It’s only 9.30am and I feel as if I’ve done a day’s work already.

It stated around 5.00am when Himself’s mobile began issuing the warning bleep that the battery was nearly flat. I nudged him to turn it off. No, he said, it would be all right, he had to get up shortly. Well thank you very much, so the occasional timely bleep that I found myself waiting for didn’t bother him only me. After the third bleep I got out of bed and turned it off myself.

Now this did bother him – Himself sets the alarm on his mobile, even though we’ve an alarm clock that is also set to wake him up. He likes the fact that his mobile has a snooze button that he can hit, oh about 4 or 5 times before he gets up. So he sets the mobile alarm for about half an hour before he's due to get up. No, I've not the foggiest idea why he has to do this either - madness, pure madness.

This morning I’m afraid he got to hear a few home truths about how he was waking me up two hours before it was necessary and I got a few home truths back in return as to how the tap, tap, tap of the keyboard stops him sleeping at night. I countered that one by saying that when he actually got around to putting a door on the computer room he’d not hear it.

Basically we had a full blown argument by whispering - looking back on it now; it was quite comical.

By 5.45am Himself has informed me how moody I am in the morning because I go to bed too late at night and I’ve told him how selfish he is making sure that he always wakes me up just because he has to get up. For a start he could turn the lamp on by the side of his bed instead of the main light.

At that point Himself goes downstairs and I pull the duvet over my head.

Five minutes later he’s back again to inform me that the dog has been sick and he doesn’t have time to clean it up – I’d made him late for work with my arguing. To give him his due he doesn’t normally rise to an argument, no matter how hard I try – it's usually me that starts it. I know, I know - that has really surprised you - you just can't imagine me arguing at all. *cough* Have you any idea how bloody annoying it is when you’re in the mood for a bloody good shouting match and your opponent just won't respond? He's so bloody laid back, my husband, that he's horizontal.

To cut to the chase I got up, cleaned up - making sure he knew I was a martyr and eventually kissed him goodbye. The swine does it to me every time. Whenever we’ve had words and I’m still gunning for him he insists that before he leaves we kiss and make up. We can still be at the point where we both disagree with each other and we‘ll talk about it again later, it could still get heated again, but he refuses to carry the argument on all day when we’re not together – or go to bed on an argument for that matter. What’s the point? We’d both be upset or angry, which just eats away at you and a little thing suddenly gets blown out of all portion. This way, 9 times out of 10, it never gets mentioned again. May be that’s why we’re still married after all these years. I don’t suppose it would work for everyone, but it works for us.