Obviously if you are the kind of person who thinks, ‘I’m not sure what I want to watch but I want it to have been directed by John Hughes’, then you may sort by director, but who does that? The alphabetised system is one that is easy to identify so there is no excuse for replacing a DVD wrongly and yet people do it simply to annoy me. If I have guests, rare though the occasion may be, after each trip to the toilet or into the kitchen I will return to a room filled with sniggering guests staring at me intently.
‘We’ve moved something!’
And the gales of laughter continue as I move around looking for the swapped DVDs or the rotated ornament, like Annie Wilkes in Misery. Perhaps the reason I don’t have guests more often is the gleeful way in which they try to make me feel uncomfortable in my own home, or perhaps they move things as a way of making themselves feel more comfortable. Such a sanitised environment cannot be easy to relax in, so perhaps they are trying to make themselves feel at home, which I suppose is valid. I myself resent being asked to remove my shoes when entering a friend’s house, even though I understand the reasoning behind it. It nevertheless sets a precedent for a visit which must leave behind no reminder. When you leave, I don’t even want to know you were ever here.
Must I really make a mess to make people feel comfortable in my house? How far do we go in making ourselves appear weak to elevate those around us? This willingness not only to expose weaknesses but to revel in them is what has led to the misguided belief that breaking wind in front of your partner is some kind of display of trust.
‘I love you so much I want you to see all sides of me, inside and out.’
I have argued with several people who believe that breaking wind is a part of life and therefore should not be hidden from someone you care about once you are over the initial dating period in which the desire to impress is paramount.
I am of the opinion that there is never a point in a relationship at which it stops being a lack of respect for someone near to you to force them to inhale the smell of your own semi-digested gut slurry. Even writing these words makes me feel uncomfortable and you can call it anal retention or weirdness if you like but if you truly can’t be bothered to leave the room to break wind then you are on a slippery slope which ends with you leaving the toilet door open and continuing a conversation with your partner while you void your bowels.
Such is my desire only to see the best parts of my partner and vice-versa that I must confess to being able to remember each time I have seen someone I was in love with fall over. I cannot help but be disappointed by such a shocking inability to perform such a simple task as staying upright. I can’t remember the last time I fell over, mostly because if it does happen it is through drunkenness which gladly takes my ability to remember anything at all away with my dexterity, but I place my feet very carefully to avoid the possibility. If we learn to walk as toddlers how can it be that, once we have mastered the basics, we accept that we don’t get any better at it? As a fully grown adult I expect at very least that I will be able to stay upright in polite society at all times.
LOOKING FOR MS VERY VERY VERY TIDY
I hope this book won’t be a predictable journey: I’m no rule-following loser all the time! I even took my dinner out of the microwave last night barely thirty seconds into the required one minute resting time. That’s right, I’m bad too, when I need to be and when I have properly assessed the potential risk. Deal with it. A few small indiscretions aside, I’m not unaware that my life isn’t following the patterns for someone my age. Even I catch myself doing things that I would be embarrassed for anyone else to find out about. In the spirit of full disclosure, here is a list.
* I find myself washing up at eleven p.m. on a Saturday night
Nothing makes me feel more like a loser than seeing myself reflected in the kitchen window wearing marigolds and scrubbing at soufflé moulds on what is widely accepted to be ‘party night’. I wouldn’t want to be out at a club, and I don’t want to wake up on Sunday morning with a load of dirty dishes staring me down while I make a cup of tea, but still I am aware of how my situation looks and cannot help but feel as though in the eyes of my peers I ought to be ashamed, which isn’t much worse than actually being ashamed.
* I smile more at dogs than their owners
I have rarely met a dog I didn’t like. Little fat dumpy ones, who look like grumpy old men as they waddle down the street; big, tall hairy ones, who look as though they are trying to convince you that they are really too cool to be tied up outside Wilkinson’s; bright-eyed, bouncy, energetic ones, who make no effort to disguise the fact that every second of their life is a revelation to them, they want to meet everyone, to smell everything and to run as fast as possible at all times. I wish I felt the same.
* I laugh at jokes the Eggheads make
I watch this teatime quiz without exception while I have my first glass of wine on days when I do not have to work. My favourite kind of people to watch on television are those who give off the impression that no matter how much they do, they will never quite be any good at it. Nervous, embarrassed by their immense founts of knowledge, the Eggheads are the ringleaders of this club. You’d be more likely to find them sharing a packet of pork scratchings at your local real-ale pub than on the red carpet at a movie premiere, and that’s suits me just fine.
* I cut recipes out of magazines (and bake them)
Weekend magazines are filled with what are, in reality, middle-class lifestyle pornographic photographs rather than recipes. It’s not that any of us really believe that we will one day spend our weekends making oxtail soup from scratch and serving it in hearty bowls on wooden boards with home-made bread fresh from the Aga, but for the two hours we spend leafing through someone’s discarded pull-out supplements in the pub on a Sunday afternoon. I do; I have to hold on to the dream.
* Wearing an apron
Not even a novelty apron, at that. Middle-aged husbands tending to barbecues in the summer can wear novelty aprons – that is all.
Whether you are a lot like me, a more extreme version of me, or scarcely recognisable as the same species as me, I hope that you will discover in yourself something of the obsessive. I truly do think we all have something deep down inside us that annoys us irrationally and that this sometimes unexplainable response is part of what makes us human.
Perhaps without thinking, you will take a toilet roll off its holder when visiting a friend’s house, and replace it the other way around to ensure that the roll unravels forwards rather than down the back against the wall. Perhaps you subconsciously clean the rim of your wine glass with your napkin in a restaurant or have an overwhelming urge to straighten paintings that rest crooked. The part of you that makes your legs tingle with the urge to get up and correct a poorly hanged piece of art is the same as the part of me that makes me keep all the items on my desk parallel with one another. It is a belief in the right way of things even if you cannot always explain why it seems so right.
Some authors travel through time with their readers, others take them to far off shores. In the quest on which you are about to accompany me – to find my Significantly Tidy Other – I will basically lock you in an enclosed space with a lunatic.
Large, deep, metaphysical questions will come bubbling up to the surface, like why, if my execution of everything has been so perfect, have I not been in a relationship for such a long time? Is the problem really with everyone else, or is there something wrong with me? Is there someone out there who could make all this better, and if I found them would I ruin it by expecting too much of them?
I suppose the ultimate question I am asking is: who is responsible for our own happiness, is it ourselves, or the person we are constantly looking for? Is my happiness really down to me … Or is it you?
It is probably worth asking at this point, who exactly is my perfect woman? Attractive? Yes. Intelligent. Of course. Blah blah blah … All of these things together? Absolutely not! What on earth would a woman like that