Things my girlfriend and I have argued about (online version)

80

In what I can only assume was an impromptu but gutsy attempt at the World Irony Record, the other day Margret started to lecture me on how I could become calmer. I mean, really, eh? It's like being pitched Al Qaeda's Little Book of Love. Her spontaneous proselytising was conjured from her now going to yoga one evening a week.

'It's really relaxing when I'm there,' she says.

'Yes, it is,' I reply. (You see what I actually meant there, right? Lord, but I'm arch.)

'Why don't you come to a session?'

There's a sucking, cultish gleam in her eye. The kind of, 'Join us! Join us — the spaceship awaits!' look that you see on the faces of Moonies or people who are telling you about homeopathy.

'No thanks.'

'But you really lose the tension.'

I consider mentioning that she always seems to find it again pretty quickly once she gets back — maybe she might think about getting a yoga instructor who 'loses her tension' by some method other than 'hiding it in our house', but I keep hold of this card for a while.

'I don't need to,' I say, 'I can achieve perfect relaxation by sitting here and watching a Buffy DVD.'

'That's not the same.'

'Yes it is.'

'No it isn't: when you're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' (I promise you these are her exact words that are coming up now), 'you're straining your mind.'

My face briefly collapses under the effort of trying to map the internal reasoning of a psychology that could incubate such a concept, but it's the logical equivalent of falling infinitely into the Mandelbrot set and I pull back, palsied and afraid. Instead, I reach for my ace.

'Well, whatever, the point is — this yoga is only relaxing you for the precise amount of time you're doing it. Once you get back home you're just the same. In fact, you've been moaning even more than usual for the last few weeks.'

'No I haven't.'

'Yes, you have.'

'No, no — I haven't been moaning,' she says, rolling her eyes and tutting. She reaches forward and ruffles my hair. 'I've just been moaning at you.' With that, she gets up and breezes from the room.

You know… I've been thinking about it for several days now, and I still can't figure out who won there.