Marriage inevitably involves sacrifices. I can no longer tell a lie when asked: “Who’s that woman on the phone?” And I can no longer tell the truth when asked: “I hope you don’t mind me buying them in all five colours, but Pascal said he won’t get any more new in my size this year.” Some sacrifices I have long ago stopped resenting, if indeed I ever did.

Knowing that I will now never be able to hit on Jodie Marsh is something I can live with, as, I suspect, can she. Acknowledging that the days are long gone when I could with a clear conscience buy a two-seater convertible Mazda, visit Boujis, arrange a pool session on the spur of the moment, invest in any item of leather clothing, wear the same underwear two days running or head off for a boys’ angling holiday in Iceland at a moment’s notice is made easier by knowing that I have never entertained the slightest desire to do any of the above.

But however docile, house-trained, meek and generally weedy you are, there are still some things even the most mild-mannered man will revolt at when confronted with the demands of married life. And with me it’s the curtains.

Actually not just the curtains. I don’t want you thinking I’m too reasonable and it’s only how you line windows that turns me into a heartless and insensitive brute.

Curtains are the worst of it, certainly, but my unreasonable behaviour (as in grounds-for-divorce unreasonable behaviour) also extends to all furnishings, soft and hard. Whether it’s cushions, beds, dining chairs, sofas or hall tables, I’m afraid my attitude is the same: you’re on your own, baby.

Marriage is about togetherness. Whether it’s sharing that special moment with your first child – when the nappies run out on the autostrada and you’re faced with how to explain the H-block-style redesign of the hire car to the nice man from Messina – or discovering that you both laugh at the same moment in Kramer vs Kramer (it is a comedy, right?).

It’s in the very nature of the married state (one flesh and all the rest of it) that you’re supposed to share things. You grow closer, cement your relationship, indeed, by shouldering life’s burdens together.

And, of course, I buy all that. But there are limits. Some things a man should never be required to do, however much it means to his partner. And I draw the line at the ground floor of Peter Jones.

Of all the subjects I find dull, furnishing and decor is there at the top. It doesn’t just bore me into a state of quiescent narcolepsy in the way that, say, flower arranging or county cricket does. I find the whole question of how a room should be designed so spirit-crushingly, brain-shrivellingly, soul-curdlingly dull that I would do anything, anything, rather than be drawn into a conversation about which sofa is nicest. My idea of the purest Hell, the seventh circle of the Inferno, the hottest depth of Tartarus, is to be trapped in a branch of Habitat with only the staff of Osborne & Little for company and the sole reading matter on the (inevitably tastefully designed) coffee table being World of Interiors.

So when my wife tries bravely to engage me in conversation about what we should do with that rather shabby chest of drawers in the front room I react much as Winston Smith might have done to an invitation to the premiere of Ratatouille. My Room 101 is filled with 101 conversations about how we fill rooms. And thus when my long-suffer-ing missus asks me what colour I’d like the dining room painted, or whether we should have built-in wardrobes in the second bedroom, I do the conversational equivalent of rolling into a tight, hedgehog ball. I visibly bristle and go on the defensive.

I try to tell my wife that she has much better taste than me (true), that every one compliments her on how our home looks already (true), that it is solely due to her (true) and that asking my opinion about how we improve the colour in the dining room is a bit like asking Wayne Rooney what he’d like to add to The Critique of Pure Reason. The result might be interesting but it’s unlikely to be an enhancement.

I think I’m paying her a compliment. I know that I’m acting honestly in the best interests of our shared environment, and shared bank account, by offering no opinion on any furnishing question. It is inconceivable, scientifically and mathematically impossible, that I could ever make any suggestion that would display better taste or shrewder judgment than my wife’s and I believe naively that it is a proper, loving and respectful gesture to keep absolutely shtum on any question of decor or design.

But rather than my silence being taken as the mute tribute that the awestruck pay to the divinely talented, it’s treated as a mulish refusal to engage with a key aspect of life. It is to no avail that I emphasise that my opinion is offered freely on questions as diverse as the rearing of our children and the advisability of mixing cashmere and leather (in public) and that our precious time together would only be wasted if anyone, especially someone as instinctively tasteful as she, were to pay the slightest attention to any view of mine about home furnishings. But I appear to be failing a key test of emotional intelligence. If it matters to your wife you must, simply must, take an interest. No matter how dull the matter in question.

And so you find me, dear reader, studying the swatches here on the ground floor of Peter Jones, venturing that yes, the taupe is nicer. Am I a heel for wishing that we were somewhere, anywhere, else? Or is there some small sliver of right on my side and can husbands legitimately, conscientiously object to having to embrace velvet swagging? Do let me know.

Bethlehem and bigotry

Eggnog lattes on sale at Starbucks? Feature-length M&S commercials? There’s one invariable sign that Christmas is almost upon us – a story about how Bethlehem is suffering at the hands of wicked Israel.

It has become almost as much a feature of seasonal journalism as stories about how Nativity plays are being subverted and commentaries on how commercialism is snuffing out the true meaning of the festival.

This year we’ve already had our first exercise in demonising Israel for its treatment of Bethlehem with the graffiti artist Banksy enjoying extensive coverage for his trip to decorate the security barrier near the town with his work. The message of Banksy’s work and the coverage it has generated is the same: oppressive Israel has snuffed the life out of the town where the Prince of Peace was born. Herod’s spirit lives on, even as the spirit of Christmas is struggling to survive.

The truth is very different. The parlous position of Palestinian Christians, indeed the difficult position of most Christians across the Arab world, is a consequence not of Israeli aggression but of growing Islamist influence. Israel goes out of its way to honour sites and traditions sacred to other faiths while the radicals who are driving Palestinian politics seek to create an Islamist state in which other faiths, if they survive at all, do so with the explicit subject status of dhimmis. But when it comes to Israel’s position in these matters it’s still a case of O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see them lie.

Gas guzzler

I’m grateful beyond words to my colleague Daniel Finkelstein for taking up the concept of the inner era and making it a Comment Central contest. And yes, I can see Daniel in the Kennedy White House. But I have one question for him in his Sixties idyll. How would he have survived in a world before they had invented Diet Coke?

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