Mil Millington

I like Mil's ramblings on the minutiae of life as seen from his point of view and his girlfriends.

Here's his latest mailing with links...

This isn't really a proper Mailing List Mail. It's actually nothing more that a few words thrown from my mouth as I gallop past on a horse and a mission. Nonetheless, I hope that they will help, in some small way, in the business of allowing you to achieve your daily goal of avoiding much that is important and urgent. They lie, awaiting your impatient indolence, here:

http://microurl.com/mil/Waste+my+time+Mil

However, as I'm here now, let me illustrate once again how I see the world like *this*, and my girlfriend sees the world like *that*.

Those gales we've had over the last week dislodged a tile from our roof. (Note how I took something completely specific to Britain there, but blithely talked about it - "Those gales we've had..." - with a sense that it concerned the entire world and nothing beyond or other existed at all. I call this crafty stylistic technique, 'Doing an American.') The tile skidded down, breached the snow guard, and plummeted through the corrugated plastic roof of our lean-to. Now, as Margret only allows me to smoke in two places ('the lean-to' and 'Exeter'), I was quick off the mark to fix the hole.

I flung the tile onto the lawn, bounded up a ladder and - with immense care and skill - repaired the roof with a section of a Tesco's carrier bag and some sellotape. My assessment of DIY, you see, is that the amateur is all too pitiably ready to resort to complex tools and materials; whereas the wise practitioner realises that all you ever really need is some sellotape, and a hammer. There's almost nothing you can't fix - at least on an acceptably minute-to-minute basis - with sellotape. I could have fixed the roof with sellotape alone, in fact: the Tesco's carrier bag should be seen more as an artistic flourish.

Anyway, weary but ennobled by honest toil, I admired that which I had wrought for a glowing moment, then put the ladder away and had my lunch.

When I'd finished and I carried my stuff into the kitchen, there - washed; standing up in the plate rack on the draining board - was a broken roof tile. We looked at each other for a few seconds in silence. Then I went back into the dining room.

"Margret," I said, "there's a roof tile in the plate rack on the draining board."

"Oh, yes," she replied, remembering. "It's the one that came off during the night."

After which explanation, she immediately got up and left.

You see the *this* and *that* problem here? *I* am wondering why (taking a wild stab at who did it) she would pick a broken roof tile up off the lawn, wash it, and then stand it to dry in the plate rack on the draining board. *She*, imagining herself in my situation, is simply concerned with which particular tile it is. She: mere provenance. Me: what, by all the socks of all the saints, is it *doing there*?

I'm telling you, from where my reasoning stands, you need the Hubble telescope to see across to where hers is sitting.

Anyway - waste your time with the thing at the top. That's all I came by to say.

Mil.

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Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About
http://www.mil-millington.com