Give Me a Break:Forgetting your wedding anniversary is not on - especially when it comes around twice a year

Had a teary weekend. Nothing to do with the debacle in Bordeaux. My husband forgot our wedding anniversary. Again. For the second time in two weeks. As if 23 years of the silent treatment on August 25th and September 8th (well, almost every August 25th and September 8th) wasn't enough to remind him.

It was he who insisted that we get married twice - once in the US and once in Dublin. That's how mad about me he was then.

His insistence on two wedding ceremonies gave him a plan B. So every August 25th, when he forgets the naive vision of white that was I gliding down the aisle, he says: "We always have September 8th." And, most years, he forgets that one too.

Usually, I take the economists' view: is this a slump, or a correction? This weekend I inwardly shrieked: wake up and smell the roses that didn't arrive, woman! This is a full-scale recession.

Which is how I found myself on Saturday night weeping over a TV ad. I can't for the life of me remember what the ad was for, only that it depicted a loved-up couple frolicking in all the usual places and, building to a passionate climax, had them making out in the sea fully clothed, despite the dangers of killer waves, sharks, etc.

The selling line was "second anniversary". Obviously this was their second month, second week, second day or, most likely, second hour. That level of passion at two years' marriage? At 20 years? I don't care what you're selling, I don't buy it.

I hate the subtle expectations around anniversaries - the posh restaurants you're supposed to eat in, the weekend breaks away you're supposed to take, the diamond eternity rings that are supposed to show how much he values you, and if he can't afford that, the baubles "inspired by diamonds", which is the latest metaphor for the fake stuff.

So there I am with a case of the weepies. The forgotten anniversary has not been mentioned. This is the tack I've chosen to take. Instead of addressing the issue like an adult - "You forgot our anniversary not once but twice!" - I have engaged in 36 hours of typical passive-aggressive behaviour.

Mainly, house-cleaning. Whatever the state of the union, the house will be sparkling. Vinegar, I'm told, has 20 household uses - windows, toilets, grease, polishing, air-freshening, etc. So I'm searching the food cupboard.

Will balsamic do? Or does it have to be cider? I don't know why we need vinegar when the cleaning products people already provide aromatherapy in a bottle. So I go wild with a bottle of disinfectant scented with mood-soothing lavender. The people who make cleaning products must know how passionately we clean our houses on forgotten anniversaries. Yet despite the product's promise that it loves the jobs I hate and kills 99.9 per cent of germs, I'm thinking "lavender, schmavender, do you not know what I'm going through?" '

So there I am, head in cupboard, when a surge of nausea accompanied by regret informs me that we have a little visitor. A mouse, to be precise.

Probably mice, judging by the amount of droppings mixed in with the chewed-through bits of muesli. In full doormat mode, I commence de-mousing the kitchen. Being a right-thinking person, I buy humane mousetraps, which excites the children with the prospect of yet another pet.

My husband, who has been living in Belfast all summer due to work, asks (one eye on the TV) how I am. I grunt in reply, keeping my thoughts to myself. Does he not see how hard I'm working? After his own schedule of 18-hour days filming in Belfast (where he has to hire ex-unionist paramilitaries as bodyguards on one side of town and ex-IRA paramilitaries as bodyguards on the other), can he not see how important cleaning this house is? Here's the real test: can he not see that the lawn has surpassed mowing stage and is now at the harvesting-with-a-scythe stage? No, he cannot see this, due to genetic predisposition. I swear the mice are tidier. So I up my passive-aggressive game. I cook his favourite dinners two nights in a row. Complete with pie. He still doesn't get it.

I consult the coven (ie, girlfriends). This takes hours. Here's the upshot: I can play really dirty and send myself flowers, then claim they came from someone who really cares about me. Or tidy the bedroom, bathe myself in scented oils (unfortunately my husband has no sense of smell), adorn myself in my sexiest negligee (I've only got serviceable cotton left) and then make him sleep in the spare room. Or, and this is really radical, I can file for divorce.

Then I happen to meet on the street one of the wisest women I know, whose first words to me are: "Are you still married?" I love this question. It's going to be my opening gambit at all social events in future whatever the consequences.

Am I still married? My friend, who's been married for about a thousand years, says: "You know, you're lucky to have someone. Whenever I get really fed up with my husband, I ask myself, how would I feel if he died?"

Dramatic pause here.

"I'd feel terrible," she says. "Being married for ages is different. You might hate him sometimes, but he's there for you in a way nobody else is ever going to be."

At the eleventh hour, post-pie, my errant husband holds his hand out to me and says: "I'm sorry I forgot. If it's any help, there are another seven guys on the shoot who forgot their anniversaries too. And haven't we got the most beautiful, amazing children?"

This makes me cry again, damn it.

One more thing, humane mousetraps don't work.