A voice drifts up from below. “What are you doing?” My girlfriend asks.
“Nothing.” I reply.
“Then you can help me with the dishes,” she says.
“I’m busy.” I yell downstairs.
I’m sitting in front of a blank computer screen, thinking, and writing about nothing. I stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back. It’s OK. I’m a man and we do that sometimes. It’s Zen in the art of being a guy. I am a whirlwind at rest, serenity in action. I am in the zone. I am zenned. Sure, I could be striving for that cherished Pulitzer. Writing about world hunger, of mans inhumanity to man, of kinder and gentler political regimes, even how to grill the perfect steak, but I’m in the moment, at one with the keyboard. The perfect lead into my next column will come, because you can’t step into the same river twice, and my fuzzy bunny slippers are still dry.
“Take out the trash, if you aren’t doing anything!” hollers my girlfriend.
Damn, my bubble of tranquility has burst, and I have nothing, nothing at all.
Nothing keeps a relationship on its toes so much as lively debate. Fortunately, my girlfriend and I agree on nothing, nothing at all. Nobody knows the dynamics of long-term relationships better than Mil Millington, author of Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About.
Mil started out writing his column for the British paper The Guardian. The column, it turns out, is about things that Mil and his girlfriend Margaret argue about. They argue about the remote, the proper way to cut a kiwi, and even argue about arguments.
Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About, the novel, begins with our protagonist, Pel, his German girlfriend Ursula, and their two children. Pel works in the IT department of a university library (or “Learning Centre” — he is a British writer after all). Pel receives an odd call from his boss, TSR, who quizzes him about extradition treaties; within a week he has vanished without a trace, and Pel is promoted to TSR’s former position, CTASATM or “Computer Team Administration, Software Acquisition and Training Manager.” Have to love those acronyms.
The story follows both Pel’s home and work lives. At home, there are the arguments with Ursula over the search for a new home after the latest burglary of their current home; defrosting the fridge during the moving preparations; Ursula terrifying the builders working on the repairs of the new house; a skiing accident that leaves Ursula with a torn tendon in her shoulder.
At work, Pel finds that taking on TSR’s job involves more than it seemed at first; he has to pay off student recruiters from the Pacific Rim, who happen to be members of The Triads, the oriental version of organized crime. He has to take care of the details of the building of a new Learning Centre building, which involves hiding the fact that skeletons from an ancient burial ground have been illegally moved from the site, and a dangerous neurotoxin is to be buried under the new addition — a dual semester science project by an unsupervised student.
These details lead him to become closely involved with the permanently hungover Vice Chancellor of the university, which leads to his receiving another promotion to Learning Centre Manager.
This is Mil’s first novel and he does tend to hang a more-or-less useless plot on the concept of “things.” In many places it seems to be a collection of his columns inserted into a novel. But he has great comic timing and his turn of phrasing will keep you entertained. He’s so deft and downright funny that it’ll get you kicked out of bed and probably start another one of those “arguments.” His humor is distinctly English.
If you don’t mind your humor peppered with bollocks, tossers, and the odd wanker, then Mil Millington is your man.
