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BACKGROUND. I stumbled upon this webpage called Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About while I was stumbling through Stumbleupon. It's the work of of British columnist and writer Mil Millington, though I didn't know when I was reading it that he was a columnist OR a writer, because his books are linked at the bottom of a VERY VERY long page. I found out about his column by googling his name. I knew all along I should be delving more deeply into The Guardian Unlimited, to which I subscribe but seldom get around to reading.
If you, like me, were living in a sadly ignorant Millington-free state prior to reading this blog, the history of his site, and his transition from website-publisher to published writer, is described here. The page, being exceptional for reasons described below, eventually got him a book deal which is---or may be---leading up to a film, in due course and in the fullness of time.
FIRST, SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE PAGE AND WHY I AM POSTING ABOUT IT HERE.
1. The page is apparently what remains of what was once a more extensive site. Though it ISN'T a blog, it somewhat resembles one, consisting principally of a seemingly endless scroll of one fine writer's reflections on life with his girlfriend (of 15 years, i.e., it's about an adult relationship, or I would not be reading it).
Instead of blogging in a blog, he just posted his thoughts right there on his website, next to her attractive picture. Which, if you happen to run your mouse over it, turns into a comical picture of a monster.
There are numerous signs that the page dates back several years. It doesn't matter. The subjects he canvasses are timeless.
Furthermore, other people have blogged about it and him. I'll be getting to them next, but not today. Today I'm just laying the foundation for the real work of blog-combing.
2. Second----and in a way, this reason really should be first----the writing at te site is brilliant writing. By "brilliant," I mostly mean that having begun to read, I want to go on reading. When I was done the first time, I went back and read it all again. If this writer described clipping his toenails----one of the domestic issues this page touches upon---- I would read that.
Millington writes in that special headlong in-love-with-the-language-for-its-own-sake British fashion that I first encountered when I began to correspond with my dear friend Rumcove. We yanks don't write that way. I'm pretty sure it's because we can't, which is not to put us down, but simply to acknowledge a difference in the way we use language. For us, writing is generally a means to an end. For certain Brits it's an end in itself.
I'm not British and I can't explain it any better than this. You'll just have to continue reading till you get to the excerpts (or skip my observations and go right to the source). CAVEAT! If you're American like me, there really are a couple of things you should know first.
To get back to Millington's writing: it's in a style that no American could really emulate. If you tried, you would end up sounding like a posturing prick and the end product would be soggy and sunken in the middle, a souffle that wouldn't rise.
Speaking as someone who reads constantly, and whose profession in fact requires constant reading, I can honestly say that the only American writer I've encountered anywhere who has successfully created an American version of this style of writing is someone I also encountered online and more or less by chance: TWoP television critic/recapper Jacob Clifton at "Television without Pity." I feel the same way about Jacob's writing as I do about this Millington's: I would read anything he wrote about anything at all.
But Jacob is simply the exception who illustrates the rule: only Brits can really write this way (and most of them can't do it either). My friend Rumcove can, and it is for this reason that we forged over the internet an unbreakable friendship based, on my side, on fervent admiration of his literary gifts. Alas, he has no interest in making a profession of self-expression, and nowadays---being a lazy sod---prefers to carry on our friendship over the phone. It's partly because I've missed reading Rumcove's writing that I am so drawn to this Millington's.
I am in awe of people who can extract comic effect from the mere piling of words upon words. And it's a style particularly well adapted for taking on pop culture, including anything to do with television, because if nothing else it illustrates the awesome power of the language to put things, including reality show contestants, in their right perspective.
CONTENTS OF THE MILLINGTON SITE---"THINGS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I ARGUE ABOUT." It is about exactly what it says---things he's argued about with his girlfriend (of 15 years). This is one thing that is likely to throw off most Americans: that it's about his arguments with his girlfriend. .
The name of the site is a bit misleading if you're American, and therefore accustomed to marrying for tax breaks and to ensure that if/when you eventually divorce the courts will assist you in divvying up your assets. The site is about an adult relationship and therefore deals with arguments over the eternal questions, some of which may overlap with issues that younger and less immovably committed couples argue about, but all of which have much greater significance when you realize that, yes, you're in it for the duration and therefore stuck with the beloved and his or her failings forever. E.g.,
- Who gets control of the remote and for how long?
- Presents and occasions requiring them.
- Old girlfriends.
- Other people who have seen your partner naked.
- The equitable disposition of the family unit's disposable income.
- Driving.
- Windchimes.
- Other random items of decor, such dreamcatchers hung directly over the bed, and plants.
- Females who won't sit still once the program[me] or film starts.
- Everything else that comes up in a marriage or virtual marriage.
WHAT THIS SITE REVEALS/CONFIRMS ABOUT ENGLISH MEN IN LOVE. Here's the thing. English men, I've found (and note that two out of three of all Damozel's past and present husbands as well as her closest friend, Mr. Rumcove, are English) are statistically if not individually inclined, once married, to be uxorious sorts. They like as well as love their wives and therefore, being British, make endless fun of them.
British men, contrary to popular belief, are often quite soppy in private and even in public---sometimes embarrassingly soppy--- but the standard for-ordinary-purposes British show of affection consists in close observation of a loved one's personal foibles and relentless (but affectionate) mockery. Yes, affectionate. Though ruthless. But loving. And relentless.
This is because in England, laughing over one's own failings and the failings of those who belong to you is known as "having a sense of humor." If you can't do that, then---by English standards---you don't have a sense of humor. It's not mean-spiritedness; it's love. If you marry a British person then you have to understand this. If you do, you will be as happy as I am with my Brit and as Mr. Millington assures his readers he and his girlfriend are. If you do not, you'll be checking out the divorce laws and pondering the meaning of "mental cruelty" before the honeymoon is over.
Which is something you have to consider if you're American reading this site: only a man very much in love with his wife would observe his partner/"girlfriend" this closely and with so much loving attention. These are the reports of a man who is not only NOT complaining, except jestingly, about the crazier aspects of his marriage, but who relishes every instance. No one who was angry, or bitter, or crying out for help would write in this vein.
I don't want to ruin it for you, and you need to click on the link and read it for yourself. I've provided two excerpts chosen almost at random:
EXCERPT 1 FROM MIL MILLINGTON'S SITE, "THINGS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I HAVE ARGUED ABOUT."
[quote from Mil Millington's website begins:]
Margret doesn't like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on - let me make sure you've got the inflection here: Margret 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.'
[quote ends]
EXCERT 2 FROM MIL MILLINGTON'S SITE, "THINGS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I HAVE ARGUED ABOUT."
What's the most terrible sound in the world? The sound that crumples your soul, jerks fishhooks in your nerves and makes you want to curl up in some dark, distant corner with a coat pulled over your head. The banshee-like squeal of your tyres as you fight with an unresponsive wheel on the blur of a mountain road? The sudden creak of an uninvited foot pressing heavy with psychopathic stealth on the midnight stairs outside your thin bedroom door? The first warning 'thum-thum-th-th-thm-thum' of the title music announcing that the Fresh Prince of Bel Air is about to start? All bowel-looseningly horrible, that's for sure, but, for me, none can compare with this: my name.
'Ahhh, yes...' you say, nodding wisely and tapping your pipe out on the heel of your shoe. 'I see. On account of your having such a stupid name.'
An understandable mistake, but that's not what I mean, in fact. I'm actually referring to the sound of my name, being called from another part of the house, by Margret's voice.
It can happen shortly after she's returned home from somewhere. It can happen abruptly; bringing to a halt some activity - tidying, rearranging, etc. - she's been engaged in. It can happen completely out of theblue; taking me down without warning, like a sniper's bullet. It will always have the same distinctive, chilling timbre, though.
'Oh - Miiiiiiil...'
Like Pandora's box, all the evils of the world are contained within that 'Mil'. There's anger, disappointment, frustration, accusation, wounded incredulity, choler and sadness; it declares something bad discovered, and promises something terrible to come. It's the sound of anguish mixed with the k-chhk of a round being pumped into the breach of an assault shotgun
And the worst thing about it is the not knowing. 'Oh - Miiiiiiil...' snaking into the room where I'm sitting carries with it a realisation both dreadful and blind. Margret has happened across something I've done. Or not done. Or done in a manner other than the one she'd pictured in the fantastic, surreal cinema of her mind. What can it be? Obviously, thousands of possibilities instantly campaign for my attention. It's fearful. Let me at least know my offence so I can prepare a reasonably plausible explanation. Dear God, don't leave me trying to guess which one of all the possible things I've done you might just now have stumbled upon - the sheer cruelty of that is unspeakable. But no. The simultaneous poverty and excess of 'Oh - Miiiiiiil...' is all I'm given. .....
[quote ends]
WHAT THIS SITE REVEALS ABOUT THE GREAT DIVIDE BETWEEN ENGLISH AND AMERICANS. English people are fond of telling me that Americans have no sense of irony. I've given long thought to this assertion and have come to the conclusion that they are correct, with this modification: "We do not have the English sense of irony," or if we do, we come by it rhough assiduous cultivation (e.g., by watching a lot of British television, reading British fiction, and listening to British talk radio on the internet).
Most of my American friends didn't like The Office or Extras or Green Wing or Peep Show or any of the Alan Partridge oeuvre ("mean-spirited"). They also didn't like Father Ted or Black Books ("stupid") or any of the old Python stuff or Nighty-Night ("disgusting"). This---contrary to Mr. Millington's belief--- is not necessarily due to lack of humor, but to a lack of a certain type of humor I'll call British even though it isn't, exactly, combined with our penchant as Americans for analyzing ourselves and everyone else (he was right about that part; I'll get to that presently).
I know quite a few English people, some of them quite young, who don't really care for the sort of British comedy that amuses the Brits I care about. The fact is, the better sort of British comedy (because I've seen plenty that sucks) appeals to a certain type of person. A person who doesn't believe, for example, that everything that is entertaining has to be edifying.
And that, of course, presents a problem from the get-go for some of Mr. Millington's American readers, who evidently, in all good faith, can't fathom that this site is a good-natured (in the English sense) account of the give-and-take (okay, mostly take, but whatever) involved in his relationship and read it as a plangent cri de coeur or cruel, piggy ridiculing of his girlfriend's failings in a public forum.
Apparently Mr. Millington has heard at various times from my compatriots who do not understand the tricks and manners of the intelligent Englishman. His "apology homepage" FAQ section includes a part called "Extra FAQS for Americans," which---rather to my amusement and definitely to my consternation----covers such questions as: "Why don't you and Margret get married?" and "Why don't you just kick the bitch out (that's what I'd have done, on day one)? Anyway, you can see he's had a lot of the one thing most of us are prepared to offer which English people are never prepared to take.
[quote begins from Mil Millington's Apology Homepage]
Hello, I'm American. What I'd like to do now is dribble out some pop psychology I saw an airport paperback writer talking about on Oprah once and which I've slavishly used as the basis of my whole life since because I really can't go to the effort of thinking anything through for myself. Clearly, I don't have the reading skills or the intellectual depth to claw my way above the crashingly literal, so I'll use this embarrassing lack of subtlety as a misplaced springboard from which to launch into a critique of your relationship. I'll probably say something like, 'For the sake of the children', I simply won't be able to stop myself. Depending upon how I feel, I might even state that, 'I have a good sense of humour' too, a fact which, tragically, I, myself, genuinely believe to be true. Can I have a 'I Don't Get It' badge please?
His answer:
Certainly. There's a box of them by the door.
[quote ends]
Though, as he kindly explains----and the explanation is so, so adorably English and delightfulI had to stop and hug the nearest Englishman to hand, in this case, Nick----he does not hate Americans.
Read his FAQs for Americans here. Then read the page. Then join the mailing list so you can get more of it. Then do whatever you have to do to subscribe to The Guardian Unlimited to get more. Then buy the books at Amazon.
More actual blog-combing on the subject of Mil Millington to follow (part 2). But since I didn't know him, I assume some of my fellow Mericans won't have heard of him either.
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