined with the inevitably approaching shortage of AC adapters and personal cassette players, my foresight will pay off and the grateful peoples of the Earth will make me their God. Anyway, never mind that now, because the real point is that it's Mandy who fills our boat with crap. And I'm not talking about doing so by the omission of crap-throwing-away here, but by insane design. While sorting out the stuff in the boxes, these are some of the things I've discovered that Mandy actually packed away at our last house and brought to our boat
A dentist's cast of her teeth circa 1984.
Empty Pringles tubes.
Rocks (not 'special ornamental rocks', you understand, just 'rocks' from our previous garden).
Old telephone directories.
Two carrier bags full of scraps of material.
Those little sachets of salt and sugar you get with your meal on planes.
Some wooden sticks.
Last year's calendar.
And yet, were I to throw her from a train, they'd call me the criminal.
Look, if you don't understand the rules of Robot Wars by now then I'm just not going to continue the conversation, OK?
Damn, damn, damn washing up. Now, in the normal course of things I do all the cooking and washing up. (This is partly due to a tactical error I made in an argument many years ago. You know when you're so angry you start blurring the line between masochistic hyperbole and usefully hissing threat? 'Well, maybe I'll just microwave all my CDs - look, look, there goes my Tom Robinson Band - feel better now?' Been there? Splendid. So, several years ago we're having this argument and somehow I found myself inhabiting a place where saying, 'OK, OK, OK - I'll do all the cooking and all the washing up all the time, then!' seemed like a hugely cunning gambit. In fact, though, this is not too bad a deal. You see, if Mandy is cooking turkey (unstuffed, three-and-a-half-hours) and oven chips (20 minutes, turn once), then she'll begin putting them in the oven at precisely the same time. If Mandy's preparing tea, then its style will be her variation on Sweet 'n' Sour that runs Burnt Beyond Recognition 'n' Potentially Fatal.) Can you remember what I was saying before I opened those brackets? Hold on... ah, right - washing up. Now, the thing is, if you're an English male, what you do when you leave home is go to the shop nearest to your new place, buy a Pot Noodle (Chicken and Mushroom), feast on its delights slumped on the sofa in front of the TV, swill out the plastic carton it came in, then use this carton for all your subsequent meals until you get married. There's a beauty of economy to it. Thus, when I cook a meal for four, the aftermath left in the sink as I carry the gently steaming plates to the table is a single saucepan and, if I've pulled out the all stops to dazzle visiting Royalty, perhaps a spoon. Mandy cannot make cheese on toast without using every single saucepan, wok, tureen and colander in the house. Post-Mandy-meal, I walk into the kitchen to discover a sink teetering with utensils holding off gravity only by the sly use of a spätzle glue.
'How the hell did you use all these to make that?'
'It's just what I needed.'
'What? Where did the lawnmower fit in?'
Arguments. There are many arguments we have over arguments. 'Who started argument x', for example, is a old favourite that has not had its vigour dimmed by age nor its edge blunted through use. Another dependable companion is, 'I'm not arguing, I'm just talking - you're arguing,' along with its more stage-struck (in the sense that it relishes an audience - parties, visiting relatives, Parent's Evenings at school, in shops, etc.) sibling, 'Right, so we're going to get into this argument here are we?' An especially frequent argument argument, however, is the result of Mandy NOT STICKING TO THE DAMN ARGUMENT, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. Mandy jack-knifes from argument to argument, jigs direction randomly and erratically like a shoal of Argument Fish being followed by a Truth Shark. It's fearsomely difficult to land a blow because by the time you've let fly with the logic she's not there anymore. A row about vacuuming gets shifted to the cost of a computer upgrade, from there to who got up early with the kids most this week and then to the greater interest rates of German banks via the noisome sexual keenness of some former girlfriend, those-are-hair-scissors-don't-use-them-for-paper and, 'When was the last time you bought me flowers?' all in the space of about seven exchanges. 'Arrrrrrgggh! What are we arguing about? Can you just decide what it is and stick to it?'
What this is really all about /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
Mandy flooded the galley last week. Turned the taps on, put the plug in the sink, and utterly forgot about it (because she'd come upstairs and we'd got involved in an unrelated argument). She goes back downstairs, opens the door and - whoosh - it's Sea World. The interesting thing about this is, if I'd flooded the kitchen, it would have been a bellowing, 'You've flooded the kitchen, you idiot!' and then she'd have done that thing where I curl up in a ball, trying to protect my head, and she kicks me repeatedly in the kidneys. As it was, however, there's a shout, I run downstairs and stand for a beat in the doorway - taking in the scene, waves lapping gently at my ankles - and she turns round and roars, 'Well, help me then - can't you see I've flooded the kitchen, you idiot?'
Regards Dave
P.S. We don't argue all the time.....honest!
<hr width=100% size=1> A man should have two things in life, a boat and a wife willing to let him have one.
