"What do you like?
J says. Not for the first time. "What do you mean?" I say. "You're always moaning things about what you don't like. Tell me something you do like."
I can't even remember now what it was I said I didn't like. Mrs Brown's Boys, the new Cadbury's creme egg recipe (not that I've actually tasted it), Iain Duncan Smith's very existence ... Something important anyway. "This is ridiculous. There is loads of things I like."
"Name one."
"I'll name 20."
Admittedly it takes me a while. And I need to write them down. This is what I came up with.
1: J. Mostly.
2: Daughters Number One and Two. Ditto.
3: The crisp clean blue you get in the sky on clear winter days.
4: The talky bits on records ("And this is Phil talking ...")
5: The smell of glossy new books and magazines. [A]
6: Morrissey and Marr. But only together.
7: Watching Rory Kinnear's face in every episode of Count Arthur Strong. [B]
8: A pot of tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake. (I'll settle for a Twix, mind.)
9: The top floor of the Tate Liverpool, because it has the best window views of any art gallery I've been in.
10: Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. (Who says modern art isn't fun?)
11: Watching Top of the Pops 1980 repeats on BBC4 and hoping The Pretenders are on.
12: Ellen Barkin in The Big Easy (though Sea of Love will do at a push). Rosanna Arquette in Desperately Seeking Susan as a fallback.
13: Love and Rockets. The comic book, not the eighties band.
14: Old martial arts movies and/or modern dance. [C]
15: The new Unthanks single.
16: Caetano Veloso singing Cucurrucucu Paloma in Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her (the greatest film of the 21st century, no matter what you Christopher Nolan fans say).
17: The last paragraph of Joyce's short story The Dead. The best ending in literature ever. Unless you count the last page of The Great Gatsby.
18: A stationery shop. Any and all stationery shops when it comes down to it.
19: Falling asleep on the train just before or just after Croy. Possibly more a habit than a preference.
20: That lovely Johnstones of Elgin scarf I used to have that I left on the train in 2013.
When I'm finished I show it to J. She casts her eye over it. "You're struggling towards the end there, aren't you?" she says. "How long did that take?"
"Not too long. A couple of hours."
"Now do a list of things you hate."
Five minutes later I'm already at number 73. If you want I'll show you later.
[A] I'm a constant paper sniffer. Is there a word for this condition?
[B] I think he might be the best comedy straight man ever.
[C] I see them as essentially the same thing.
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