BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY – THE FIRST COLUMNS
By Helen Fielding

FOREWORD
Back in the winter of 1995 I was trying to write an earnest and frankly unreadable novel about cultural divides in the Caribbean, and was rather short of cash. The Independent asked me to write a column, as myself, about single life in London. Much as I needed the money, the idea of writing about myself in that way seemed hopelessly embarrassing and revealing. I offered to write an anonymous column instead, using an exaggerated, comic, fictional character. I assumed no one would read it, and it would be dropped after six weeks for being too silly.
Had I known what was to happen, and that millions of people across the world would end up reading about Bridget Jones and thinking that it was me anyway - me who consumed up to 12 alcohol units and 14,000 calories a day, me who resolved not to entertain any more fuckwits, then repeatedly shagged Daniel Cleaver -1 would have realised it wasn't a particularly privacy-protecting idea. I certainly would never have dared write what I did.
I always stuck all the columns in a series of large hardback scrapbooks. I found them again recently. It was funny to read the first ones after all this time and remember how nervous I felt writing them. I didn't let anyone except the section editor know it was me. All the journalists on my desk were frightfully serious and writing about New Labour and global warming -1 didn't want them to know that I was writing about why it takes three hours between waking up in the morning and leaving the house.
I feel rather more confident about them now. And it's good to be starting the column again, back at The Independent, where it all began, before all the fuss. I hope you enjoy reading the originals - but please do remember: they are the diary of an exaggerated, comic, fictional character. It wasn't me who drank all the alcohol units and shagged all the fuckwits. It was Bridget Jones. Obviously.
Helen Fielding
August 2005

Sunday 26 February
8st 13, alcohol units 2 (excellent), cigarettes 7, calories 3,100 (poor)
2pm Oh why hasn't Daniel rung? Hideous, wasted weekend glaring psychopathically at the phone, and eating things. I cannot believe I convinced myself I was keeping the entire weekend free to work, when in fact I was on permanent date-with-Daniel standby.
On top of everything, I open the papers to find the bloody Cones Hotline is being scrapped. Who else am I supposed to ring up late at night when I feel lonely? I love the lovely Hotline idea: whisking you straight to the heart of Cone World on a fast track. In my experience there is always some bored chap at the end of it at any hour of the day or night, only too happy to moan a little about people ringing up at 2am to order a 99 or Cornetto ("I know, I know") then move on to your own problems. Maybe they should re-name it the Cones Chatline or the Cones Supportline. That would be more Nineties, I feel.
Right: work. Beginning on Ash Wednesday: "I will not fantasise about or behave ridiculously regarding Daniel Cleaver, boss of my publishing house" is to be relaunched along with the other New Year Resolutions: I will not smoke, I will get down to 8st 7,1 will not recycle items from the laundry basket, I will not bitch about Perpetua but work positively with her.
8pm Phone call alert, which turned out just to be Tom asking if there was any progress. Tom, who has taken, unflatteringly, to calling himself a Hag-Fag, has been sweetly supportive about the Daniel crisis. (He has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding; both being used to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society.)
Last Tuesday, at the Cheapskate's Wine Guide launch, weeks of flirtation appeared to climax. When the others were boring on about Stephen Fry ("Understandable, I mean, everyone has their breaking point", "... size of Kent", "... pathetic, I mean, we all have to learn to take criticism", "Actually, Stephen's a really good friend of mine"), Daniel moved behind me and murmured, "So... will I see you?" and then, more quietly, "I mean... see you?" - so horny. Then he wrote
"Bridget" and my home number on a cigarette packet and said "I'll call you".
11.15pm No call. At breaking point I dialled the Cones Hotline. No reply. I understood. All those months of relentless criticism and now the press, but then, after 14 rings, came a kindly voice. We had a cursory chat about cones and then moved on to Daniel. Maybe he had lost the cigarette packet? The Hotline man, I must say, very tactfully, raised the question of directory inquiries. "He doesn't know where I live," I replied, "and there are 25 B. Joneses in the directory." Should I call him? The Hotline man thought no. "The essence of alchemy is release," he said.
Monday 27 February
9st (irreversible slide into obesity), alcohol units 4, cigarettes 29, calories 770 (v.g. but at what price?)
Nightmare day. I arrived in the office, to find Perpetua in hysterics. Usually, on Monday morning the smug witch is in full telephone autowitter to Hermione or Piggy about the weekend's dizzy social whirl, and the latest £500,000 Fulham flat she's buying with Hugo.
"Yars, yars, well it is north-facing but they've done something frightfully clever with the light." Flats were off. The whole flat thing, apparently, was based on the job Hugo was about to take up with Barings. "Darling! Go home," the whole office cooed. "Everyone has their breaking point."
I watched the door for Daniel all morning: nothing. By 11.45am I was seriously alarmed. Suddenly, I saw it all. He had broken, of course: he'd been too successful, clever, witty, and good-looking for too long. Should I raise an alert? Go round to his flat? Quickly I was immersed in a Daniel-in-emotional-crisis fantasy: me, him, talking late into the night: "I have never, never found anyone I could say these things to before. Oh, Bridget... "
"Daniel? He's at the sales conference in Croydon. He'll be in tomorrow." Perpetua, coat on, suddenly bellowed and sniffed into the phone. "God, all these bloody girls ringing him up."
A French cook's knife cut through me as I reached for the Silk Cut. Which girls? What? Somehow I made it through the day, got home,
and in a moment of insanity left a message on Daniel's answerphone saying (oh no, I can't believe I did this), "Hi, it's, er, Bridget here. I was just wondering how you are and if you wanted to go out sometime, like we said."
The second I put the phone down, I realised it was an emergency and rang Tom who calmly said leave it to him: if he made several calls to the machine he could find the code and erase the message. Eventually, he cracked it, rang to do the deed and Daniel answered. But instead of saying, "Sorry, wrong number", Tom put down the phone. So now, Daniel not only has the insane message, but will think it's me who's rung his answerphone 14 times this evening and then, when I did get hold of him, banged the phone down.
It is almost Shrove Tuesday. I shall disgust myself with my own greed by smoking 40 cigarettes instead of eating pancakes. And on Wednesday my new smoke-, fat-, and Daniel-obsession-free life will begin.
Saturday 4 March
8st 12, alcohol units 2, cigarettes 0, calories 998 (excellent, v.g., perfect saint-style person)
A week of ups and downs - on the Daniel Cleaver front in a depressingly metaphorical sense. On Wednesday I slunk into the office, crippled with embarrassment about inadvertently leaving a message on his answerphone suggesting a drink. (Not my fault. He drove me to it by suggesting it first, then not calling me.) I had resolved totally to detach myself from him, but then he appeared looking unshaven, tall, lean, dark and unnervingly sexy, and started making all the secretaries laugh so that I went all to pieces.
I was all over the place. Perpetua, who has dumped all her work on to me while she nurtures Hugo through his cauchemar with Barings, kept ringing me up with more tasks and hissing about "that little shit, Nick Leeson". Is it just me who has strangely positive feelings about Nick Leeson? - more, funnily enough, than about Liam Neeson, even though they wear the same spectacles. I so much wanted him not to be caught, but to roam the Far East like James Bond, shooting at pursuers in a dark suit, being firm and specific about his cocktails. Clearly I have lost all moral sense and am unable to distinguish
between right, wrong and celebrities, even though I have not yet seen Natural Born Killers.
Suddenly, Message   pending flashed up on the top of my computer screen.
Thanks for your phone call. Cleave
was the message. The man is a sadist. The phone call was suggesting a date. Who replies by saying "thanks" and leaves it at that? Had this happened in the flesh I would have behaved like a fish. But the beauty of the computer messaging system is that it gives you time to compose yourself, and think out replies before you need them rather than after. It removes all barriers of rank - the perfect medium for flirtation. After a little thought, I sent back,
Please shut up. I am very busy and important.
Jones
And after a few moments more, he replied,
Sorry to interrupt Jones, Pressure must be hellish. Over and out.
Cleave
p.s. I like your bum in those leggings.
And we were off. Frantic messaging continued all week, culminating in the Sunday night date. Sometimes I look around the office as we all tap away and wonder if anyone is doing any work at all.
(Is it just me or is Sunday a bizarre night for a first date? - all wrong, like Saturday morning or Monday at 2pm Plus I have to attend my godson Harry's birthday party in the afternoon which gives me little time to prepare.)
Sunday 5 March
8st 11, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 29 (v.v. bad esp in 2 hours), calories 3,879 (repulsive)
Ham Luxuriate in bed with the papers. Breathless stories about two-year-olds taking tests for nursery school make my heart sink at the impending tea party with its ex-career-girl mothers and their Competitive Child Rearing. Magda, once a commodity broker, lies about Harry's age now to make him seem more advanced than he is. Even the conception was cut-throat with Magda trying to take eight times as much folic acid and minerals as anyone else. The birth was great. She'd been telling everyone for months it was going to be a natural childbirth and 10 minutes in she cracked and started yelling, "Give me the drugs, you fat cow." Must get up.
6pm Back in flat after a nightmare scenario: me plus a roomful of power-mothers one of whom had a four-week-old baby. "Oh isn't he sweet?" cooed Sarah de Lisle, then snapped "How did he do in his APGAR?" I don't know what the big deal is about tests at two - this APGAR is a test they have to do at two minutes.
Recently Magda has been boasting around the nanny circuit that her son is a defecational prodigy, triggering off a round of boast and counter-boast. The toddlers, therefore, clearly of the age when they should be securely swathed in layers of rubberware, were teetering around in little more than Baby Gap G-strings. I hadn't been there 10 minutes before there were three turds on the carpet. A superficially humorous but vicious dispute ensued about who had done the turds, followed by a tense stripping off of towelling pants, immediately sparking another contest over the size of the boys' genitalia and, correspondingly, the husbands'. 'There's nothing you can do, it's a hereditary thing. Cosmo doesn't have a problem in that area, does he?"
I escaped and rushed home with my stomach fluttering about tonight. Two hours to go. My legs are smooth. The fridge contains a full range of breakfast items. Outfit choice is down to a shortlist of three. However, there is still facial-steaming, bathing, moisturising, hair and make-up and eve-of-battle phone call to Tom to do, so must press on.
7pm I can't believe this has happened. On the way to the bathroom I noticed the answerphone light was flashing: Daniel. "Bridget, sweetheart [sweetheart?], I'm not going to be able to make it tonight. I've got a meeting at 10 in the morning and two manuscripts to get through. Sorry, love. Maybe we'll make it another time."
It is not fair. I had been doing so well on the no-smoking for Lent and now I have let myself down and also eaten four chocolate croissants. Never mind. Wednesday is National No Smoking Day. I might as well carry on till then, and then make a completely fresh start.
Wednesday 8th March
8st 12, alcohol units 7 (why? why?), cigarettes 22, calories 1,850 (perfectly fine particularly in light of freakish am gym session)
11.30am Delighted by reports that by the turn of the millennium a third of all households will be single, I telephone Jude and Tina from the office to break the news. At last we are no longer tragic freaks. Jude grumpily claims it will take centuries for the world to adapt to not asking, "Why aren't you married?" in patronising voices at every available opportunity and for Smug Marrieds to lose the drive to fix you up with obvious homosexuals through excruciating informal suppers.
Tina, worse, simply bursts into tears. Eventually she explains in a sheep's voice that Richard, whom she has been seeing for 18 months, has chucked her for asking him if he wanted to go on holiday with her. Tina is full of remorse and self-loathing. "I'm a fool, it's all my fault. I asked for too much to satisfy my own needs. Oh, if only I could turn back the clock."
An emergency summit is scheduled for 6.30pm in the Dome. By this time Perpetua is practically apoplectic with rage over all my personal phone calls, but suddenly, like a gift from God, Daniel appears, sits himself on the edge of my desk, with his back to her, takes out his diary and murmurs, "How are you fixed for Friday?" Yesssssss! Oh bliss, oh joy.
llpm At the Dome, Jude presents her theory on the Richard situation: "Emotional Fuckwit-age", which is spreading like wildfire among
men over 30. As women glide from their twenties to thirties, she claims, the balance of power subtly shifts. Even the most outrageous former minxes lose their nerve, wrestling with the first twinges of existential angst: fears of dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by an alsatian. Stereotypical notions of shelves, spinning wheels and sexual scrapheaps conspire to make you feel stupid, no matter how much time you spend thinking about Joanna Lumley. "And men like Richard," says Jude, "play on the chink in the armour to wriggle out of intimacy, commitment, maturity, honour and the natural progression of things between a man and a woman." By this time Tina and I are going shhh shhh out of the corners of our mouths and sinking down into our coats. After all there's nothing so unattractive to a man as strident feminism. "How dare he say you were getting too serious by asking to go on holiday?" yells Jude.
"What is he talking about?"
Thinking moonily about Daniel and the date I venture that not all men are like Richard. At which point Jude starts on a long illustrative list of Emotional Fuckwit-age in progress on our friends, one whose boyfriend of 13 years refuses even to discuss living together, another who started an affair with a man who chucked her after the fourth date because it was getting too serious, another who was pursued by a bloke for three months with impassioned proposals of marriage, who ducked out two weeks after she succumbed and repeated the whole process with her best friend.
"We women are only vulnerable because we are a pioneer generation. In 20 years' time men won't even dare start with Fuckwit-age because we will just laugh in their faces," declares Jude. At this point, Alex Walker, who works in Jude's company, strolls in with a stunning blonde who is about eight times as attractive as him. He ambles over to say hi. "Is this your new girlfriend?" asks Jude. "Well, chuh, you know, she thinks she is, but we're not going out, we're just sleeping together. I ought to stop it really, but, well..." he says, smugly.
"Oh that is just such crap, you cowardly, dysfunctional little schmuck. Right. I'm going to talk to that woman," says Jude, getting up. We forcibly restrain her and Alex, looking panic-stricken, rushes back to continue his Fuckwit-age unrumbled.
Friday 10 March
8st 9, alcohol units 6 (urine of Satan), cigarettes 400 (feels like), calories 875 (offfood)
Huh. Daniel and I had a dream date at an intime little Genoan restaurant near his flat. "Um... Right. I'll get a taxi," I blurted awkwardly as we stood in the street. Then, looking amused, he lightly brushed a hair from my forehead, took my cheek in his hand and kissed me, full on the lips, urgently, desperately. After a while he held me hard against him, and whispered throatily, "I don't think you'll be needing that taxi."
The second we were inside his flat we fell upon each other like beasts, shoes, jackets strewn hi a trail across the room. He suddenly said, "Bridget, look, I'm not sure this is a good idea." (His hand was at this moment undoing the zip on my skirt.)
"I mean, I think it would be great to sleep together a few times, but I don't think we should have a relationship," he said, then caveat in place, carried on with the zip. Had it not been for Jude and the drink, I think I would have sunk back, powerless into his arms. As it was, I leapt to my feet, pulling up my skirt. "That is such crap," I slurred. "How dare you be so fraudulently flirtatious, cowardly and dysfunctional. I am not interested in Emotional Fuckwit-age. Goodbye."
It was great. You should have seen his face. But now I am home I am sunk into gloom. I may have been right, but my reward, I know, will be to end up all alone half-eaten by an alsatian.
9st (again: what is the point?), alcohol units 4, cigarettes 17, calories 2,994 (but mainly fruit)
Hmmm. Can it really be, I was wondering, that love is nothing but see-saw? When one is up the other is down, when one backs off, the other runs after. Next thing I find is that international politics are just as bad, with the Prime Minister of Britain trying to do see-saws with the President of the United States by not speaking to him. I mean, for heaven's sake, it's the sort of thing I'd do.
I spent the weekend struggling to remain disdainfully buoyant after walking out on Daniel Cleaver's charming offer to shag me a few times but not have a relationship. I kept saying the words "Self-respect" and "Huh" over and over till I was dizzy, trying to barrage out, "But I luuurve him." Smoking was v. bad. Apparently there is a character in the new Martin Amis novel who is so crazily addicted that he starts wanting a cigarette even when he is smoking one. That is me. It was good ringing up Sharon to boast about being Mrs Iron Knickers, but Tom saw straight through it and said, "Oh, my poor darling," which made me go silent trying not to burst into self-pitying tears at the marvellous new image of myself as wounded nun. "You watch," warned Tom. "He'll be gagging for it now. Gagging."
"No he won't," I said sadly. But on Tuesday in the office, every time I looked in Daniel's direction he was staring at me, as if he'd just really seen me for the first time.
At 3.45pm Message pending flashed up on the screen.
Frigid cow. Cleave
I laughed, I couldn't help it, and then I looked across and he was smiling at me in a relieved and fond sort of way. So of course we are back on the computer messaging now, but I am being very reserved. I made a complete arse of myself at the end of today, though. I got in the lift to go home and found Daniel in there with Simon from marketing talking about the footballers being arrested for allegedly throwing matches. "Have you heard about this, Bridget?" said Daniel. "Oh yes," I lied, flailing for an opinion. "Actually, I think it's all rather petty. I know it's a thuggish way to behave, but as long as they didn't actually set light to anyone, I don't see what all the fuss is about." Simon looked at me as if I was mad and Daniel stared for a moment and then burst out laughing. He just laughed and laughed till he and Simon got out, then turned back and said, "Marry me," as the doors closed between us. Hmmm.
Sunday 19 March
9st, alcohol units 0 (fat chance), cigarettes 0 all day then 7 in last hour, calories 5 million
Huge, lard-smeared, Sunday lunch at my parents'. My mother has decided the vicar is gay and was ranting on hideously about homosexuality being a form of laziness. "They just can't be bothered to relate to the opposite sex. Look at your Tom," she said. "If that boy had anything about him he'd be going out with you properly instead of all this ridiculous 'friends' nonsense." "Mother," I said, "Tom has known he was a homosexual since he was 10." "Oh, you know, men get these silly ideas but you can always talk them out of it." "Does that mean if I talked to you really persuasively you'd leave Dad and start an affair with Auntie Jean?" "Now you're just being silly, darling." "Exactly," Dad joined in. "Auntie Jean looks like a kettle." Sometimes I think I am a changeling child.
Monday 20 March
9st 5 (wish to murder Mother), alcohol units 9, cigarettes 10, calories 700 (but too late)
8.30am Wake up to hear Nelson Mandela on the Today programme claiming he doesn't think about Winnie any more. Even the wisest man in the world is trying to pretend he doesn't care. John finally called Bill but his moody week of silence hasn't got him very far. "We do have a warm and special relationship with the Prime Minister," says the White House. Huh. "Special" these days means precisely the opposite. If you get a birthday card saying "to Someone very Special", it means they couldn't be bothered to get you a nice card. Major's therapist should tell him to forget the whole thing with America. It's like someone who used to go out with Kate Moss at school imagining she still wants to go out with him, even though she's a supermodel now. One thing I have learnt from Major's see-sawing is that there is nothing to be gained from being unattractively churlish. Instead of being "businesslike and thorough" with Clinton, he should have been irresistibly charming and flirtatious but quietly started going out with Japan instead.
8pm Oh no. Computer messaging today somehow whipped itself up to fever pitch. At 6 o'clock I resolutely put my coat on and left, only to meet Daniel getting into my lift on the floor below. There we were, just he and I caught in a massive electrical charge field, pulled together irresistibly, like a pair of magnets. Then suddenly the lift stopped again and we broke apart, panting, as Simon from marketing got in wearing a hideous beige raincoat over his fat frame. "Bridget," he said, smirkily, as I involuntarily straightened my coat. "You look as if you've been caught throwing matches."
Thursday 23 March
9st (liposuction soon?), cigarettes 19, alcohol units 2, fat units 8 (unexpectedly repulsive notion: never before faced reality of lard splurging from bottom and thighs under skin. Must revert to calorie count tomorrow)
I know for certain that Daniel and I will sleep together tomorrow given that we have kissed passionately on company premises three times in the past four days: twice in the lift and once in the books cupboard (does this mean he will have to resign?). Hints at a weekend in Prague suggest he has thought better of his no-relationship caveat. So why do I feel not happy but as if I am on a self-improvement assault course? Surely it is not normal to be revising for a date as if it were a job interview? I suspect Daniel's enormous well-read brain may turn into a bit of a nuisance if things develop. Maybe I should have fallen for someone younger and mindless who would just, like, cook for me, wash all my clothes and agree with everything I say.
Since leaving work I have nearly slipped a disc wheezing through a step aerobics class, scratched my naked body for seven minutes with a stiff brush; smeared myself with, effectively, salad dressing; cleaned the flat; filled the fridge; plucked my eyebrows; skimmed the papers and the Ultimate Sex Guide; put the washing in and waxed my own legs, since it was too late to book an appointment. Ended up kneeling on a towel trying to pull off a wax strip firmly stuck to the back of my calf whilst watching Newsnight. My back hurts, my head aches and my legs are bright red and covered in lumps of wax.
Meanwhile, I'm frantically trying to drum up some incisive new-woman opinion about the ex-mistress's vengeance on the ex-deputy governor of the Bank of England. In panic all I can think of is that
Mary Ellen Synon looks exactly like Jennifer Saunders. It seems bizarre that this should be so overlooked amidst endless speculation as to why she took such immoderate revenge. I see her slumped over a bottle of Bolly with a fag on, 15-denier legs akimbo slurring, "I schlowed 'im, sweetie, I shnot gonner take it lying down, schlowed the whole bloody world," and Joanna Lumley going, "Course you bloody did, darling, quite right. Wife's a bloody hag."
No wonder Mary Ellen is crazed with rage if she has to go through all this to start another affair, as well as wandering round pantless trussed in a suspender belt.
Wise people will say Daniel should like me just as I am, but I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, have been traumatised by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor my body are up to it, if left to their own devices. I can't take the pressure. I am going to cancel and spend the evening eating doughnuts in a cardigan with egg on it.
Saturday 25 March
8st 10, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0, calories 200 (at last have found the secret)
6pm Oh joy. Have spent the day in a state I can only describe as shag-drunkenness, mooning about the flat smiling, picking things up and putting them down again. It was so lovely. The only down points were 1) immediately it was over Daniel said, "Damn, I meant to take the car into the Citroen garage" and 2) when I got up to go to the bathroom he pointed out that I had a pair of tights stuck to the back of my calf.
But as the rosy clouds begin to disperse, I begin to feel alarm. What now? No plans were made. Suddenly I realise I am waiting for the phone again. How can it be that the situation between the sexes after a first night remains so agonisingly imbalanced? Call me old-fashioned, but I think it is biological. For a man, some part of him, however tiny, will be saying "Hah!", feeling that a quest has been fulfilled and wanting to back off. Simultaneously, in the female camp, no matter how cool the woman believes herself to be, age-old practical needs and vulnerabilities rear up inappropriately, demanding twigs, feathers
and cosiness. It is a hideous blunder of nature. Now I feel as if I have just sat an exam and must wait for my results. Oh my God, it's Mother's Day tomorrow.
Monday 27 March
9st (4lb in one day? how?), alcohol units 4, cigarettes 17, calories
3,000
The last remaining tiny bathmat of security has been pulled from under my feet. Called my parents yesterday to say Happy Mother's Day and offer magnanimously to pay surprise visit to deliver enormous gift (not yet purchased) only to get odd-sounding Dad on end of phone. "Er... I'm not sure. Could you hang on?" I reeled. Part of the arrogance of youth (well, I say youth) is the assumption that your parents will drop everything and be thrilled the second you decide to turn up. He was back. "Bridget, look your mother and I are having some problems. Can we ring you later in the week?" Problems? What problems? I tried to get Dad to talk, tried to help, understand, but got nowhere. What is going on? Is the whole world doomed to emotional trauma? Poor Dad, poor Mum, poor me. Am I to be the tragic victim of a broken home, now, on top of everything else? As is the way these days, my mind turns instinctively to thoughts of compensation. But who is to blame for the emotional quagmire I find myself in? Cosmopolitan! Society? The feminist backlash? Myself? Opening my paper it seems policemen are suing police bosses for something which was the police's fault. Maybe that means it would be all right to sue Daniel.
Friday 31 March
9st 5, cigarettes 20, alcohol units 0, calories 1500
How can I have put on 31b since the middle of the night? I was 9st 4 when I went to bed, 9st 2 at 4am and 9st 5 when I got up. I can understand weight coming off - it could have evaporated or been passed out of the body into the toilet - but how could it be put on? Could food react chemically with other food to double its density and volume, solidifying into ever heavier hard fat? I don't look fatter. I
can fasten the button though not, alas, the zip on my '89 jeans. So maybe my whole body is getting smaller but denser. The whole thing smacks of female bodybuilders and makes me feel strangely sick.
I look wistfully at my colleague Perpetua, her vast bulbous bottom swathed in a tight red skirt with a bizarre three-quarter length striped waistcoat strapped across it. What a blessing to be born with such Sloaney arrogance. Perpetua could be the size of a Renault Espace and not give it a thought. I have never heard her so much as enunciate the words "fat unit". How many hours, months, years have I spent worrying about weight while Perpetua has been happily looking for lamps with porcelain cats as bases around the Fulham Road? She is missing out on a source of happiness, anyway. It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth or power but the pursuit of attainable goals, and what is a diet if not that?
I call up Tom, who says write down everything you've eaten, honestly, and see if you stuck to the diet:
Breakfast: hot-cross bun (Scarsdale Diet - mild variation on specified piece of wholemeal toast); Mars Bar (Scarsdale Diet - mild variation on specified half grapefruit).
Snack: two bananas, two pears (switched to F-plan as starving and cannot face Scarsdale carrot snacks). Carton orange juice (Anti-Cellulite Raw-Food Diet).
Lunch: jacket potato (Scarsdale Vegetarian Diet) and hummus (Hay Diet - fine with jacket spud as all starch, and breakfast and snack were all alkaline-forming with exception of hot-cross bun and Mars -minor aberration).
Dinner: four glasses of wine, char-grilled tuna with polenta crust (Scarsdale Protein Diet, and also Hay Diet - protein-forming); portion tiramisu; Peppermint Aero (pissed).
I realise it has become too easy to find a diet to fit in with whatever you happen to feel like and that diets are not there to be pick and mixed but picked and stuck to, which is exactly what I shall begin to do, once I've eaten this croissant.
Saturday 1 April
On the way to meet Sharon and Tina for shopping, an old couple, plainly up from the country for a new jar of marmalade, got on the Tube and two young girls wearing flared jeans and Doc Martens gave them their seats. Well! The girls didn't know what to do with their mouths and no one in the carriage knew where to put themselves. It felt as though someone should shout, "OH FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE", or everyone should turn and shake hands with each other like in church.
Next thing I found myself fantasising about men giving ladies their seats, especially, say, on a Friday night after work. We would feel so cherished and they would feel kind, strong and good about themselves.
Naturally, I brought the worrying fantasy up with the girls. "Of course they should bloody well give up their seats," exploded Sharon. "They sit there surrounded by seatless girls carrying eight Tesco Metro carrier-bags each, and it has been proved by surveys that they will go home and have supper cooked and washed up by some woman who's been working just as hard all week and stood up on the Tube all the way home carrying shopping. It's positively Third World. We learned how to go out and earn our own livings and still carried on making the supper and cleaning behind the toilet and they didn't learn how to cook, forgot how to put shelves up and mend cars, and abandoned giving up their seats."
"We're a doomed sub-species, doomed," I said.
"No," said Sharon. "We're going to take over the world while they sit watching football in their vests throwing beer cans at the television. We'll just kind of keep them as pets. For sex."
"In your dreams," said Tina.
When I got home there was a message from my Dad asking if I would meet him for lunch on Sunday. I went hot and cold. My Dad does not leave messages for me. My Mum leaves messages for me. My Dad does not come up to London to have lunch with me on Sundays. He has roast beef or salmon and new potatoes at home with Mum. "Don't ring back," he said, "I'll just see you tomorrow." But I'm seeing Daniel tonight and we won't even be up by...
Sometimes I realise how vile and selfish I have become, almost like Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians. Poor kind, sad, uncommunicative Dad. I go out for cigarettes and try to work out what the hell is going
on, get used to the idea of looking after my parents instead of them looking after me and fight off existential despair.
When I get back, the light is flashing on the answerphone.
It is Mum, saying she is coming to see me for lunch tomorrow. She will bring a piece of salmon with her and will be here about 1 o'clock.
Sunday 2 April
9st 3, cigarettes 10, alcohol units 3, calories 1,878
Yesterday I received two unsettling and unprecedented messages on my answerphone: one from my father announcing he was coming down to London to take me out to lunch today, and not to tell Mum; another from Mum announcing she was bringing a salmon round for lunch today and not to tell Dad.
Recent signs all point to my becoming the tragic victim of a broken home. But today, in denial, I am clutching at straws. Maybe it was just an April Fool. Maybe over-exposure to Noel Edmonds has finally turned them into practical jokers. Perhaps my mother will arrive with a live salmon flipping skittishly on a lead and announce that she is leaving Dad for it. Maybe Dad will appear hanging upside down outside the window dressed as a morris dancer, crash in and start hitting Mum over the head with a sheep's bladder; or suddenly fall face downwards out of the airing cupboard with a plastic knife stuck in his back.
Oh God, I can't have them both arriving here at the same time. It is too Brian Rix for words. In desperation, I pick up the phone and dial my brother's number only to get one of his hilarious answerphone messages: the sound of running water and my brother pretending to be Ground Control in Houston, then a toilet flushing and his pathetic girlfriend tittering in the background. The only thing which can possibly get things back on course is a Bloody Mary.
Later
Just before noon Mum called. "Let him come," she said. "Let him bloody well have his own way as usual." (My Mum does not swear. She says things like "ruddy" and "Oh my godfathers".) "I'll be all right on my bloody own. I'll just clean the house like Germaine sodding Gear and the Invisible Woman." (Could she possibly,
conceivably, have been drunk? My Mum has drunk nothing but a single cream sherry on a Sunday night since 1952, when she got slightly tipsy on a pint of cider at Mavis Enderby's 21st.)
"Mum, no. Couldn't we all talk this through together over lunch?" I trilled, as if this were Sleepless in Seattle and lunch was going to end up with Mum and Dad holding hands and me winking cutely at the camera, wearing a luminous rucksack.
"Just you wait," she said darkly. "You'll find out what men are like."
"But Mum, I already..." I began.
"I'm going out, darling," she said. "I'm going out, to get laid."
At 2 o'clock Dad arrived at the door with a neatly folded copy of the Sunday Telegraph. As he sat down on the sofa, his face suddenly crumpled and big tears started to splosh out of his eyes.
"She's been like this since she went to Albufeira with Una Alconbury and Geoffrey Coles's wife, Audrey," he sobbed, trying to rub the tears off his cheek with his fist. "When she got back she started saying she wanted to be paid for doing the housework, and she'd wasted her life being our slave [Our slave? I knew it. This is all my fault. If I was a better person, Mum would not have stopped loving Dad] and... and..." he collapsed in monster sobs.
"And what, Dad?"
"She said I thought the clitoris was something out of Geoffrey Coles's lepidoptery collection."
Monday 11 April
9st 1, cigarettes 0 (spiritual enrichment removes need to smoke: massive breakthrough), alcohol units 5, calories 2,845
Though heartbroken by my parents' distress, I have to admit parallel and shameful feelings of smugness over my new role as carer and, though I say it myself, wise counsellor this week. It is so long since I have done anything at all for anyone else that it is a totally new and heady sensation. This is what has been missing in my life. I am having fantasies about becoming a Samaritan or Sunday schoolteacher, making soup for the homeless (or, as my friend Tom suggested, darling little portions of pesto sauce) or even retraining as a doctor.
Maybe going out with a doctor would be better still, both sexually and spiritually fulfilling. I even began to wonder about putting an ad in the lonely-hearts column of the Lancet. I could take his messages, tell patients wanting night visits to bugger off, cook him little goat's cheese souffles, then end up in a foul mood with him when I am 60 like Mum.
Yesterday I opened my News of the World and realised that becoming a Sunday schoolteacher might massively improve not so much my spirit as my sexual allure, giving me novelty value, like a stopping nun, or barrister in suspenders. Mind you, THREE IN MP'S BED SCANDAL Sunday schoolteacher Odette Nightingale (why, oh why, aren't I called Nightingale?) seems an odd sort of bird or fish to me. Who, when visiting a male friend of their lover, goes to the bathroom to "tidy up"? Would she have gone on to run the vacuum round, too, if she hadn't become distracted? And who, on emerging from the bathroom to find two men naked in bed, decides the polite thing to do is get in between them? And how come (this was Tom's point), when there are so many newspaper pictures of Odette in differently hideous A-line strappy nylon dresses, she is wearing the same pair of beige elasticated sling backs in each one? Hasn't she even heard of the word "accessorise"? As Dad said on the phone (fourth call) at 4am, "If this is what they're teaching them in Sunday School these days, it's no wonder you're mother is acting peculiar."
Wednesday 12 April
9st, alcohol units 7, cigarettes 23, calories (cannot bear to think about it: pizza, chocolate bombe. Oh No)
Why oh why can I not deal with parties? They say that Tina Brown from the New Yorker has it to a tee, gliding prettily from group to group going, "Harold Brodkey! Martin Amis! Nelson Mandela!" in a tone that at once suggests, "My God, I have never been more thrilled to see anyone in my entire life! Have you met the most interesting person at the party apart from you? Talk! Talk! Must network! Byee!"
This is what happens to me at parties.
1. Enter room, cannot see single person I recognise. Want to go home.
2. Spot person I know. Attempt to join group but find them deep in unintelligible conversation. Stand wearing unconvincing grin. Notice someone else I know and shamble off to repeat sorry performance. Want to go home.
3. Get stuck with dull person, meanwhile noticing 12 people would rather talk to. Fear of being the sort who looks over shoulders all the time and pretends to fetch drink then never returns forces me to stay. I then get dragged into conversation of an intensity totally inappropriate to party setting and my desire never to see dull person again. Want to go home.
4. Nice person joins us just when dull person has reached most excruciating moment in account of slow death of mother. Feel like Newsnight presenter chairing studio row with producer yelling in ear, "Wind it up! Get them to shut up! Get the stupid f***ers to shut up!" Cannot bring self to interrupt dying mother story in middle of death throes to acknowledge nice person. Situation becomes untenable so blurt, "Oh hello! Have you met Brian? He was just telling me about his mother dying." Appal both people. Want to go home.
Tonight's party was complicated by the presence of Daniel. Our relationship remains agonisingly unclear. We have slept together five and a half times but a next meeting is never scheduled in advance. The situation is further complicated by the looming threat of Easter bank holiday with nothing arranged: both parents separately away, Sharon and Tina mini-breaking with men, and Tom in a work crisis. Cannot free my head of weekend-in-Prague-with-Daniel fantasies: walking hand in hand surrounded by bunnies, Daniel slipping me chocolate eggs containing emerald ear-rings.
Tonight was the perfect opportunity to resolve things but every time I looked he was telling some amusing story to a circle of girls wearing no skirts to speak of, who were falling about with laughter and jiggling their Wonderbras at him. My spirits sank lower and lower. And then a tiny miracle happened. "Don't you just hate parties?" said a voice. It was Dr Rogers, the not-at-all-bad-looking doctor from our health centre. (No stirrups embarrassment or anything; he'd only treated me once when I got my contact lens stuck on my eyeball.)
"What's up with you?" he said. That's doctors for you. Naturally I
couldn't think of an amusing diagnostic quip, so I told him the truth.
"Fancy a pizza?" he said. It felt like being with a fatherly yet strangely attractive duvet. "Don't even think about saying goodbye," he murmured, seeing me glance across at Daniel. "I bet he hasn't got round to saying hello yet, has he?"
It was just so great seeing Daniel's face when we left. I couldn't smoke during the pizza, obviously, him being a doctor and everything. I couldn't even flirt because of the Hippocratic oath. So I just listened quietly and sensibly to Dr Rogers's advice as if he were telling me not to tug the cornea. It was the old see-saw theory, of course. "As long as he knows you love him he'll be so full of himself he'll keep wondering if he can get someone better," he said. "You have to keep him thinking he's not quite good enough for you. You have to be the ice queen."
"But I'm not an ice queen."
"No, you're not," he said, with something like tenderness. "Icecream, maybe?"
I glowed, then realised he was looking at the dessert menu. "I can't bear love to be such a joyless game," I cried.
"It isn't," he said.
"So what's the answer?" I said.
"Don't fall for good-looking gits who think it is. You're nicer than that. How do you feel about the chocolate bombe?"
He drove me home. And he asked me out for dinner next Tliesday. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? It is. He lives with someone called Gerrard. And he calls him she.
Easter Sunday
Midnight Watched the BBC's Persuasion alone, considering Anne Elliot too wet, Wentworth too louche and the best bits bungled, but now I think I am Anne Elliot anyway. I noticed it was only when someone else was after Anne that Captain Wentworth came running. How can men be so obvious?
I have had three answerphone messages from Daniel this weekend and ignored them all. La! Let him think I have gone to Lyme, fallen on my head and am being tended by Dr Rogers. But then wait: Anne Elliot did not play games but was modest, honest and true and certainly did not sit smoking and smirking at the answerphone.
Hmm. Maybe Dr Rogers is an over-prudent Lady Russell figure persuading me to give up the love of my life whom he doesn't even
know. Oh sod it. Is midnight on Easter Sunday too late to call
someone you care for?
Thursday 20 April
8st 12 (yes!), alcohol units 2, cigarettes 30 (swings & roundabouts), calories 966 (v.g.)
Feel strange, perhaps unnatural, affinity with Victoria Althorp, with her addictions and weight obsession. Wonder if self will soon have to check into similar clinic. But why have so many children when things are so rocky? Is it possible to get addicted to children, too? Weight 6st 7, alcohol units 14, Children 7. Hate thought of world being full of unsuspected new pitfalls for addictive personalities. Strangely perplexed also about Tuesday's date with Dr Rogers. I do not think Dr Rogers, or rather "Peter", is gay any more, for the following reasons:
1) He has an ex-long-term girlfriend.
2) After he drove me home (own car, drank only one glass of wine, clearly not alcoholic - unless exaggerated cover-up - all excellent signs), he stopped the car and leaned forward to give me what I anticipated as a "peck". But no. It was one of those on-mouth kissettes with a question mark attached, followed by another. I was too startled to respond.
Or was it that? Had it been Daniel, nothing, even wild pigs in the car, could have prevented me tearing the buttons off his shirt. So why no response to Dr Rogers? He is perfect. We are going for a walk in the country on Sunday. Maybe he is gay but doesn't know it but my body secretly understands. Maybe I have turned frigid.
Monday 24 April
9st 3 (better than eating disorder), alcohol units 4, cigarettes 19, calories 1,234
Depressed as do not love eminently suitable Dr Rogers with his stupid country walks. Love mad, badly behaved Daniel. Depressed also by constant lateness for work, and failure to address in-tray bulging with threats from bailiffs etc. Resolve to investigate with time and motion
study on self. 7am Get weighed.
7.03 Return to bed in sulk over weight. Head-state bad. Sleeping or getting up equally out of question. Think about Daniel.
7.30 Hunger pangs force self out of bed. Make coffee, consider grapefruit, defrost chocolate croissant.
735-7.50 Look out of window. 7.55 Open wardrobe. Stare at clothes.
8.00 Select shirt. Try to find black Lycra miniskirt. Pull clothes out of bottom of wardrobe in quest of skirt. Go through drawers and search behind bedroom chair. Go through ironing basket. Go through dirty-linen basket. Skirt has vanished. Have cigarette to cheer self up.
8.20 Dry skin brushing, bath and wash hair.
8.35 Begin selection of underwear. Laundry crisis means only available pants are vast and white cotton. Too unattractive to contemplate even for work (psychological damage). Go back to ironing basket. Find unsuitably lacy prickly pair but better than giant Mummy-pant horror.
8.45 Start on black opaque tights. Pair one seems to have shrunk -crotch is three niches above knees. Get second pair on and find hole on back of leg. Throw away. Suddenly remember had Lycra miniskirt on when returned with Daniel from most recent date. Go to living room. Triumphantly locate skirt between cushions on sofa.
8.55 Return to tights. Pair three have hole only in toe. Put on. Hole transforms into ladder which will protrude tellingly from shoe. Go to ironing basket. Locate last pair of black opaque tights twisted into rope-like object speckled with bits of tissue. Untangle and purge of tissue.
9.05 Have got tights on now. Add skirt. Begin ironing shirt.
9.10 Suddenly realise hair is drying in weird shape. Search for hairbrush. Locate in handbag. Blow-dry hair. Will not go right. Spray with plant spray and blow some more.
9.40 Return to ironing and discover stubborn stain on front of shirt. All other possible shirts dirty. Panic about time. Try to wash out stain. Entire shirt now soaking wet. Iron dry.
9.55 V. late now. In despair, have fag and read holiday brochure for calming five minutes.
10.00 Try to find handbag. Handbag has vanished. Decide to see if anything nice has come in the mail.
10.07 Access letter only, about non-payment of minimum payment. Try to remember what was looking for. Restart quest for handbag.
10.15 Beyond lateness now. Suddenly remember had handbag in bedroom when looking for hairbrush, but cannot find. Eventually locate under clothes from wardrobe. Return clothes to wardrobe. Put on jacket. Prepare to leave house. Cannot find keys. Scour house in rage.
10.25 Find keys in handbag. Realise have forgotten hairbrush. 10.35 Leave house.
Three hours and 35 minutes between waking and leaving house is too long. In future must get straight up when wake up and reform entire laundry system.
Buy paper to discover man arrested for Oklahoma bombing was convinced the authorities had planted a microchip in his buttocks to monitor his movements. Horrified by thought of similar chip being in own buttocks, particularly in the mornings.
Thursday 27 April
8st 10, alcohol units 4, cigarettes 17, Instants 6
It seems rather unlucky timing to get addicted to the Instants just when the once-lovely Lottery has become tainted and soured by the Government's arrogant failure of tact, rather like a half cup of coffee left out in the sun which someone has dropped a fag end in. I cannot believe that we are still going to drink it, but that's addiction for you. Next thing they will be using our millions to buy copies of the novels of Jeffrey Archer, the 18th hole at Gleneagles, collections of his mother's handbags from Mark Thatcher and tiny packets of vintage snuff hand-rolled by Annabel Heseltine, but we are all too hooked to stop.
The Instants are much better than the Lottery itself, where the numbers no longer come up during Blind Date and all too often do not have a single one of yours among them, leaving you feeling both impotent and cheated with nothing to be done except screw your ticket up and throw it defiantly on the floor.
Not so with the Instants, very much a participation thing with six cash figures to be scratched off - often quite a hard and skilled job -and never giving you the feeling that you didn't have a chance. Three amounts the same secures a win, and in my experience you always get very close, often with as many as three matching pairs for amounts as great as £50,000.
It was a bit off-putting when I bought the first Instant after the Churchill news, but I suppose it is a bit like smoking and cancer -you never think it will happen to you.
My pounds are the ones that go to disadvantaged children and not to smug Winston double Junior or the latest folly dreamt up by a bunch of snobs smirking about a tax on the stupid.
Anyway, you can't deny yourself all pleasures in life, I'm only on about four or five a day, and besides, I am going to stop soon, the minute I get down to 8st 71b.
Friday 28 April
Instants 9. This must stop.
Bit of a turn-up for the books. First Dr Rogers is on the phone all the time suggesting dates to the theatre. I hate the theatre - it being one of those school-like things, there purely to be endured in order to earn pleasures such as interval drinks, pizzas or sex. The cinema long ago exposed it as completely unrealistic and it is embarrassing to have live luvvies able actually to see if you fall asleep.
Second, Daniel, whom I have been making a point of ignoring lately, walked past my desk this morning and said: "Will you come to Prague next weekend?" (all this goes to show that the way to a man's heart these days is not beauty, food, sex or alluringness of character but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him).
"What? er hahahaha you mean the weekend after this one?"
"Yees, next weekend," he said with an encouraging, slightly patronising air, as if he had been teaching me to speak English.
"Yeah, all right then," I said.
"That's as long as I can get free of work," he said smirking. Dammit. I should have said no. There isn't a hope in hell of Daniel getting it together to come to Prague with me. He is just making sure I will still let him sleep with me if the fancy takes him. Huh.
Sat 29 April
Instants 3 (better), normal Lottery £2
At last I get to the bottom of Mum and Dad. My normally self-sacrificing mother has somehow engineered it that she now has the family home to herself while Dad is living in a granny flat at the bottom of the Alconburys' garden. I have long suspected a post-Portuguese-holiday Shirley Valentine situation and that one day I will turn on the Anne and Nick show to see my mother sporting dyed blonde hair and a leopard-skin top, sitting on a sofa with someone in stone-washed jeans called Gonzales and explaining that if you really love someone a 46-year age-gap really doesn't matter.
Today she asked me to meet her for lunch at the coffee place in Dickens & Jones and I determined to confront her. "There is no one
else," she said, staring into the distance with a look of melodramatic bravery I swear she has copied from pictures of Marti Caine in Hellol
"So what is it then?" I said sulkily.
"Darling, it's merely a question of realising when your father retired that I had spent 43 years without a break running his home and bringing up his children ("We're your children too," I tried to interject, hurt) and that as far as he was concerned his lifetime's work was over and mine was still carrying on - which was exactly how I used to feel when you were little and it got to the weekends. You only get one life and I am going to spend what's left of mine looking after me for a change."
As I went to the cash till to pay, for once I could see her point and thought it made sense. Then my eye was caught by a tall distinguished-looking man with grey hair, a European looking leather jacket and one of those gentlemen's handbag things. He was looking into the caf, holding his watch and raising his eyebrows. I wheeled round and caught my mother mouthing "won't be a minute", and nodding towards me apologetically. Then she saw me looking at her.
It's the first time in my life I have ever seen her blush.
Saturday 6 May
9st 5, alcohol units 6, cigarettes 25, calories 3,800 (celebrating end of rationing), Instants 2
Feel strangely unhappy about VE day fever. In fact, "left out" might be the expression I am groping towards. I do not have any grandpas. Dad has got all worked up about a party being hosted in the Alconburys' garden at which, for unexplained reasons, he will be tossing pancakes. Mum is going back to the street she was brought up in in Cheltenham for a whale meat fritter party, probably with her Portuguese Lothario. (Thank God she didn't run off with a German.) None of my friends are organising anything. It would seem embarrassingly enthusiastic and all wrong, somehow, suggesting a positive approach to life, or that we were trying creepily to annex something that was nothing to do with us. I mean, I probably wasn't even an egg when the war ended. I was just nothing - while they were all fighting and making jam out of carrots or whatever they did.
I hate this idea for some reason and toy with calling Mum to see whether she had started her periods when the war ended. Do eggs get
produced one at a time, I wonder, or are they stored from birth in micro-form until they are activated? Could I have somehow sensed the end of the war as a stored egg? If only I had a grandpa, I could have got in on the whole thing under the guise of being nice to him. Oh sod it, I am going to go shopping.
7pm The heat has made my body double its size, I swear. I am never going in a communal changing-room again. I got a dress stuck under my arms in Warehouse while trying to lift it off and ended up lurching around with inside-out fabric instead of a head, tugging at it with my arms in the air, rippling stomach and thighs on full display to the assembled sniggering 15-year-olds. When I tried to pull the stupid dress down and get out of it the other way it got stuck on my hips.
I hate changing-rooms. Everyone stares sneakily at each other's bodies but no one ever meets anyone's eye, and there are always those girls who know that they look fantastic in everything and dance around beaming, swinging their hair and doing model poses in the mirror saying, "Does it make me look fat?" to their obligatory obese friend, who looks like a water buffalo in everything.
It was a disaster of a trip, anyway. One must only ever shop when one has no money and no need to get anything (when everything you see will be perfect) and never, as I did this afternoon, when you absolutely have to buy something that day.
The trip to Prague - suggested by Daniel for this weekend - was subsequently never mentioned again. When it got to Wednesday, I mumblingly brought it up, feeling bizarrely ashamed for doing so. As if it wasn't him who had suggested it; as if it wasn't peculiar behaviour to invite someone to come to Prague in eight days' time, have them accept, then never mention it again. As if I was a total sad-act to have failed telepathically to realise that he'd gone off the idea, and then been so goatishly inconsiderate as to make him feel uncomfortable by bringing it up. " Oh God, yah I'd forgotten about that. When was it supposed to be?" he snapped, as if I was a nagging ex-wife trying to get him to take the children to the water slides.
"Look, I can't this weekend. I'm completely snowed under."
"Fine," I said, walking off with my nose in the air, then dived for the ladies' loo and slumped on to the seat in shock, staring at the door crazily with one eye. Later that afternoon, he asked me to come to some agent's summer party in a marquee on the river next Tuesday night. Wanting to be happy rather than sad, I accepted - then realised I had nothing to wear.
I still have nothing to wear. The answer to shopping, I know, is simply to buy a few choice items from DKNY, Nicole Farhi, Joseph; but the prices so terrify me that I go scuttling back to Warehouse and Miss Selfridge, rejoicing in a host of dresses at £34.99, get them stuck on my head, then buy things from Marks & Spencer because I don't have to try them on, can take them back later and at least I've bought something.
I have now come home with four things, all of them unsuitable and unflattering. One will be left behind the bedroom chair in an M&S bag for two years. The other three will be exchanged for credit notes that I will then lose. I have thus wasted £119, which would have been enough to buy something really nice from Nicole Farhi - like, er, a T-shirt.
It is all a punishment, I realise, for being obsessed by shopping in a shallow, materialistic way instead of wearing the same rayon frock all summer and painting a line down the back of my legs; also for failing to join in the VE Day celebrations. Maybe I should ring Tom and get a lovely party together for Monday. Is it possible to have a kitsch, ironic VE day party - like for the Royal Wedding? No, you see, it isn't - you can't be ironic about dead people. And then there's the problem of flags - half of Tom's friends used to be in the Anti-Nazi League and would think the presence of Union Jacks meant we were expecting skinheads. I wonder what would have happened if our generation had had a war? Maybe we would be a bit less mad. Ah well, time for a little drinky.
Saturday 13 May
9st 1, alcohol units 5, cigarettes 15, Instants 1, Lottery £2
My mum rang and I decided to confront her about the late-in-life smoothie I saw waiting for her outside the Dickens & Jones coffee shop.
"Oh, you must mean Julian," she trilled. This immediately was a giveaway. My parents do not describe their friends to me by their Christian names. It is always Una Alconbury, Geoffrey Coles, Brian Enderby: "You know Brian, darling - married to Monica Enderby who's in the Lifeboat." It's a sort of gesture to the fact that they know in their hearts I have no idea who Monica Enderby is, even though they're going to talk about Brian and Monica Enderby for the next 40
minutes as if I've known Brian intimately since I was four.
I knew straight away that Julian would not turn out to be involved in lifeboat luncheons, nor would he have a wife who was in any Lifeboats, Rotaries, or Friends of St George's. I sensed also that he was not Julian but Julio, and that she met him in Portugal, before the trouble with Dad. I sensed that, let's face it, Julian was the trouble with Dad.
She denied it. She even came out with some elaborately concocted tale about him bumping into her in the Marble Arch Marks & Spencer, making her drop a new Le Creuset terrine dish on her foot and taking her for a coffee in Selfridges, from which sprang forth as if by magic a firm platonic friendship based entirely on department store coffee shops.
Why? Why, when people leave their partners because they're having an affair with someone else, do they think it will seem better to pretend there was no one else involved before they left? Do they think it will be less hurtful for their partners to think they just left because they couldn't stand them any more, and then had the good fortune to meet some tall Omar Sharif figure with a gentleman's handbag two weeks afterwards while the ex-partner is spending his evenings bursting into tears at the sight of the toothbrush mug? It's like those people who instinctively invent a lie as an excuse rather than the truth, even when the truth is actually better than the lie.
I once heard my friend Simon blowing out a girl - on whom he was really keen - because he had a spot with a yellow head just to the right of his nose, and because he had gone to work, owing to severe laundry crisis, in a ludicrous late-Seventies jacket, assuming he could pick his normal jacket vip from the cleaners at lunchtime, but the cleaners hadn't done it.
He told her he couldn't come because his sister had turned up unexpectedly for the evening and he had to entertain her, adding wildly that he also had to watch some videos for work before the morning. At which point, the girl reminded him that he'd told her on the previous date that he hadn't got any brothers or sister - which he hadn't - and why didn't he come round and watch the videos at her place while she cooked him supper? But he didn't have any videos to bring round and watch - and a quagmire of lies ensued that ended with the girl convinced he was trying to chuck her on the second date and go out with someone else and Simon spending the evening drinking alone in his Seventies jacket.
I tried to explain to mum that she wasn't telling the truth, but she is
so suffused with lust that she has lost sight of, well, everything.
"You're really becoming very cynical and suspicious, darling," she said. "Julio's just a friend. I just need some space."
So why, when I saw her in the Dickens & Jones coffee bar, did she have a carrier-bag full of Charnos bra-slips?
Sunday 15 May
Awake, alone, to find myself imagining my mother in bed with Julio, , which raises a complicated quagmire of feelings: repulsion at vision of parental, or rather demi-parental, sex; outrage on behalf of father; heady selfish optimism at having another 30 years of unbridled passion ahead of me (not unrelated to frequent thoughts of Joanna Lumley); jealousy; extreme sense of failure and foolishness at being in bed alone while my mother, aged 60, is probably just about to do it for the second... oh my God. No. I can't bear it. Must get coffee.
Maybe their generation are just better at getting on with relationships. Maybe they don't muck about being all paranoid and diffident. Maybe it helps if you've never read a self-help book in your life.
Open paper to discover that the Henley Centre says that people have taken to ignoring the broader picture and giving themselves little "boomlets" — shopping sprees that they cannot afford and so on - to cheer themselves up, which rapidly peter out. I sympathise with this entirely.
I realise that my entire life has become a series of boomlets: cigarettes, drinks, instant lottery cards, bursts of excitement with Daniel which never come to anything. Then read on to see that the feel-good factor has been replaced with the "Sod it - oh, Christ" syndrome.
I don't know why they bother with all that time-consuming, costly research. They should just save themselves a lot of money and ring me up.
Saturday 20 May
8st 13J/2, alcohol units 4, cigarettes 12 (v.g.), calories 1,500 (v.g.)
My mother has become a force I no longer recognise. She burst into my flat late on Saturday morning as I sat slumped in my dressing-gown, sulkily painting my toenails and watching the preamble to the racing.
"Darling, can I leave these here for a few hours?" she said, flinging an armful of carrier-bags down and heading for my bedroom.
Minutes later, in a fit of mild curiosity, I slobbed after her to see what she was doing. She was sitting in front of the mirror in an expensive-looking, coffee-coloured slip, mascara-ing her eyelashes with her mouth wide open. (Why is it only possible to put mascara on when your mouth is open?)
"Don't you think you should get dressed, darling?" She looked stunning: skin clear, hair shining. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I really should have taken my make-up off last night. One side of my hair was plastered to my head, the other sticking out in a series of peaks and horns. It is as if the hairs on my head wait till I drop off to sleep and say, "Now what shall we do?"
"You know, darling, all these years your father's made such a fuss about doing the bills and the tax - as if that excused him from 30 years of washing-up. Well, the tax return was overdue, so I thought, sod it, I'll do it myself. Obviously, I couldn't make head nor tail of it so I rang up. The man was really quite overbearing with me. 'Really, Mrs Jones, I simply can't see what the difficulty is.'
"I said, 'Listen. Can you make a brioche?' He took the point, talked me through it and we had it done inside 15 minutes. Anyway, he's taking me out to lunch today. A tax man! Imagine!"
"What?" I stammered, grabbing at the door-frame. "What about Julian?"
"Just because I'm 'friends' with Julian doesn't mean I can't have other 'friends'," she said sweetly, slipping into a yellow two-piece. "Do you like this? Just bought it. A lovely lemon, don't you think? Anyway must fly. I'm meeting him in Debenhams coffee shop at 1.15."
After she'd gone, I ate a bit of muesli out of the packet with a spoon and finished off the dregs of wine in the fridge.
I know what her secret is: she's discovered power. She's got power over Dad, he wants her back. She's got power over Julian, and
everyone else is sensing her power and wanting a bit of it, which just makes her even more irresistible. So all I've got to do is find someone or something I have power over and then... oh, sod it. I haven't even got power over my own hair.
Sunday 21 May
Find myself snorting at Virginia Bottomley's plan to put alcohol units on display in pubs. I suppose it's the same thing as putting calories on food, but then sometimes I find myself confidently tucking into seven Shape yoghurts simply because they only have 50 calories each and then spend the day with vats of yoghurt fermenting in my stomach like a ginger beer plant. Anyway, you don't eat food in order to get fat, but you do go to pubs in order to get drunk. I bet half the people in the pub choose the most alcoholic drinks to get plastered immediately and the others choose the lower alcoholic ones so they can drink three times as many and end up with stomachs like barrage balloons squelching and bumping into each other.
Next, Sharon rang saying she was worried about Tom because she'd seen him from the window of a taxi last night, wandering along Tottenham Court Road holding his head and, she thought, bleeding, but by the time she'd gone back, he'd disappeared.
Frantic phoning ensued. Tom wasn't in, so I rang Jude who rang Simon and got him to go round. Not there. Then Sharon rang again. She'd spoken to Tina who thought he was going to Michael's for lunch. I was just calling Michael when the doorbell rang. It was Tom, with a huge bump on his head and more depressed than I'd ever seen him, saying he'd started an affair three weeks before with a 22-year-old "freelance film-maker" called Jerome who'd dumped him last night and Tom had got blind drunk, fallen over and hit his head.
"Nobody loves me," he said. I told him to ring his answerphone where there were 22 frantic messages from his friends and said, anyway, how could one moody git with a stupid name make him think nobody loves him?
Two Bloody Marys later, he was laughing at Jerome's obsessive use of the term "self-aware" and skin-tight, calf-length Calvin Klein underpants. Meanwhile, eight of his friends had rung to see how he was. "I know we're all psychotic, single and completely dysfunctional, and it's all done over the phone," he slurred
sentimentally, "but it's a bit like a family, isn't it?"
Two minutes later there was a ring on the doorbell and my mother collapsed into the hallway in floods of tears.
Saturday 27 May!!!
Cigarettes 0, alcohol units 0, calories 1,800
Today is an historic and joyous day. After 18 years of trying to get down to 8st 7,1 have finally achieved it - without even trying. It's no trick of the scales, but confirmed by jeans. I am thin.
There is no explanation. I have been to the gym twice in the last week, but that, though rare, is not freakish. Ihave eaten normally. It is a miracle. Rang up Tom, who said maybe I have a tapeworm. The way to get rid of it, he said, is to hold a bowl of warm milk and a pencil in front of my mouth, (tapeworms love warm milk), then, when the worm's head appears, wrap it carefully round the pencil. "Listen," I told him, "this tapeworm is staying." I love my tapeworm. Not only am I thin, but I no longer seem to want to smoke or glug wine.
"Are you in love?" asked Tom in a suspicious, jealous tone. He's always like this. It's not that he wants to be with me, because, obviously, he is a homosexual, but if you are single the last thing you want is your best friend forming a functional relationship with somebody else. I racked my brains then stopped, shocked by a sudden, stunning, realisation. I am not in love with Daniel anymore. Maybe that explains it.
Saturday night
Went to Jude's party tonight, clad in a tight little black dress to show off figure, feeling fantastic.
"Bridget, are you all right?" asked Sharon when I walked in. "You look really tired." "I'm fine," I said, crestfallen. "I've lost half a stone. What?"
"Nothing, no, I just, thought..."
"What? What?"
"Maybe you've lost it a bit quickly off your... face," she trailed off,
looking at my admittedly somewhat deflated cleavage.
Simon was the same.
"Bridgiiiiiit! Have you got a fag, angel?"
"No I've given up."
"Oh blimey, no wonder you look so... "
"What??"
"Oh nothing, nothing. Just a bit... drawn."
It continued all evening. There's nothing worse than people telling you you look tired. They might as well have done with it and say you look like five kinds of sh*t. I felt so pleased with myself for not drinking but as the evening wore on, and everyone got drunker, I began to feel so calm and smug that I was even irritating myself. I kept finding myself in conversations when I actually couldn't be bothered to say a single word, and just looked on and nodded in a wise, detached manner. "Have you got any camomile tea?" I said to Jude at one point as she lurched past, hiccuping happily, at which point she collapsed into giggles, put her arm round me and fell over. I decided I'd better go home.
Once there, I got into bed, put my head on the pillow but nothing happened... I kept putting my head in one place, then another place, but still it wouldn't go to sleep. Normally I would be snoring by now and having some sort of traumatised paranoid dream. I put the light on. It was only 11.30. Maybe I should do something, like, well, er... mending? The phone rang. It was Tom.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, I feel great. Why?"
"You just seemed, well, flat tonight. Everyone said you weren't your usual self."
"No, I was fine. Did you see how thin I am?" Silence.
'Tom?"
"I think you looked better before, hon."
Now I feel empty and bewildered - as if a rug has been pulled from under my feet. Eighteen years - wasted. Eighteen years of calorie and fat-unit based arithmetic. Eighteen years of buying long shirts and jumpers, and leaving the room backwards in intimate situations to hide my bottom. Millions of cheesecakes and tiramisus, entire packets of Emmenthal slices, left uneaten. Eighteen years of struggle, sacrifice and endeavour - for what? For nothing. I feel like a scientist who discovers that his entire life's work has been a mistake. Eighteen years and the result is "tired and flat".
Last week my mother turned up on Sunday morning in floods of
tears. I wondered if her new self-perpetuating sexual power surge had collapsed like a house of cards with dad, Julio and the tax man losing interest simultaneously. But no. She had merely been infected with "Having it All" syndrome. "I feel like the grasshopper who sang all summer," she sobbed, "and now it is the winter of my life and I haven't stored up anything of my own." I was going to point out that three potential eligible partners gagging for it, plus half the house and the pension schemes wasn't exactly nothing, but I bit my tongue. "I want a career," she said. And some horrible mean part of me felt happy and smug, because I had a career. I was a grasshopper collecting a big pile of grass, or flies, or whatever it is grasshoppers eat, ready for the winter.
Today, though, she was positively blooming. "My godfathers, darling!" she said, steaming through my flat and heading for the kitchen. "Have you lost weight or something? You look dreadful. You look about 90. Anyway, guess what, darling," she said, turning, holding the kettle and dropping her eyes modestly and then looking up, beaming. "I've got a job as a TV presenter."
Friday 2 June
8st 7, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0, calories 900
I read in an article that Kathleen Tynan, late wife of the late Kenneth, had "inner poise" and, when writing, was to be found immaculately dressed, sitting at a small table in the centre of the room, sipping at a glass of chilled white wine. Kathleen Tynan would not, when late with a press release for Perpetua, for example, lie terrified under the duvet, fully dressed, chain smoking, glugging cold sake out of a beaker and putting make-up on as a deranged displacement activity.
Lately, therefore, whenever things have risked ranging out of control, I have repeated the phrase "inner poise" and imagined myself wearing white linen and sitting at a table with flowers on it. "Inner poise." No fags for six days now. Only 3 alcohol units consumed over the last week as grudging concession to Tom who complained it was like spending the evening with a halibut. My body is a temple. Nothing of value comes through struggle - it is all about flow. Zen and the art of life. "Flow." I wonder if it's time to go to bed yet? Oh no, it's only 8.30. "Inner poise."
Sat 9pm
9st, cigarettes 64, alcohol units 14, calories 8,400
At 8.45 last night I was running a relaxing aromatherapy bath and sipping camomile tea when a car burglar alarm started up. I have been waging a campaign in our street against car burglar alarms which are intolerable and counter-productive since you are more likely to get your car broken into by an angry neighbour trying to silence the burglar alarm than by a burglar.
This time, however, instead of raging and calling the police I merely breathed in through flared nostrils and murmured "inner poise". The doorbell rang. I picked up the intercom. Hysterical sobbing. I rushed downstairs. There was my friend Magda, in floods of tears with her husband Jeremy's Saab convertible, all lights flashing emitting a "doowee dooweee dooweee" of indescribable loudness while the baby screamed as if being murdered in the car seat. Every window in the street had a head in it.
"Turn it off!"
"I bloody well can't!" shrieked Magda, tugging at the car bonnet.
"Just going to ring my husband. Jerrers!" She yelled into the portable phone, "Jerrers! How d'you open the bonnet on the Saab?"
Magda is very posh. Our street is not very posh. Our street still has half tom-off posters saying "Free Nelson Mandela" in the windows.
"I'm not bloody coming back, you bastard," Magda was yelling.
"Just tell me how to open the fucking bonnet."
We were both in the car now, pulling every lever we could find. Magda swigging intermittently at a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. By this time a small crowd was gathering. Next thing Jeremy, thank God, roared up on his Harley-Davidson, but instead of turning off the alarm he started trying to grab the baby out of the back seat with Magda screaming at him. Then the Australian guy, Bruce, who lives below me, opened his window.
"Oy, Bridgid," he shouted. "There's water pouring through my ceiling."
"Sh*t. The bath."
I ran upstairs, but when I got to my door, I realised I'd shut it behind me with the key inside. I started banging my head against it, yelling, "Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t." Then Bruce appeared in the hall.
"Christ," he said, "You'd biddah hev one of these."
"Thanks," I said, practically eating the proffered fag.
Several cigarettes and a lot of fiddling with a credit card later we were in, to find water flooding everywhere.We couldn't turn the taps off. Bruce rushed downstairs, returning with a spanner and a bottle of scotch. He managed to turn off the taps and started helping me to mop up. Then the burglar alarm stopped and we rushed to the window just in time to see the Saab roar off, with the Harley-Davidson in hot pursuit. We both started laughing - we'd had quite a lot of whisky by now. Then suddenly, I don't quite know how, he was kissing me. This was quite an awkward situation, etiquette-wise, because I had just flooded his flat, and ruined his evening so I didn't want to seem ungrateful. I know that didn't give him licence to sexually harass me, but the complication was that it was quite enjoyable, really, after all the dramas and inner bloody poise. Then suddenly a man in motorbike leathers appeared at the open door holding two pizza boxes.
"Aow sh*t," said Bruce. "Ah forgot ah ordered pizza." So we ate the pizzas and had a bottle of wine and a few more cigarettes and then he started trying to kiss me again and I slurred, "No, no, we mushn't," at which point he went all funny and started muttering, "Ow chraarst. Ow chraarst."
"What is it?" I said.
"Ahm merrid," he said. "But Bridgid, ah think ah live you."
When he'd finally gone I slumped on the floor, shaking, with my back to the front door, chain-smoking butt ends. "Inner poise," I said, half-heartedly, then the doorbell rang. I ignored it.
It rang again. Then it rang without stopping. I picked it up.
"Darling," said a voice I recognised. "I never realised before. I love you."
"Go away, Daniel."
"No. Lemme explain."
"No." Silence.
"Bridge... Marry me..."
"Go away."
"Can I use your toilet?"
Twenty-one hours, four pizzas, one Indian takeaway, three packets of cigarettes and two bottles of champagne later Daniel is still here. I am in love. I am also now between one and all of the following:
a) back on 30 a day
b) engaged
c) pregnant
d) stupid
I have just been sick, and as I slumped over the loo trying to do it quietly so Daniel wouldn't hear, he suddenly yelled out from the bedroom, "there goes your inner poise, my plumptious. Best place for it, I say."
Monday 5 June
9 st, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0, calories 4,200
I think I am pregnant. How could we have been so stupid? Daniel and I were so carried away with euphoria at being back together again, that reality seemed to go out of the window - and once you've... oh, look, I don't want to talk about it. This morning I definitely felt the beginnings of morning sickness, but that could be because I was so hungover after Daniel left yesterday that I ate the following things to try to make myself feel better:
2 packets Emmenthal cheese slices; 1 litre freshly squeezed orange juice; 1 cold jacket potato; 2 pieces unbaked lemon cheesecake (very light, also possibly eating for two); 1 Milky Way (Body's enthusiastic response to cheesecake suggested Baby needed sugar); 1 chocolate Viennoise dessert thing with cream on top (greedy Baby incredibly demanding); steamed broccoli (attempt to nourish Baby and stop it growing up spoilt); 4 cold frankfurter sausages (only available tin in cupboard. Too exhausted by pregnancy to go out to shop again).
Oh, dear. Am starting to get carried away with idea of self as Conran Shop-style mother figure, poss wearing crop top and throwing Baby in the air, laughing fulfilledly in advert for designer gas cooker, feel-good movie or similar.
In the office today, Perpetua was at her most obnoxious, spending 45 minutes on the phone to someone called Desdemona, discussing whether yellow walls would look nice with pink and grey ruched blinds or whether she and Hugo should go for blood red with a floral frieze. For one 15-minute interlude she said nothing whatsoever except, "Absolutely... no, absolutely... absolutely", then concluded, "But, of course, you could make exactly the same argument for the
red." Instead of wanting to staple things to her head, I smiled in a beatific sort of way, thinking how soon all these things would be immaterial to me, alongside caring for another tiny human being.
Next 1 discovered a whole new world of Daniel fantasies: Daniel carrying the baby in a sling, Daniel rushing home from work thrilled to find the two of us pink and glowing in the bath and, in years to come, being incredibly impressive at parents/teachers evenings. "Miss Wutherspoon - as I think I remember from when I took my Cambridge double first in English literature..." But then Daniel appeared. I swear to God I have never seen him look worse. The only possible explanation was that, on leaving me yesterday, he had carried on drinking. He looked over at me, briefly, with the expression of an axe murderer. Suddenly the fantasies were replaced by images from that film Barfly, where a couple spend the whole time blind drunk, screaming and throwing bottles at each other - or Harry Enfield's The Slobs with Daniel yelling, "Bridge. The baby is bawlin' its 'ead off." And me retorting, "Daniel. I am 'avin' ay fag."
Thursday night
Help. Monday and most of Tuesday I sort of thought I was pregnant, but knew I wasn't, really - rather like when you're walking home late at night and think someone is following you, but know they're not really. But then they suddenly grab you round the neck and now I'm two days late. Daniel ignored me all day Monday then caught me at 6pm and said, "Listen, I'm going to be at the sales conference in Portsmouth all week. I'll see you Friday night, OK?" He hasn't called.
Friday 9 June
Went to the chemist to discreetly buy a pregnancy test. I was just shoving the packet at the girl on the till, with my head down, wishing I'd thought to put my ring on my wedding finger, when the chemist yelled,
"You want a pregnancy test?"
"Shhh," I hissed, looking over my shoulder.
"How late's your period?" he bellowed. "You'd be better with the blue one. It tells you if you're pregnant on the first day after your period is due." I grabbed the blue one, handing over the eight pounds sodding ninety-five and scuttled out.
For the first two hours this morning I kept staring at my handbag as if it was an unexploded bomb. At 12.30 I could stand it no longer, grabbed the handbag, got in the lift and went to the loos two floors down to avoid the risk of anyone I knew hearing suspicious rustling. For some reason the whole business suddenly made me furious with Daniel. It was his responsibility, too, and he wasn't having to spend £8.95 and hide in the toilets trying to wee on a stick. I unwrapped the packet in a fury, shoving the box and everything in the bin and getting on with it, then put the stick upside down on the back of the loo without looking at it. Three minutes. There was no way I was going to watch my fate being sealed by a slowly forming thin blue line. Somehow I got through those hundred and eighty seconds, my last hundred and eighty seconds of freedom, picked up the stick and nearly screamed. There in the little window was a thin blue line, bold as brass. Aargh! Aargh!
Got home to an answerphone message from my mother saying, "Darling, call me immediately. My nerves are shot to ribbons." Her nerves are shot to ribbons! What about my nerves?! I only found out I was pregnant today in the toilets at work. After 45 minutes staring blankly at the computer trying to pretend Perpetua was a Mexican cheese plant whenever she asked me what was the matter, I bolted and went out to a phone booth to ring Sharon. Bloody Perpetua. If Perpetua had a pregnancy scare, she's got so much English establishment behind her she'd be down the aisle in an Amanda Wakeley wedding dress in 10 minutes flat.
There was so much traffic noise outside I couldn't make Sharon understand.
"What? Bridget? I can't hear... are you in trouble with the police?"
"No," I snuffled, "the thin blue line in the pregnancy test."
"Jesus. I'll meet you in Cafe Rouge in 15 minutes." Although it was only 12.30,1 thought a vodka and orange wouldn't do any harm since it was a genuine emergency, but then I remembered that Baby wasn't supposed to have vodka. I waited, feeling like a weird sort of hermaphrodite or Push-Me-Pull-You, experiencing the most violently opposed Baby sentiments of a man and a woman both at the same time. On the one hand, I was all nesty and gooey about Daniel, smug about being a real woman - so
irrepressibly fecund! - and imagining fluffy pink baby skin, a tiny creature to love, and darling little Baby Gap outfits. On the other, I was thinking Ohmygod, life is over, Daniel is a mad alcoholic and will kill me, then chuck me when he finds out. No more nights out with the girls, shopping, flirting, sex, bottles of wine and fags. Instead, I am going to turn into a hideous growbag-cum-milk dispenser machine which no one will fancy and which will not fit into any of my trousers, particularly my brand new acid green Agnes B jeans. This confusion, I guess, is the price I must pay for becoming a modern woman instead of following the course intended by marrying Abnor Rimmington off the Northampton bus when I was 18.
When Sharon arrived, I sulkily thrust the pregnancy test, with its telltale blue line, at her under the table.
"Is this it?" she said.
"Of course it is," I muttered. "What do you think it is? A portable phone?"
"You," she said, "are a ridiculous human being. Didn't you read the instructions? There are supposed to be two lines. This line is just to show the test is working. One line means you're not pregnant, you ninny."
11.45pm
Daniel just called. "Had a good week?" he said. "Super, thanks," I said brightly. Super, thanks. Huh. I read somewhere that the best gift a woman can bring to a man is tranquillity, so I could hardly — as soon as we've started properly going out - admit that the minute his back was turned I started having neurotic hysterics over a phantom pregnancy. Oh well. Who cares? We're seeing each other tomorrow night. Hurray! Lalalala.
Saturday 10 June
Spent the morning in mourning for Baby but cheered up when Tom called to suggest a Bloody Mary. Returned to find petulant message from mother saying she's gone to a health farm. I wonder what's up? Probably overwhelmed by too many Tiffany's boxes from love-sick suitors and offers of presenting jobs from rival TV executives.
11.59pm
Completely weird evening. I am now hiding in the kitchen having a fag, while Daniel is in bed pretending to be asleep. Our entire relationship so far has been based on the idea that one or other of us is supposed to be resisting having sex. Spending an evening together when we were supposed to have sex at the end of it was nothing short of bizarre. We sat watching TV with Daniel's arm uncomfortably round my shoulders -1 mean it was really digging into the back of my neck, but I didn't feel I could ask him to move it - as if we were two 14-year-olds in the cinema. When it became impossible to avoid the subject of bedtime any longer, instead of tearing each other's clothes off like beasts we went all English and formal: "Do use the bathroom first." "No, after you." "No, after you." "No, really, I insist." We ended up lying side by side not touching, as if we were Morecambe and Wise or John Noakes and Valerie Singleton in the Blue Peter House.
Monday 19 June
Thrilled by the Jonathan Aitken fax-bungle story. I just love the idea of his absurd PR man sending the stupid, smug, scheming fax to the wrong person by mistake. Maybe there is a God after all, punishing them for trying to manipulate our opinions in a pompous Them and Us sort of manner. If there is such a God, I would like humbly to ask Him - whilst making it clear that I am deeply grateful for being granted Daniel as my boyfriend - to stop Daniel getting into bed at night wearing pyjamas and reading glasses, staring at a book for 25 minutes then switching off the light and turning over, and change him back into the naked, lust-crazed sex beast I used to know and love. Thank you, Lord, for your kind attention regarding this matter.
Friday 23 June
8st 12, alcohol units 9, cigarettes 47, calories 6,876
12.15am Daniel has just... Oh dear I think I'm going to be sick.
Saturday 24 June
8st 12lb 8oz (weird miracle), cigarettes 7, calories 1,145, Instants 5 (won £2 therefore total Instants expenditure only £3), Lottery proper £2 (number of correct numbers: 0)
How come have only put on 8oz after last night's over-consumption orgy? Maybe food and weight are the same as garlic and stenchful breath: if you eat several entire bulbs, your breath doesn't smell at all. V. bad situation in head. Would welcome removal for thorough valeting. Still, was worth it for delicious night of feminist ranting with Sharon, Jude and Tina.
The generous girls had each brought an extra something from M&S as well as wine. Therefore, in addition to the three-course meal already bought -1 mean prepared by entire day's slaving over stove -by me and and five bottles of wine, we had 1 tub hummus & pkt mini-pittas, 12 smoked salmon and cream cheese pin wheels, 12 mini-pizzas, 1 raspberry pavlova, 1 tiramisu (party size) and 2 Swiss mountain bars to get through.
Sharon was on top form. "Bastards," she was already yelling by 8.35, pouring a glass of Kir Royale straight down her throat. "Stupid, arrogant, manipulative, self-indulgent bastards. Oooh, pass me one of those mini-pizzas, will you?"
Jude was depressed because her ex-boyfriend, Richard (the one who chucked her for asking him to go on holiday with her), keeps ringing her up dropping verbal bait suggesting he wants to get back together, to keep her interested, meanwhile protecting himself by saying he just wants to be "friends". Last night he made an incredibly assumptive, patronising phone call asking if she was going to a mutual friend's party. "Ah well, in that case I won't come," he said.
"No, it really wouldn't be fair on you. You see I was going to bring this sort of... date with me. I mean it's nothing really, just some girl who's stupid enough to let me shag her for a couple of weeks."
"What?" exploded Sharon. "Arrogant little prat. That's the most repulsive thing I've ever heard anyone say about a woman."
"How dare he give himself licence to treat you any way he likes under the name of friendship, then make himself feel clever by trying to make you jealous," yelled Tina. "If he was really concerned about not hurting your feelings, he'd have just discreetly kept his stupid
'date' out of your way instead of waving her under your nose like he'd won on the Instants."
"Friends! Pah! Bastards more like!" I shouted happily, tucking into another Silk Cut and a salmon pinwheel.
By 11.30 the Greenpeace victory over Shell had been transformed by Sharon into an imminent feminist victory. I heard the phone ring at this point but left it to the answerphone. "Ten years ago people who cared about the environment were laughed at as sandal-wearing beardie weirdies, and now look at the power of the green consumer," Sharon was bellowing, scooping tiramisu into her mouth with her fingers. "The same will come to pass with feminism. There won't be any men leaving their post-menopausal wives for young mistresses, or trying to chat women up by showing off about the unwanted love of other deluded women, or trying to have sex without any niceness of commitment: because women will just tell them to sod right off and men won't get any sex unless they learn how to behave properly instead of cluttering up the seabed with their SHITTY, SMUG, SELF-INDULGENT BEHAVIOUR."
"Bastards!" yelled Tina, slurping her Pinot Grigio.
"Bastards!" I shouted through a mouthful of pavlova. Just then the doorbell rang.
"I bet that's Daniel, the bloody bastard," I slurred, yelling "Wha' you want?" into the entryphone.
"Hello, darling," murmured Daniel in his gentlest, politest voice. "I'm really sorry to bother you. I did ring earlier and leave a message. I've been stuck in the most deadly board meeting you can imagine for the entire evening and I so much wanted to see you."
"All right," I said grumpily, lurching back to the table. "Bloody bastard."
"Culture of entitlement," Sharon suddenly shouted. "Cooking, shopping, succour, young girls' bodies when they're old and fat - they think they're entitled to all this stuff from us... here, have we run out of wine?"
Then Daniel appeared up the stairs. He looked tired, clean-shaven and very neat in his suit. He was holding a box of Milk Tray.
"Oh. Hello. I bought you these," he mumbled, looking endearingly embarrassed. "Don't let me interrupt. I've done the shopping for the weekend," he said, taking eight Cullen's carrier-bags through into the kitchen. At that moment the mini-cab firm the girls had just rung back saying sorry, they weren't going to be able to come for another three hours. "I'll drive you home," said Daniel. "You can't hang
around the streets looking for cabs at this time of night."
While he was gone I picked at the Milk Tray, feeling a bewildering mixture of smug pride at my perfect new boyfriend who all the girls fancy, and rage at the normally mad sexist drunk for ruining our ranting by being freakishly well behaved. Huh. We'll just see how long this lasts, I thought, going into the layer below for the hazelnut whirl. Huh.
Half an hour later he ran up the stairs, took me in his arms and kissed me with almost unbearable sexiness. "Bridget," he whispered into my neck, almost shyly, "would you think I was being sexist and trying to, like, take you over if I paid for you to come to Bali with me for three weeks in August?"
Wednesday 28 June
9st 3 (swollen up in heat), cigarettes 11, alcohol units 5, calories 1,648, Instants 2, 1471 calls 3. Excellent, restrained day.
Increasingly irritated with the TV news bulletins for going on and on about the stupid Conservative Party instead of getting on with Hugh and Elizabeth. Halfway through News at Ten, just when Hugh and Elizabeth was starting, the phone rang, throwing me into a panic about which to go for - unbelievably inconsiderate of someone. Ended up missing both, as the caller rang off when the answerphone clicked on.
No matter - quickly dialled 1471, which tells you the number of the last person who called. "Telephone number 0171-373 7409 is stored," said the weird, computerised lady's voice. Daniel's number. I dialled it. "Did you just ring?" I asked him. "No," he said airily, "I was watching the news."
Hah! I have been keeping the existence of 1471 from Daniel, so he had no idea I knew he was lying. This filled me with heady excitement. The fact that he (a) didn't leave a message and (b) pretended he hadn't rung me means that he is uncool enough about me to want either to check up on me or play it cool, either of which might mean that he really loves me.
Daniel's recent fit of being the perfect boyfriend was evidently some kind of freak or drug-induced side-effect, as it is now over and he claims to have no memory of offering to take me to Bali in August ("Bali? August? But it's the sales conference in August!") and has
gone back to being incapable of making any arrangements whatsoevei in advance. I was hoping he'd rang to make a plan for the lovely hot forthcoming weekend, but no.
"Did you hear that the police have dropped charges against Hugh Grant?" he said.
"No," I said, pointedly. "I missed it because somebody rang in the middle."
"Yes," he said gleefully, almost bursting out laughing at his hilarious joke. "Apparently somebody swallowed the evidence."
Thursday 29 June
9st 2, cigarettes 3 (v.g.), alcohol units 4, calories 1,326, Instants 0 (excellent), 1471 calls 6 (bad)
Hurray. Managed to persuade Perpetua to let me stay at home to read sub-Birdsong rip-off Second World War romance manuscript. Certain she only agreed because she wants to sunbathe and watch Wimbledon, too. Only problem being, it seems I actually have to read the moronic manuscript, as she wants to "discuss it" - ie, test me on it - first thing tomorrow. Hopeless, as cannot stay awake for more than a few moments at a time. Felt if John Redwood proposed national siesta between 12 and 4 he would walk it.
6pm Just called Jude, who was furious with me as had just come in from work and was about to call 1471 to see if her ex-boyfriend Richard had called and now my number will be stored instead. Jude says she does not like 1471 any more as it is exploitation by British Telecom of the addictive personalities and relationship breakdowns endemic among the British populace and she is calling it seven or eight times a day. Also, she says, if you have just split up with, or started sleeping with, someone, it doubles misery potential when you come home: no-number-stored-on-1471-misery to add to no-message-on-answerphone-misery, or number-stored-turning-out-to-be-Mother's.
Jude says that in America the 1471 equivalent tells you all the numbers mat have rung you since last time you checked, and how many times. Shudder with horror at the thought of own obsessive calling of Daniel's number in early days being exposed in this way. The good thing over here is that if you dial 150 before you ring, it stops your number being stored on the other person's phone. Jude says you have to be careful, though, because if you are stalking
someone obsessively and you ring when they are in, then ring off and no number is stored, they might guess it was you. Must make sure Daniel does not find out about any of this. It is all too enjoyable when he does not know. Oh, I really want to go mini-breaking this weekend. It would be so lovely, lying on some grassy riverbank in the sunshine, snogging lazily with Daniel and sipping Pimm's, or maybe even hi a small boat, with Daniel rowing and me in a long dress possibly from Ghost.
Saturday 1 July
(Or rather Sunday 2am. In kitchen having cigarette, worrying about relationship.)
Huh. Daniel said we could not go away for the weekend as he had to work today, then spent all afternoon in my living-room in his underpants with the curtains closed, watching Wimbledon, drinking cans of Foster's and smoking Marlboros. Sometimes he can be such a... Well, tonight, for example, we went to a party at one of his Mend's, Wicksy, whom I did not know, where there was no one I knew, so I ended up doing a lot of tagging along after Daniel. At one point we went over to join Wicksy and a very pretty girl he was talking to, who, I noticed, looked a bit funny when we approached.
"Daniel," said Wicksy, "have you met Vanessa?"
"Hi," said Daniel, putting on his most flirtatious seductive grin and holding out his hand. "Nice to meet you... Vanessa."
"Daniel," said Vanessa, folding her arms and looking absolutely livid. "We've slept together."
Sunday 9 July
8st 13, cigarettes 25, alcohol units 6 (Daniel's fault), calories 600 (inspired by marvellous example of Nigel Lawson losing four stones, my new lord and guru), minutes spent looking at brochures: long-haul 45, mini-break 87
This afternoon Daniel settled down as usual with the curtains drawn to flick between the tennis and the cricket, idly sticking his hand down my bra now and again, as if my right bosom was one of those
fabric frogs-cum-bean bags which old ladies put on the chair arm to fiddle with. I had to eat an entire bag of tortilla chips to stop myself yelling out, "Why can't we go away together?"
The whole subject of holidays has become an absurd taboo now. I have to pretend I hate holidays; that the last thing I want to do is go on holiday; that if I ever went on another holiday again it would be too soon.
I hate this. I feel a colossal failure. How can it be a proper relationship if Daniel and I are not going on holiday this summer, anc haven't even been mini-breaking yet?
The trouble with my fantasy life is it's like a dammed-up stream. If it's blocked one way, it will just trickle out another, and will soon be flowing freely and happily again. No sooner had the holiday to Bali been firmly vetoed than I started obsessing wildly about mini-breaking. (Odd how mini-break fantasies naturally tailor themselves to the love object. With my last boyfriend, Arthur, I obsessed about mini-breaks to simple flagstone-floored pubs in mountainous areas. Somehow Daniel requires a mini-break fantasy on a much grander scale. Nothing short of a country house hotel - no, a country-stately-home-hotel fantasy is suitable for Daniel.)
Eventually, after sitting in semi-darkness for the second weekend running on the hottest, loveliest Sunday of the year watching the most boring tennis match in the history of man, I suddenly blurted out,
"Why can't we go on a mini-break? Why? Why? Why?"
'That's a good idea," said Daniel, mildly, taking his hand out of my dress. "Why don't you book somewhere for next weekend? Nice country-house hotel. I'll pay."
9pm After Daniel had gone, the phone rang. It was my father, speaking in a weird, disconnected voice, almost as if he were a dalek. "Bridget. Turn your television set to BBC1." I switched channels and lurched in horror. It was a trailer for the Anne and Nick show and there, frozen in a video-effect diamond between Anne and Nick on the sofa, was my mother, all bouffed and made-up as if she was Katie Bloody Boyle.
"Nick," said Anne pleasantly.
"... and we'll be introducing our new summer slot," said Nick.
"Suddenly Single - a dilemma being faced by a growing number of women. Anne."
"And introducing our spanking new presenter, Pam Jones," said Anne.
'Suddenly Single herself and making her TV debut."
While Anne was speaking, my mother unfroze with the diamond, which started whooshing towards the front of the screen, obscuring Anne and Nick and revealing, as it did so, that my mother was thrusting a microphone under the nose of a mousy-looking woman.
"Have you had suicidal thoughts?" bellowed my mother.
"Yes," said the mousy woman and burst into tears, at which point the picture froze, turned on its end and whizzed off into one corner to reveal Anne and Nick on the sofa again looking sepulchral.
Dad was devastated. Mum hadn't even told him about the TV presenting job. It seems he is in denial and has convinced himself mum is just having an end-of-life crisis and that she already realises she has made a mistake but is too embarrassed to ask to come back.
Actually, I'm all for denial. You can convince yourself of any scenario you choose and it keeps you happy as a sandboy - as long as your ex-partner doesn't pop up on your television screen forging a new career out of not being married to you any more.
I tried rather feebly to pretend it didn't mean there was no hope, and that mum might be planning their reunion as a really grabby end to the series, but it didn't wash.
Poor dad. I don't think he knows anything about Julio or the man from the tax office.
He asked me if I was around next weekend and I felt like a child murderer. I remember only too well that the worst thing about being Suddenly Single is the way everybody else in the whole world is doing something nice next weekend except you. I asked him if he'd like me to cancel but he said it's alright. The Alconburys are holding an Olde English supper in the garden on Saturday for the Lifeboat.
Tuesday 11 July
8st 12lb (v.g.), alcohol units 0 (but only Want), cigarettes 5, calories 450, minutes spent looking at mini-break brochures 135
Feel personally touched and flattered by the Pope's open letter to We women, apologising for the way We have been treated throughout history. See myself alone with the Pope wearing a brave, but tearful smile, saying "It was difficult at times but... we muddled through"
and then breaking down in his arms.
Also find myself imagining the Thelma & Louise-style remake in 2010 with a female Pope sending an open letter to All Men apologising for the way they have been treated for the last 10 years but unfortunately omitting to mention the fact that the ban on male priests will be remaining intact.
Oh I am so excited about the mini-break. But should it be Thornbury Castle or Amberley?
Saturday 15 July
Sst 12, cigarettes 23, alcohol units 6. Minutes spent looking at brochure 52 (bizarre, in spite of actually being on mini-break).
2pm
Humph. By Wednesday, Daniel was so sick of me obsessing about the mini-break that he refused to look at any more brochures. How could he expect me not to be excited? For once we were going to enjoy the heatwave, instead of watching the cricket with the curtains drawn. Why is it that men have not learnt to choose holidays from brochures yet, in the way that many of them have learnt to cook or sew? The responsibility was hideous. Wovingham Hall seemed ideal — tasteful without being over-formal, with four-posters, a lake and even a fitness centre not to go in, but what if Daniel didn't like it?
In fact, he decided the place was "nouveau" from the moment we arrived because there were three Rolls-Royces parked outside, one of them yellow. I was fighting a sinking realisation that it was suddenly freezing cold and I had packed for 90-degree heat as follows: swimsuits 2, bikinis 1; long floaty white dress; Elizabeth Hurley ladybird motif sundress; 1 pair trailer-park-trash pink jelly mules; 1 tea-rose pink suede minidress; silk teddy; bras, pants (various). There was a crack of thunder as I teetered, shivering, after Daniel to find the foyer stuffed with bridesmaids and men in cream suits and discover that we were the only guests staying in the hotel who were not in the wedding party.
"Chuh. Isn't it dreadful what's happening in Srebrenica," I chattered maniacally to try and put our problems in proportion. 'To be honest, I never feel I've quite pinned down what's going on in
Bosnia. I thought the Bosnians were the ones in Sarajevo and the Serbs were attacking them, so who are the Bosnian Serbs?"
"Well, if you spent less time reading brochures and more time reading the papers, you might know," smirked Daniel.
"So what is going on?" I said, in a pathetic manner which instantly annoyed me, practically putting my head on one side and sticking my forefinger in my mouth.
"God, look at that bridesmaid's..." said Daniel.
Suddenly I had the unmistakable feeling that Daniel was trying to change the subject.
"Are the Bosnian Serbs the same lot who were attacking Sarajevo?" I asked.
Silence.
"Whose territory is Srebrenica in, then?"
"Srebrenica is a safe area," said Daniel in deeply patronising tones.
"So how come the people from the safe area were attacking before?" I said.
"Shut up," said Daniel.
"Just tell me if the Bosnians in Srebrenica are the same lot as the ones in Sarajevo."
"Muslims," said Daniel triumphantly.
"Serbian or Bosnian?"
"Look, will you shut up."
"You don't know what's going on in Bosnia, either."
"I do."
"You don't."
"I do."
At this point the commissionaire, who was dressed in knickerbockers, white socks, patent buckled shoes, a frock coat and a powdered wig, leant over and said: "I think you'll find the former inhabitants of Srebrenica and of Sarajevo are Bosnian Muslims, sir," adding pointedly, "Will you be requiring a newspaper in the morning at all?" I swear to God, I thought Daniel was going to hit him. I found myself stroking his arm, murmuring, "OK now, easy, easy," as if he was a racehorse with rabies.
5.30pm
Having spent so long imagining lying by lakes hi hot sun wearing a long floaty dress, I ended up blue with cold in a rowing boat with one
of the hotel bath towels wrapped round me. Eventually, we gave up t< retire to our room for a hot bath and Lemsip, discovering en route tha another couple were to be sharing the vast dining-room with us that evening - half of which was a girl called Eileen whom Daniel had slept with twice, inadvertently bitten dangerously hard on the breast and never spoken to since.
As I emerged from my bath, Daniel was lying on the bed giggling. "I've got a new diet for you," he said. "So you do think I'm fat?" I said. "OK, that's it," he said. "It's very simple. All you do is not eat any food which you have to pay for. So at the start of the diet you're a bit porky and no one takes you out to dinner. Then you lose weight and get a bit leggy and shag-me hippy and people start taking you out to dinner. So then you put a few pounds on, the invitations tail off and you start losing weight again."
"Daniel!" I exploded. "That's the most appalling sexist, fattist, cynical thing I've ever heard."
"Oh, don't be absurd, Bridget," he said. "It's the logical extension of what you really think. I keep telling you nobody wants legs like a stick insect. They want a bottom they can park a bike in and balance a pint of beer on."
I was torn between a gross image of myself with a bicycle parked in my bottom and a pint of beer balanced on it, fury at Daniel for his blatantly provocative sexism and an awful suspicion that he might be right about my concept of my body in relation to men.
'I'll just pop the telly on," said Daniel, taking advantage of my temporary speechlessness to press the remote-control button and moving towards the curtains, which were those thick hotel ones with blackout lining. Seconds later, the room was in complete darkness apart from the flickering light of the cricket, Daniel had lit a fag and was calling down to room service for six cans of Foster's.
"Do you want anything, Bridge?" he said, "Cream tea, maybe? I'll pay."
Friday 21 July
8st 13, alcohol units 4 ( modest), cigarettes 21 (fine), instants 4 (a mere nothing)
At four o'clock in the office, just when Perpetua was breathing down my neck so she didn't end up late for her weekend in Gloucestershire
at the Trehearnes', the phone rang. "Hello, darling" - my mother -"How are you, I've been so worried about you." So worried that she hasn't rung me for two weeks. "Listen. I've got the most marvellous opportunity for you."
"What?" I muttered sulkily.
"You're going to be on television," she gushed as I crashed my head on to the desk. "I'm coming round with the crew at 10 o'clock tomorrow. Oh darling, aren't you thrilled?"
"Mother. If you're coming round to my flat with a TV crew, I won't be in it."
"But you must," she said icily.
"No," I said, but then a horrible vanity got the better of me, "Why, anyway?"
"Oh, darling," she cooed, "They're wanting someone younger for me to interview on Suddenly Single, someone pre-menopausal and suddenly single who can talk about, well, you know, darling, the pressures of impending childlessness and so on."
"I'm not pre-menopausal, mother," I exploded. "And I'm not Suddenly Single, either. I'm suddenly part of a couple."
"Yes, but you were Suddenly Single until five weeks ago," she hissed. I could hear office noises in the background.
"I wasn't."
"You were."
"I wasn't. I was Single, but I wasn't Suddenly. I hadn't had a boyfriend for 18 months," I said, suddenly glancing over my shoulder at Perpetua, who was smirking.
"Oh please, darling. I've told them I've found someone."
"No."
"Oh pleeeeeese. I've never had a career all my life and now I'm in the autumn of my days and I need something for myself," she gabbled as if reading from a cue card.
"Someone I know might see. Anyway, won't they notice I'm your daughter?"
There was a pause. I could hear her talking to someone in the background. Then she came back and said, "We could blot out your face."
"What? Put a bag over it? Thanks a lot."
"Silhouette, darling, silhouette. Oh please, Bridget. Remember, I gave you the gift of life. Where would you be without me? Nowhere. Nothing. A dead egg. A piece of space."
The thing is I've always, secretly, rather fancied being on
television.
Saturday 22 July
9st 3 (why? from where?), alcohol units 7 (Saturday), cigarettes 27 (positively restrained considering), number of correct lottery numbers 0
The crew had trodden a couple of wine glasses into the carpet before they'd been in the house 30 seconds, but I'm never too fussed about that sort of thing. It was when one of them staggered in shouting "Mind your backs", carrying an enormous light, bellowed, "Ere Trev, where do you want this brute?" then overbalanced, crashed the light through the glass door of my drinks cupboard and stepped in a vase which was standing by the rubbish bin, then knocked over an open bottle of extra virgin olive oil on to my River Cafe Cookbook, that I realised what I'd done. Three hours after they arrived they were still crashing around saying, "Can I just cheat you this way a bit, love?" By the time we finally got going with mother and I sitting opposite each other in semi-darkness, it was nearly half past one.
"And tell me," she was saying in a caring, understanding voice I'd never heard before, "when your husband left you, did you have..." she was almost whispering now, "suicidal thoughts?"
I stared at her incredulously.
"I know this is painful for you. If you feel you're going to break down, we can stop a moment," she said hopefully.
I was too livid to speak. What husband?
"I mean it must be a terrible time, with no partner on the horizon, hearing that biological clock ticking away," she said, kicking me under the table. I kicked her back. She jumped and let out a little noise.
"Don't you want a child?" she said, handing me a tissue.
At this point there was a loud snort of laughter from the back of the room. I had thought it would be fine Daniel staying in the bedroom because he never wakes up till after lunch on Saturdays and I'd put his cigarettes on the pillow next to him. "If me and Bridge had a kid she'd lose it in three days - she'd leave it in the off-licence," he guffawed. "Hey, hon, haven't we got any beer in? Hi Mrs Jones. Bridge, why can't you get all done up on Saturdays like your Mum?"
Monday 24 July
Humph. Daniel was awful all weekend. My Mum is not speaking to either of us for humiliating her and exposing her as a fraud in front of her crew, but she seems to have got away with it. At least she might leave us alone for a bit now.
Very excited by the Home Office's new mathematical equation to work out whether offenders will reoffend. Feel similar equation should be applied to potential boyfriends - begin with 100, subtract age of offender, divide by four if over 30, divide by number of ex-partners, subtract square root of the number of daily alcohol units, multiply by number of abandoned children or pregnant partners times pie to the power of four, subtract five for relationships ended by fax or answerphone message, divide by four for each previous girlfriend who is not speaking to them. If the score is less than 20,1 will probably end up going out with them.
Friday 28 July
8st 12, circumference of thighs 18 inches (honestly, what is the bloody point), alcohol units 3 (but v. pure sort of wine), cigarettes 7 (but did not inhale), calories 1,500 (good, but wrong things), teas 0, coffees 3 (but made with real coffee beans thus less cellulite-inducing)
Determined, now, to free self's thighs of cellulite. Have embarked on detoxification programme involving no tea, no coffee, no alcohol, no white flour, no milk and what was it? Oh well. No fish maybe. Anyway, what you have to do is dry-skin brushing for five minutes every morning then a 15-minute bath containing anti-cellulite essential oils, during which one kneads one's cellulite in manner of dough, followed by massaging more anti-cellulite oil into the cellulite.
This last bit puzzles me - does the anti-cellulite oil soak into the cellulite through the skin? In which case, if you put self-tanning lotion on, does that mean you get suntanned cellulite inside? Or sun-tanned blood? Or a suntanned lymphatic drainage system? Urgh. Anyway I am very excited about the new programme. (Cigarettes. That was the
other thing. No cigarettes. Oh well. Too late now. I'll do that tomorrow.)
Need to find new form of exercise. Gym membership, though expensive, does not seem really to be working out. Have only been twice in the past six months, both times to buy a sandwich. Fully intend to go three times a week but it seems such a horrible idea when it comes to it. The men grunt when they are lifting weights and wear silly little slippery shiny shorts, often with loose legs and nothing underneath.
11.15 Perpetua is in Siena so have been working at home this week, but now Friday has come, realise little has been achieved. Anti-cellulite programme is taking up good bit of time, obviously, but does not account for loss of entire week, though it has been hot. Resolve to concentrate for next two hours. Or maybe more useful to make time and motion study of work pattern.
11.25 Notice middle nail on right hand a touch on the scratchy side.
11.25-11.30 go into fantasy of how pleasantly different it would be having sex if did not have cellulite on thighs - could move around room freely and naturally instead of draping weird things that come to hand round nether regions and reversing out of doorway. Also could absolutely assume position of choice during activity instead of avoiding any cellulite revelatory ones.
11.30-11.35 Start having paranoid fantasy for no reason about Daniel having an affair with someone else. Think up dignified, but cutting, remarks.
11.35 to 11.40 Bit of work.
11.40 Nail really is scratchy. Decide if I don't do something about it, I'll start picking at it and next thing I'll have no fingernail left. Resolve to go find emery board. Come to think of it, nail varnish generally is looking a bit scrotty. Need to take it all off and start again. Get up, which involves unplugging laptop, taking feet off chair, unplugging fan, moving chair, knock over coffee. Go fetch cloth to mop up coffee.
11.45-12.30 Suddenly remember how fed up I am that Daniel will not
come on holiday with me. Call Tom (emergency: psychological crisis). Tom says it is much more fun to go on holiday with somebody you are not having a relationship with because if you go on holiday with someone you are having a relationship with, particularly in the early stages, you spend the whole time worrying about how the relationship is going, instead of just enjoying being in a lovely place. So maybe he and I should go together. It is far better to go with a few chums, he says, then you can have a hoot over dinner.
Apart from sex, I say. Apart from sex, he agrees. Holidays are very expensive, he adds. It's not just the holiday itself, it's all the things you end up buying at the airport - films in packets of three when 36 photos of one holiday is enough for anyone but you end up taking 108 photos and having to have 108 photos developed. Also it is stupid taking so many pictures on holiday because when you are old, the thing you will really want is to have pictures of everyday life. Arrange to meet Tom tonight with brochures to plan fantasy, or phantom, holiday.
12.30 Decide to go see if any brochures have come in second post. Nothing.
12.35 Shorts and T-shirt are too hot and uncomfortable. Resolve to change into long floaty dress. Put long floaty dress on. Unfortunately, pants show through dress. Decide to change into different pants, although no one in house to see see-through dress pant gaffe. Cannot find requisite flesh-coloured pants.
12.45 Put washing in and make do with visible pants in meantime. 12.55 Remember about nail varnish.
12.59 Return to work station with emery board, nail varnish remover pads, cotton wool, nail varnish. Is toe-nail varnish sexy or common?
1.00 Lunch time!
2pm OK, this afternoon I am really going to work and get everything done before the weekend. V. sleepy though. It's so hot. Maybe I'll just close my eyes for five minutes. Catnaps are said to be an excellent way of reviving oneself. Maybe I'll lie down on the bed.
7.30pm Oh bloody hell.
Thursday 3 August
14st (most likely), alcohol units 90, cigarettes 500 (feels like), calories 4 bloody million.
11.45pm Huh. Just got back from dinner party with ego size of lentil. It was me, four married couples and Jeremy's brother (forget it, Red braces and face. Calls girls "fillies"). They obviously didn't know any unmarried girls to make up the numbers in the entire world except me. "So," bellowed Jeremy, pouring me a drink, " How's your love life?"
Gurgh! Why can't Smug Marrieds understand this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-all it was when you were 22 and that the honest answer is more likely to be "non-existent" or "actually last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little angora crop top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/ commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than "Super, thanks."
One of the best things about finally having a boyfriend was having a showy-offy reply ready. But unfortunately things have been going rather badly with me and Daniel this week and I'm not sure whether we're still going out or not. Not being a natural liar, I ended up mumbling shamefacedly to Jeremy, "fine" at which point he boomed
"So, you still haven't got a chap! Bridget! What are we going to do with you!"
"Yes why aren't you married yet Bridget?" sneered Woney (baby talk for Fiona), the wife of Jeremy's best friend Cosmo, with a thin veneer of concern while stroking her pregnant stomach.
Why do they do this? Maybe the Smug Marrieds only mix with other Smug Marrieds and don't know how to relate to individuals any more. Maybe they really want to patronise us and make us feel like freaks. Or maybe they're in such a sexual rut that they think, "There's a whole other world out there" and hope for vicarious thrills by getting us to tell them the roller-coaster details of our sex lives.
"Seriously," said Woney, "why aren't you married?"
"Because I don't want to end up like you, you fat, boring, Sloaney milch cow", was what I should have said, or "Because if I had to cook Cosmo's dinner then get into the same bed as him just once, let alone every night, I'd tear off my own head and eat it", or "Because actually, Woney, underneath my clothes, my entire body is covered in scales." But I didn't, because ironically enough I didn't want to hurt her feelings, and merely simpered apologetically, at which point Jeremy piped up "well, you know, once you get past a certain age..." "Exactly. All the decent chaps have been snapped up," said Cosmo, slapping his fat stomach and smirking so that his jowls wobbled.
At dinner, Magda had placed me, in an incestuous sex-sandwich sort of way between Jeremy and his crasher of a brother. "You really ought to hurry up and get sprogged up you know, old girl," said Jeremy, pouring a quarter of a pint of '78 Pauillac straight down his throat. "Time's running out."
By this time I'd had a good half-pint of '78 Pauillac myself. "Is it one in three marriages which end in divorce or one in two Jeremy?" I slurred with a pointless attempt at sarcasm.
"Seriously old girl," he said, ignoring me, "office is full of them, single girls over 30 - fine physical specimens. Can't get a chap." "That's not a problem I have, actually," I breathed, waving my fag in the air.
"Ooh. Tell us more," said Woney.
"So who is it, then?" said Cosmo.
"Getting a bit of a shag, old girl?" said Jeremy. All eyes turned to me, beadily. Mouths open, slavering.
"It's none of your business," I said hoity-toitily.
"So she hasn't got a man!" crowed Cosmo.
"Oh my God it's 11 o'clock," said Woney. "The babysitter," and they all leapt to their feet and started getting ready to go home. "Will you be OK, Bridget?" said Magda pityingly. "Actually, I'm going to, like this, club right?" I said, lurching out in the street. "Thanks, for a really great evening." Then I got into a taxi and burst into tears.
00.10 Just called Sharon. "You should have said I'm not married because I'm a Singleton, you smug, prematurely ageing, narrow-minded morons," she ranted. "And because there's more than one bloody way to live; one in four households are single, most of the Royal Family are single, the nation's young men have been proved by surveys to be completely unmarriageable and as a result there's a
whole generation of single girls like me with their own incomes and homes who have lots of fun and don't need to wash anyone else's socks. We'd be as happy as sandboys if people like you didn't conspire to make us feel stupid just because you're jealous." "Bastards!" I shouted happily. "Bloody bastards!"
00.30 Blimey. Daniel just rang. "Bridge," he slurred, "I love you. Say you won't leave me."
"No," I said sulkily.
"Will you marry me?" he said.
"Ooooh, yes please," I said, rather too quickly. At which point he burst into tears and said, "My wife, my wife" and put the phone down. What does this mean? Was he feeling so sentimental about the idea of me as his wife that he couldn't speak any more? Or has he jus! remembered he's already married? Am I engaged? To Daniel? Oh my God. What have I done?
Monday 14 August
8st 12 (estimate), cigarettes 16 (g.), alcohol units 6, calories 3,845 (bad)
Humph. Daniel shot off early this morning to go home and change before work (nobody in the office knows we're having an affair). I woke in a panic at 9.45am, rushed to get weighed, spotted myself in the mirror and screamed. In the middle of my neck was the biggest love-bite you've ever scene. It had the surface area of a Mars Bar icecream, but more the shape and colouring of a smattering of Mac blusher.
Bloody Daniel. I bet he thought it was really funny. I stood quivering on the scales, trying to remember what to do. Love-bites used to be all the rage but somehow they have completely slipped out of fashion, to the point where they are plainly unacceptable. The last time I had one I was in the sixth form and it was Abnor Rimmington off the bus. What was I supposed to do? A polo-necked jumper? But the temperature was 90 degrees so I started rifling through my drawers in the illogical hope that an Hermes scarf might have clambered in there unnoticed and I could bring off a sort of Angela Rippon-meets-air-hostess-scarfy look that might cover it up. Then I remembered the toothpaste trick - covering the love-bite in toothpaste
to seal it in, putting a layer of Rimmel Hide and Heal on top, then smoothing the whole area - including the rest of the neck - with foundation. If anyone noticed, you said you had bumped into a lamppost.
It was 10.45am when I had finished and the result was really rather impressive
Unfortunately, however, by 10.46am the love-bite was emerging from behind the toothpaste like a midday equatorial sun from behind a light cloud. There is no way I am going to work with this on me. A PE mistress and one from Abnor Rimmington is one thing, but Perpetua, and, in effect, one from the headmaster is another altogether. Right, I am going to bloody well ring Daniel at work and give him what for.
Later. Daniel is being completely Japanese about this. He won't apologise. Or at least, he has apologised but I consider his apology inadequate. Furthermore, he is not accepting responsibility for what he has done. And I am not at all sure how sorry he is.
His initial response was to roar with laughter and say, "But, Bridge, I'm sure it looks absolutely lovely. You could start a new trend. You're a publicist. Why don't you place some articles in the newspaper? 'Whatever happened to the Love-bite?' 'Suddenly there are more Love-bites everywhere!!' You'll be in the very van of fashion. Everyone will want one. Linda Evangelista will..."
"All right, shut up," I muttered. "It's not funny, and I'm not coming into work. So you'd better apologise, now and then get me out of trouble with Perpetua."
"But it's not my fault."
"Yes it is. You did it on purpose."
"I did not. I was carried away with passion. Actually, it's your fault for inflaming me to such a point where I was no longer responsible for my actions."
"I insist you apologise," I hissed.
"I am sorry you feel embarrassed by the love-bite, but I did not know I was doing it," he parroted sulkily. Eventually, he got his secretary to tell Perpetua I had called in sick. Sometimes I think he does not realise how difficult it is to keep our affair secret in the office. It is all right for him, but there is something so cliched and pathetic about sleeping with one's boss that no one must know. He says everyone knows anyway, which is complete garbage.
After I put the phone down, though, I started to wonder about what he had said about bringing love-bites back into fashion. Do people
always do the same things in bed throughout the ages, or do different activities suddenly become all the rage? If models in magazines and shampoo adverts suddenly all started having love-bites on their necks would everyone start sucking each other's necks like mad?
Tuesday 15 August
9st 5 (why? why?), cigarettes 23, alcohol units 7 (Tom's fault), calories 1,574 (v.g.)
Began day in shock. Tom called last night in a complete panic because three people had rung him up in 24 hours wanting a gay godfather for their babies - which is apparently all the rage since the Canon of Hampshire banned it and he'd gone and said yes to all of them out of uncertainty of etiquette.
"They spring it on you as if they're offering you a knighthood, and how can you say no?" he said. "Instead, they're just asking you for a lifetime of presents and free babysitting. I feel like I've got pregnant with triplets. What do you think I should wear for the christening? How about a sort of naval look with a captain's hat and little boxy jacket?"
He was so absorbed by the outfit question it took him 45 minutes to get round to dropping his bombshell. Apparently, he saw Jude going into a restaurant in Notting Hill on Saturday night, holding hands with my father. By this morning, the love-bite, faded and imperceptible under its toothpaste, seemed the least of my worries next to the fact that my father may be sleeping with my second-best friend. That was until I got into the office.
"Bridget," Perpetua yelled at the top of her voice. "You've got a love-bite on your neck! No wonder Daniel was looking so shagged out yesterday."
Thursday 17 August
9st 3 (but had drunk 1 litre of mineral water directly before weighing = 2lb approx), cigarettes 0, Hamlet Cigarillos 22 (substitution experiment —failure, clearly), alcohol units 4, instants 2
2am Cannot sleep. Knowing Tom as I do, when he thought he saw my second-best friend walking into a restaurant hand in hand with my
father last Saturday he was probably so busy obsessing about whether his dark brown Timberlands were working with the white Levi's that in reality it was Bonnie Langford about to have a business meeting with Trevor McDonald. Nevertheless, the sickening suspicion that Dad and Jude are in the dizzying throes of a new affair has lodged in a particularly sensitive area of my stomach like a determined, long-staying house guest. It is one of those rumours which throw up such a web of tiny, unconscious past observations and instincts that you immediately sense that it's true. God. Surely not. Surely they won't try and do this behind my back? But then, if it is true, and they don't, they'll have to break the news to me in some indescribable way. Have sickening vision of being summoned to meet them in Cafe Rouge, finding them smiling coyly at each other and Jude saying, "Bridget, Daddy and I have something to tell you..."
No wonder I haven't heard from bloody Jude for two weeks. Sharon seems to be avoiding me also. It is clearly a conspiracy.
Friday 18 August
9st 1 (thus proving litre of water theory), cigarettes 25, alcohol units 9 (Friday night with Daniel: inevitable), calories 3,874
6pm Just got home and called Tom who can't get hold of Jude or Sharon either.
"You know what makes me really furious?" I said. "Most things?" said Tom.
"It's just that there is no way, in a million, trillion years, that one of my male friends in their thirties would end up having an affair with my mum. Life is so bloody unfair for women. Look at all those absurd 30-year-old-woman-conceives-powerful-attraction-for-70-year-old-man movies like that bloody stupid Indecent Proposal and In the Line of Fire. It makes me want to puke up. Just fat old male studio-owners hoping life will mimic art. Huh. In their dreams. I'd like to see a film where a lithe 30-year-old man gets a monster crush on bloody Miss Daisy and starts a torrid affair."
"Bridget," said Tom. "Can I borrow your black Levi's tomorrow night?"
Honestly. There is no way he would fit into them. Better start
lengthy body-grooming process as Daniel will be round in 45 minutes.
2am Cannot sleep again. Woke up in floods of tears from a hideous recurring dream I have where I'm sitting A-level French and realise as I turn over the paper that I have forgotten to do any revision and I'm wearing nothing except my domestic-science apron, trying desperately to pull it round me so Miss Hand won't see that I'm wearing no pants. I expected Daniel to at least be sympathetic. I know it's all to do with my worries about where my career is leading me, but he just lit himself a cigarette and asked me to run over the bit about me domestic-science apron again.
"It's all right for you with your bloody Cambridge First," I whispered, sniffing. "I'll never forget the moment when I looked at the noticeboard and saw a D next to French and knew I couldn't go to Manchester. It altered the course of my whole life."
"You should thank your lucky stars, Bridge," he said, lying on his back and blowing smoke at the ceiling. "You'd probably have married some crashing Geoffrey Boycott character and spent the rest of your life cleaning out the whippet cage. Anyway..." he started laughing, "there's nothing wrong with a degree from... from..." (he was so amused now he could hardly speak) "Bangor."
"Right, that's it, I'm sleeping on the sofa," I yelled, jumping out of bed.
"Hey, don't be like that, Bridge," he said, pulling me back. "You know I think you're a... an intellectual giant. You just need to learn how to interpret dreams."
"What's the dream telling me then?" I asked sulkily. "That I haven't fulfilled my potential intellectually?"
"Well, not exactly."
"What, then?"
"Well, I think the pantless apron is a pretty obvious symbol, isn't it?"
"What?"
"It means that the vain pursuit of an intellectual life is getting in the way of your true purpose."
"Which is what?"
"Well, to cook all my meals for me, of course darling," he said, beside himself at his own amusingness, again, "and to walk around my flat with no pants on."
Monday 21 August
9st 5 (Right. This has gone too far. This is how obesity begins), cigarettes 12 (excellent), alcohol units 0 (Scarsdale diet), calories 1,200 (Scarsdale diet plus one chocolate croissant consumed before weighing revealed necessity for diet)
Came in from work to three answerphone messages.
1. From Dad, inviting me and Daniel to a Tarts and Vicars party in the Alconburys' garden next Sunday and saying he has a surprise for me.
2. From Mum, asking me if I think it will be all right to take Julio to the Alconburys' Tarts and Vicars party.
3. From my friend Simon, asking me for my mum's phone number.
Tuesday 22 August
Can't decide whether to go to Edinburgh. Loads of people are going, but I'm supposed to be at the Alconburys' Tarts and Vicars party on Sunday. Also, everyone will be more successful and having a better time than me.
Wednesday 23 August
Definitely going to Edinburgh. Una Alconbury called - ostensibly to tell me Geoffrey's in a state about people seeing his buddleia because of the hosepipe ban so they're delaying the Tarts and Vicars until the 2nd - but actually to say, "So, when are you going to get yourself married, then?" Also Daniel is working.
Thursday 24 August
I'm staying in London. I always think I'm going to enjoy going to Edinburgh, then end up only being able to get into the mime acts. Also, you dress for summer, then it's freezing cold and you have to teeter shivering for miles up cobblestone precipices, thinking everyone else is at a big party.
Friday 25 August
7pm I am going to Edinburgh. Today Perpetua said, "Bridget, this is absurdly short notice, but it's just occurred to me, I've taken a flat up there - I'd adore it if you wanted to stay..." So generous and hospitable of her.
10pm Just called Perpetua and told her I'm not coming. It's all stupid I can't afford it.
Saturday 26 August
830am Right, I'm going to have a quiet, healthy time at home. Lovely. I might finish The Famished Road.
9am Oh God, I'm so depressed. Everybody's gone to Edinburgh except me.
9.15am I wonder if Perpetua's left yet?
-                                                                        •
Midnight - Edinburgh
Oh God. I must go to see something tomorrow. Perpetua thinks I'm mad. She spent the entire train journey with the portable phone pressed to her ear, bellowing at the rest of us, "Arthur Smith's Hamlet is completely booked up, so we could go to the Coen brothers instead at five, but that means we'll be too late for Richard Herring. So shall we not go to Jenny Eclair... Chuh! I frankly I don't know why she still bothers - and do Lanark, then try to get into Harry Hill or Bondages and Julian Clary. Hang on, I'll try the Gilded Balloon. No, Harry Hill's booked up, so shall we skip the Coen brothers?"
I said I'd meet them at the Pleasance at six because I wanted to go to the George Hotel and leave a message for Tom, and I bumped into Tina in the bar. I didn't realise how far it was to the Pleasance, and when I got there it had started and there were no seats left. Secretly relieved, I walked or rather abseiled back to the flat, picked up a lovely jacket potato with a chicken curry and watched Casualty. I was supposed to meet Perpetua at the Assembly Rooms at nine. By the time I was ready it was 8.45, but I didn't realise you couldn't ring out on the phone, so I couldn't book a taxi, and by the time I got there, it was too late. 1 went back to the George bar to look for Tina. I'd just got myself a Bloody Mary and was trying to pretend I didn't mind not having any friends when I noticed a flurry of lights and cameras in one corner and nearly screamed. It was my mother, done up like Marianne Faithfull and about to interview Alan Yentob. "Absolute quiet everyone!" she trilled in a Una Alconbury flower-arranging voice. "Action!!!! Tell me, Alan," she said, turning sepulchral, "Have you ever had... suicidal thoughts?" The telly's been quite good tonight, actually.
Sunday 27 August
2am Can't get to sleep. I bet they're all at a really nice party.
Sam Perpetua's back, giving her verdict on the alternative comedians. "Puerile... completely childish... just silly." I think she might have misunderstood something somewhere along the line.
5am There is a man in the house. I can just tell. 6am He's in Debby from marketing's room. Blimey.
9.30am Woken by Perpetua bellowing: "Anyone coming to the poetry reading!!" Then it all went quiet, and I heard Debby and the man whispering and him going into the kitchen. Then Perpetua's voice boomed out: "What are you doing here?!! I said NO OVERNIGHT GUESTS."
2pm Oh my God, I've overslept.
7pm - King's Cross train
Oh God... I met Tina in the George at three. We were going to go to a Question and Answer session, but we had a few Bloody Marys and remembered that Question and Answer sessions have a bad effect on us.You get hypertense trying to think up a question, putting your hand up and down, then finally get to ask it, in a semi-crouching position, and odd high-pitched voice, then sit frozen with embarrassment, nodding like a dog in the back of the car whilst a 20-minute answer is directed at you. Before we knew where we were, it was 5.30. Then Perpetua appeared with a whole bunch of people from the office.
"Ah, Bridget," she bellowed. "What have you been to see?" There was a big silence. "Actually, I'm just about to go to..." I began confidently "... get the train."
"You haven't been to see anything at all, have you?" she hooted.
"Anyway, you owe me £75 for the room." " What?" I stammered. "Yes," she yelled. "It would have been £50, but it's 50 per cent extra if there's two people in the room."
"But... but, there weren't..."
"Oh, come on, Bridget, we all knew you had a man in there," she bellowed. "Remember, dear, it isn't love, it's only Edinburgh. Don't worry, we won't tell Daniel."
Saturday 2 September
8st (v.g.), alcohol units 6 (bad), cigarettes 23, calories 2,187, number of correct lottery numbers 2 (v.g.)
I absolutely do not want to spend tomorrow at the Alconburys' Tarts and Vicars party, being greeted by Una Alconbury in thigh boots, fishnet tights and a peephole bra.
For 60-year-olds to organise such an event seems unnatural and wrong. Daniel, having promised to come, has now changed his mind. I accused him of being ashamed of my parents and their friends. He said, on the contrary, they were a source of constant happiness to him and he had been greatly looking forward to the party, but would sadly be unable to attend on aesthetic grounds as, since the invitation was issued, Tarts and Vicars has become devalued as a comic idea. I said what in the name of arse are you talking about? He said the whole joke depended on the contrast between tarts and vicars and since
David Brain and the Nine O'Clock Service scandal everyone thought vicars were tarts so there wasn't any point.
I hate Daniel. Everyone knows when you are going out with someone they are supposed to support you at hideous family occasions, and he thinks if he makes one of his so-called amusing clever jokes, he can get out of anything. Now all the Alconburys' friends will spend the entire time asking me if I've got a boyfriend yet, and no one will believe me. I'm going shopping.
7pm I don't know what's been going on in staff training, but I swear to God shop assistants are getting even worse at opening lines. I was doing a little light fantasy coat buying in Nicole Farhi, trying on my fourth one, when the girl asked brightly: "Looking for a coat?" What did she expect me to say? "No, I'm trying to find a really effective biological detergent."
Then I thought maybe she could tell there was no way I was going to buy a coat, I just wanted to try them all on. So in fact I wasn't looking for a coat and it was quite a perceptive question. I ended up going bright red, putting the coat back and leaving the shop. I didn't like them anyway. All Nicole Farhi things are made for thin giants and make me look like Bridget the fat Midget wearing a blanket.
Sunday 3 September
8st (continuing good work), alcohol units 7, cigarettes 48, calories 5,245 (sodding Una Alconbury)
12 noon Mmmm. Daniel was really sweet last night and spent ages helping me to choose my outfit for the party. Maybe I will forgive him. In fact, as a special treat I am going to leave without waking him up while pretending not to.
6pm I cannot believe what I have just been through. I drove for two hours, parked at the front of the Alconburys' and walked around the side to the garden, where I could hear voices raised in merriment, and as I started to walk across the lawn, they all went quiet. I was wearing the outfit Daniel had chosen, which was a black lacy Marks & Spencer's body, with stockings and suspenders, a French maid's-style
apron that we'd made out of two hankies and a piece of ribbon, a bow-tie and a cotton-wool rabbit's tail.
Instead of tarts and vicars, however, all the ladies were in Country Casuals calf-length floral two-pieces and the men were in slacks and V-necked sweaters. I stood there, frozen, like, well, a rabbit. Then, while everyone stared, Una Alconbury came flapping across the lawn in pleated fuchsia holding out a plastic tumbler full of bits of apple and leaves. "Bridget. Super to see you. Have a Pimm's," she said.
"What a shame you haven't brought anyone with you."
"I thought it was supposed to be a Tarts and Vicars party," I hissed.
"Oh dear, didn't Geoff call you?" she said. I couldn't believe this. I mean, did she think I dressed as a bunny girl normally or something?
"Geoff," she said, "Didn't you telephone Bridget?"
"How's-my-little-Bridget?" said Geoffrey lurching over, pissed, in a baby-yellow V-necked jumper.
"Geoffrey," said Una coldly.
"Yup, yup, all present and correct, orders obeyed, lieutenant," said Geoffrey, saluting, then collapsing on to her shoulder giggling. "But it was one of those ruddy answerphone thingumrnyjigs."
"Geoffrey," hissed Una. "Go-and-see-to-the-barbecue. I'm sorry, darling, you see we decided after the Nine O'Clock Service scandal there'd be no point having a tarts and vicars party because..." she started to laugh. "Because... everyone... everyone thought vicars were tarts anyway... oh dear," she said, wiping her eyes. "Anyway, how's your love life? When are we going to get you married off?"
I spent the party wearing a puff-sleeved Laura Ashley bridesmaid dress of Janine's in a floral sprig over my suspender outfit. There was no sign of Dad, thank God, and no one said anything, so maybe this rumour about him and my friend Jude was all just a figment of Tom's imagination. My mother was too busy supervising Julio shooting the video to do more than say, "What a pretty dress darling!" "Absolute quiet everyone," she kept trilling. "Action!!!" "Cut."
After 45 minutes I thought I could decently leave, pleading work to Una, ("You career girls! Can't put it off forever, you know: tick-tock-tick-tock.") Then, just as I got back to the main road my dad's car drove past. Sitting next to him in the front seat was Jude, wearing a red lace underwired uplift basque and two bunny ears.
Monday 4 September
8st 13, alcohol units 4, cigarettes 7 (excellent), calories 974 (offfood)
Thinking about Jude and Dad makes me want to cry. Daniel says I am being ridiculous, that I only saw them in a car together and am stuck in a provincial nuclear family mindset and should lighten up. But they weren't just in a car together, they were on the way to a party which Mum was at and Jude was wearing a red basque and bunny ears. The whole scenario breaks every rule in the book, as follows, and is unacceptable:
1. Parents should not have sex: not with each other except to bestow the gift of life and certainly not with others.
2. Parents should not prefer anyone else to you.
3. Exes (and I include my father in this category, by the way, because I am identifying closely with my mother, not because there is any question of child abuse) should never go out with or marry anyone else after you. Instead, they should remain celibate and lonely to the end of their days to boost your ego. (Though maybe there is something unnatural to do with Dad buried deep in my consciousness which only expensive therapy could get out. Maybe that is why I feel so weird about Jude. Oh, no.)
4. Sexes should be equal. Therefore it is wrong that my Dad in his sixties should be able to pull my friend in her thirties as this would not work the other way round.
5. Best friends should not form successful relationships when one is not in one oneself.
6. Friends should not do sneaky things behind one's back such as, just to give an example, shagging your father.
7. The whole thing is too humiliating. It is definitely worse than when
an ex-boyfriend marries and everybody realises it wasn't that he couldn't commit, he just didn't want to commit to you.
Tuesday 5 September
Why hasn't Mum rung? Surely this will destroy her. Jude is half her age. It is so difficult for older women in our society who feel they have outlived their power and attractiveness once they pass 50, like Germaine Greer and the Invisible Woman.
Wednesday 6 September
Mum finally called at 7.30 this morning. She must have been crying all night. "Oh, Mum - are you all right?" I said.
"Darling, you are sweet. I'm under such terrible pressure."
"Is there anything I can do?" There seemed to be rather a lot of noise in the background.
"Actually, there is something," she said brightly. "Do any of your friends have a number for Lisa Leeson. Darling? You know - Nick Leeson's wife. I've been desperate to get her for days - she'd be perfect for Suddenly Single, especially if we could screen it the day of the Frost interview."
"I was talking about Dad," I hissed.
"Dad? I'm not under pressure from Dad. Don't be silly, darling."
"But the party... and Jude."
"Oh, I know, hilarious, poor thing. Made the most absurd fool of himself trying to attract my attention, turning up with some half-formed piece of fluff dressed as a hamster or something. Honestly! Julio says women don't become remotely interesting until they've passed 55. Anyway, must run, but will you think who might have a number for Lisa? Let me give you my direct line, darling."
Thursday 7 September
9st 4 (horror, gone to seed), alcohol units 6, cigarettes 23, calories 4,526, Instants 9 (bad, but won £2, so total expenditure £7)
4pm Just had a call from Daniel. He was supposed to be away all week in Frankfurt but is coming back this afternoon and will pick me up from the office, but that means I will not have time to do anything to myself before I see him. Being a woman is worse than being a farmer - there are so many areas to be cultivated and maintained: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturised, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned that you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature - with a full beard and handlebar moustache on each shin, Denis Healey eyebrows, face a graveyard of dead skin cells, spots erupting, long curly fingernails like Struwwelpeter, flabby body flobbering around. Ugh, ugh. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence?
6pm Huh. Tried to get leg-waxing appointment in afternoon. Endecl up having to do legs with Immac in third-floor loos hoping nobody would notice the smell. Waited until coast clear then dashed out, tightiess, to rinse shins. Standing with one leg in washbasin and supporting leg still covered in Immac when Perpetua walked in.
"Ah, Bridget," she said. "Thought I'd find you in here. Daniel's oa the phone."
"Ah. Could you ask him to ring back in five minutes?" I said, taking my leg out of the washbasin in a dignified manner.
"He's about to go into a meeting. He said to tell you he's not coming home until Saturday now."
8pm Got home to a message from Dad, asking if I'd like to come out for a meal tomorrow night. Then a second message from Jude, in tears, asking if I'm free tomorrow night.
Friday 8 September
9st (easier to lose weight when Daniel is away), cigarettes 30 (worrying whether Daniel is safe in Frankfurt), alcohol unit 12 (whole alcohol problem is Daniel's fault), calories only 900 (you see), Instants 9
llam Office.
Oh God! Cannot concentrate this morning. Last night got message from Dad asking me to meet him for dinner tonight followed by message from Jude - in tears - asking me to meet her for dinner tonight. Feel awful because I know I should help - Jude being my friend, and Dad having given me the gift of life - but they might at least have told me they were sleeping together before they start asking me to be Friar Lawrence when they split up.
Anyway, how am I supposed to cheer up Jude? I can't exactly say "Bloody bastard! never liked him anyway" about my own father, can I? Wish Perpetua would stop hovering around like an enormous seagull.
11.30 Just called Tom, who says I am not assertive enough and constantly tossed about by the demands of others. He told me about an assertiveness course when everyone was asked to assemble a chair which was impossible to assemble. The men said: "It's completely absurd. Impossible to assemble," while the women all apologised for being too stupid to assemble the chair. He said Jude and Dad was an impossible situation for me to deal with and I should refuse to get involved. He is right.
11.45 Still feel guilty, though.
12.00 Just had brilliant idea. Rang Dad's answerphone and left message saying I'd see him at Cafe Rouge at 8.30. Then left a message for Jude telling her the same thing and am not going to turn up. Brilliant. So they will be thrown back together without me having to do anything.
12.10 Just rang Tom to tell him and he says I am a mindless moron. Oh, shit! How could I have been so stupid? Don't even want Dad to
be going out with Jude any way.
12.15 Perpetua has just blown her top at me for not doing any work.
llpm Humph. Spent entire afternoon dithering about situation, then left messages on both their answerphones saying I couldn't make it. Practically in tears at complication of it all.
Got home to find message from Dad saying he wouldn't be able to make it and Jude saying tonight was fine. Didn't know whether she meant fine to my first message or the second, so I went to Cafe Rouge anyway. Neither of them turned up. Returned home to message from Daniel, saying he was back early and did I want to come out for dinner to Le Caprice. Then another message saying that since I was out he was taking Perpetua.
Saturday 16 September
9st 3, alcohol units 5 (I rest my case) cigarettes 17, calories 3,200, number of correct Lottery numbers 2 (excellent)
Tonight Daniel and I went to see The Bridges of Madison County and I cried. Afterwards I was going on about how brilliant it was to have a film which was about love at the end of people's lives, and showing a woman over 40 as the love interest, but that I would now like to see a 60-year-old woman as the love interest and a man in his forties. Also it was marvellous to have a romantic hero who kept offering to do the washing up. Daniel said I was the Bridget of Madperson Ranty and it was time to shut up now or he wasn't having dinner with me. He then spent the entire meal taking the piss out of Meryl Streep's accent and fluttering hands, claiming the first thing Clint Eastwood said when he auditioned her was: "Now, you're not going to do one of your accents, are you?" I got into a sulk and said he was shallow and it wasn't nearly as bad as "I had a farm in Africa..."
When we got home I wanted to discuss it further but he put Match of the Day on and drank half a pint of whisky then fell asleep. Sometimes I think I am going to chuck Daniel and go out with
someone more sensitive who understands me, like, um, well, anyway.
Sunday 17 September
Number of serious articles read 11
Got absolutely incensed this morning in bed with the paper. Absolutely cannot believe the Government is planning to slash its aid budget to the poorest countries by 50 per cent or more. Didn't they notice from Live Aid that their voters do not want the rest of the world to starve? Idiotic bastards, out of touch with the mood of the Nineties. I told Daniel I was going to write to my MP and he asked me who that was, which unfortunately I didn't know. Glenda Jackson maybe? Or that chap who's a homosexual? Anyway, that isn't the point. Then he got all snuggly and said he hated it when I turned into a virago, and why not try on my tarts and vicars outfit to see how it looked after my diet? I said, what diet? He said, "But you've lost loads of weight." I was so surprised and delighted, I said I would try on the bunny girl outfit. As I was putting it on he started laughing and wouldn't tell me why. Eventually he said he'd distracted me from the plight of the world's starving by telling me I'd lost weight and what was it I'd said last night about him being shallow?
I think he has a point and in future I am going to be better informed and more serious-minded about world affairs.
Sunday 24 September
9st 5 (I am actually fat now. I think my thyroid has become underactive), calories 4,700, alcohol units 6, cigarettes 20, number of serious articles read 12 (but including 9 about Indian statues drinking milk)
I wonder if I am too old to be an "Underwolf"? It is such an attractive idea being a cool, rangy creature taking pride in being outside the system and not having any national identity. I must say, since I have started taking a more informed interest in politics and world affairs, I have really found it interesting. I tried to discuss the Underwolf issue with Daniel when we were reading the papers in bed. "Have you read
82
about the report on 18-to 34-year-olds from the left-wing think-tank Demos?" I began.
"No, darling," he said, in his worst pretending-to-be-excited voice.
"What does the left-wing think-tank Demos think? Is it the same as Demos the Left-Wing Think-Tank Engine?" I hate it when he gets like this. As if it is really amusing that I should have any sort of intellectual opinion about anything. It's actually extremely sexist.
I bet Kate Moss is an Underwolf. It is almost as if there is this hip parallel world going on underneath us, as if all the young people in the Calvin Klein advert were hunting in cool packs in the sewers, or a series of underground tunnels. The article also said that young women have started to think that using violence is an acceptable way of getting what you want.
"Well I think they're absolutely right, Bridge," said Daniel, and then shoved the pillow actually quite roughly - if we were in a court of law - on top of my head and put his head on it. "You see, it works. You've shut up and I can read the papers. Oh my God, Bridge. It says here you can't be an Underwolf if you weigh more than 9 stone."
Daniel, as I pointed out, is definitely too old to be an Underwolf. In fact, as I also pointed out, if Demos had to classify Danielas either an Underwolf or a Grey Panther, I don't think there would be a particularly long discussion about it.
3.10pm Daniel is watching the football as usual.
It is interesting about using violence to get what you want, though. I mean, I can see it in principle (apparently there is a Thelma and Louise copycat female robber duo going round America and everybody cheers when they do robberies). But I'm not sure how I would actually put the violent goal-seeking into practice in everyday life. I suppose, say I was shopping with Sharon and there was one pair of gun-metal grey narrow-legged PVC trousers left in a medium and we both wanted them, I would just, like, push her over and take them to the cash till.
Or, say it was a traffic warden who waits by your meter till 10 seconds past the limit and starts the ticket as you're running towards him and gives you the "I've started so I'll finish" line, you would just grab his book, tear up the ticket, and push him over.
Or say you were in a car park and...
3.30pm I have come in the kitchen as Daniel says if I don't shut up
he is going home.                .
4pm Huh. Daniel has gone home. I was really very interested by the "Indian statues taking in milk" stories. Particularly Ganesh the Elephant God. There is a delicious kind of cake icing called Chocolate Ganache. Anyway one of the experts said the miracle was connected with the hot summer followed by cold weather and terracotta.
Then I remembered I had a terracotta essential-oil burner from the Body Shop. So I fetched it, put some semi-skimmed milk in a teaspoon and offered it to the oil burner. I simply tilted the spoon and held it against the edge of the hole where you put the candle in. I couldn't believe it. The burner was taking in the milk. You could actually see the milk disappearing from the teaspoon.
It was amazing. I rushed into the living-room shouting, "Daniel come here quick! My Body Shop essential-oil burner is taking in milk!" How was I supposed to know that would be just when Lazio scored?
Tuesday 26 September
8st 13, alcohol units 5, cigarettes 41.5, calories 254 (offfood), Instants 12
Midnight I am very sad. Daniel was distant with me yesterday at work and didn't ring me in the evening. I just knew something was wrong. He didn't come in today so I rang him and left a message at lunchtime but he didn't ring me back. By 6pm, I was really worried because usually we see each other on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, so I left another message asking if he was OK and would he ring me. He didn't ring all evening. I thought maybe he was out and hadn't noticed the message.
When it got to midnight I called him and started to leave another message and he picked up the phone and said, "What is it?" in a really horrible voice which sounded as though I was just a nuisance and he didn't even like me.
He said he'd been in all evening and hadn't called back because he was working. I asked him when we were going to meet and he said he wasn't sure because he had a very busy week. And then he said, "I'll call you over the weekend."
Daniel is going to chuck me.
Monday 2 October
2am Daniel has just chucked me and left. I feel so desperate I don't know what to do.
9am Just woke and had a wonderful 30 seconds where my head felt all washed clean by sleep and then I remembered what had happened. I didn't get to sleep till six o'clock, I couldn't stop crying. He said such horrible things. Am I really that horrible? I accused him of being overimpressed by celebrities, and only wanting to split up because that's what all the smart couples are doing these days, and just because he's always had this thing about Emma Thompson there's no need to copy everything she does. And then he came out with all this stuff saying I was stupid and flippant and spent my entire time adding up calories on a calculator, doing scratchcards and feeding milk to terracotta oil-burners and never used my brain. And he wasn't even sure that I had a brain it was so long since he'd seen any evidence of it. And if I carried on this way I was going to end up as a call girl, or a fat - he actually said, " fat" - pissed Scottish housewife, smoking Woodbines and spending my entire time at the bingo.
Oh my God. He's my boss. He's probably going to sack me as well. I can't face going into work. I think I'm having a panic attack. He'll probably read out a prepared statement.
"Bridget and her brain have been drifting apart for several months, and as a result, with great sadness, I have decided to chuck and sack her." I'll arrive and he'll be standing all dishevelled on the steps in an old sweatshirt with glasses on taking questions, fluffing his lines and trying to make everyone sorry for him.
Anyway he is overinfluenced by celebrities. He's probably in a car getting a blow job from a prostitute at this very moment.
11.30am (Office. 3rd-floor toilets.) This is just... just... intolerable. Whatever possessed me to think I could have an affair at work, with my boss to boot, and get away with it? I can't deal with it out there. It's so hard stopping myself crying. I keep remembering how romantic it was when we started and it was all secret computer messages and trysts in the lift. Now it's blindingly obvious that Daniel really, really wishes I wasn't here. I'm sure everybody knows. I heard
him on the phone arranging to meet a woman tonight and he said in this intimate, confidential voice: "Not too bad... so far," and I knew he was talking about me. I'm so humiliated I feel like that little bolt that says "vacant" on the toilet door.
Tuesday 3 October
Sam Oh my God. It's Emma Thompson. Daniel's the guy that's having the affair with Emma Thompson. He used to be friends with her at Cambridge. It all makes perfect sense.
4am If only I had someone to talk to. I should have stayed at Tom's. He and Sharon were brilliant last night. Tom said: "If Daniel Cleaver turns out to be single-handedly responsible for all the fighting in Bosnia, I won't be in the least surprised." Then he said: "Er, Bridge. If you get back together, forget I said that." Maybe we will get back together, then I'll stop feeling like this. Not if he's having an affair with Emma bloody Thompson we won't, though. I'm going to get her. Julia Carling's not the only one who works in PR. I'm going to issue a very clever 79-word statement saying: "What hurts and saddens me is that this has arisen because of circumstances beyond my control. I would have thought that certain people who win Oscars and appear in films named after former foreign secretaries would have learnt their lesson by now."
Sam If only I could get some sleep. My Dad broke my heart on the phone last evening. He said: "The thing is, Bridget, when you think someone loves you it's like having cotton wool all round your heart. Then when you realise they don't any more..." and then he started to cry.
5.15am Daniel's right. I'm just useless and horrible. I am stupid and trivial. If only I could talk to someone. I'm going to ring him.
Hmm. Just seen the note Tom taped on the telephone, saying: "Do not ring Daniel or you will regret it." He's right.
5.30am I'm so miserable. I'm going to have to leave my job and then I will end up as a call girl. I'm going to ring my Mum.
10am Mum was brilliant. I'm just off to work looking like Ivana bloody Trump. I'm wearing a suit and lip-gloss.
"Darling," she said. "Of course you haven't woken me, I'm just leaving for the studio. I can't believe you've got in a state like this over a stupid man. They're all completely self-centred and no use to man nor beast. Yes that does include you, Julio. Now come along, darling. Brace up. Back to sleep. Go into work looking drop-dead gorgeous. Leave no one in any doubt that you've suddenly discovered how marvellous life is without that pompous, dissolute old fart bossing you around. And prepare to hand in your notice in a couple of weeks. Yes, darling. We're going to get you a job in television."
Monday 9 October
8st 9 (v.g.), cigarettes 25, alcohol units 5, half-hour units moping about being chucked 11 (v.g.), half-hour units crying 7 (excellent progress), calls to 1471 to see if Daniel has rung 85 (g.)
I'm falling apart. Tom took me to an opening at the Saatchi gallery to stop me obsessing about being chucked by Daniel. "Bridget," he muttered nervously as we walked into the white hole and sea of grunge youths, "you know it's unhip to laugh at installation, don't you?"
"OK, OK," I said sulkily. "I won't make any dead-fish jokes."
"No Tiwda bleedin' Swinton gags ivah." When he's with his art-school grunge friends Tom always starts talking like Grant from EastEnders. Someone called Gav said "Hi": 22 maybe, sexy, in a crop tank top, revealing a chopping board-like midriff.
"It's really, really, really, really amazing," Gav was saying. "It's, like, a sullied Utopia with these really, really, really good echoes of, like, lost hierarchies." He led us excitedly across the big white space to a toilet roll: inside out with the cardboard outside the paper.
"Roi', yeah, it's like, alienation but like, compensating with external form. Mazin'," gushed Tom. The prat.
They looked at me expectantly. Suddenly, I knew I was going to cry. Tom was now drooling over a giant bar of soap bearing the imprint of a penis. Gav was staring at me. "Wow, that is, like, a really, really, really wild..." he whispered reverently as I blinked back tears
"... response."
"Just going to the loo," I blurted, rushing away past a configuration of sanitary towel bags thinking, oh my God he's gorgeous. I wanted to kiss him. I'm turning into one of those sad, older women who gets aroused by toyboys . There was a queue outside a Portaloo, and I joined it, shaking. By the time it was my turn I was absolutely bursting. Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm. It was Daniel.
"Bridge, what are you doing here?"
"What does it look like?" I snapped, "Excuse me, I'm in a hurry." I burst into the cubicle, and was just about to get on with it, when I realised the toilet was actually a moulding of the inside of a toilet, vacuum-packed in plastic. Then Daniel put his head round the door.
"Bridge, don't wee on the installation, will you?" he said, and closed the door again. When I came out he had vanished. I couldn't see Gav, Tom or anyone I knew. Eventually I found the real toilets, sat down and burst into tears, thinking I wasn't fit to be in society any more and just needed to get away till I stopped feeling like this. Tom was waiting outside. "Come and talk to Gav," he said. "He's really, like, into you." Then he took one look at my face and said: "Oh shit, I'll take you home." It's no good. When somebody chucks you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and in the end, the whole sum of parts which adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a broad bean?
"Gav likes you," said Tom.
"Gav is 10. Anyway he only liked me because he thought I was crying about a toilet roll."
"Well you were, in a way," said Tom. "... Bloody git, Daniel..."
Tuesday 10 October
10.30am Office. Daniel's at the Frankfurt Book Fair so work's not too horrific, but Perpetua's smirk is beyond endurance. Must find another job.
11.30am Mum rang. "Darling," she said. "Guess what? Wake Up Britain are looking for researchers. Current affairs, terribly good. I've
spoken to Richard Finch, the editor, and told him all about you -1 said you had a degree in politics, darling, don't worry, far too busy to check. He wants you to come in on Thursday for a chat." Thursday. Oh My God. Thursday's the day after tomorrow.
I was just trying twitchily to watch the news and read The Economist whilst memorising the names of the Shadow Cabinet, when Mum burst in bearing carrier-bags. "Now, darling," she said, sailing past me into the kitchen. "I've brought you some nice soup, and some smart outfits of mine for Thursday!" I looked at her. She was wearing a fuchsia suit, black tights and high-heeled court shoes. She looked like Cilia Black on Blind Date. "Where do you keep your soup ladles?" she said, banging cupboard doors. "Honestly darling. What a mess! Now. Have a look through these bags while I cook."
I peered cautiously into the first one. We were talking lemon jacket and pleated skirt with a repeat terracotta leaf. "Er, Mum..." I began. Her portable phone rang. "Ah, that'll be Julio. Yup, yup." She was balancing the phone under her chin and scribbling. "Yup, yup... Put it on, darling," she hissed. "Yup, yup."
Now I have missed Newsnight and she has gone off to a party leaving me looking like Teresa Gorman. "Don't be silly, darling," was her parting shot. "If you don't do something about your appearance you'll never get a new job, never mind another boyfriend!" I am wearing a lime-green two-piece over an electric blue slithery top, green button earrings and blue metallic eyeshadow. Charming young whippersnapper as he is, I am quite glad that Gav is not here at this particular moment to see me.
Thursday 12 October
8st 12, alcohol units 4 (v.g.), calories 1,750, cigarettes 22, revision 3.5 hrs, total Instants expenditure pounds 7, wins pounds 3, effectively Instants 4 (v.g.)
Today is my interview with Richard Finch of Wake Up Britain for a researcher's job. I have told Perpetua I am at the gynaecologist's. I know I should have said dentist, but opportunities to torture the nosiest woman in the world must not be allowed to slip through the net. I am almost ready and merely need to complete my make-up while practising my opinions on the Portillo speech. Oh my God, who's the Shadow Defence Secretary? Oh damn, oh damn. Robin
Cook? Shit: telephone. I can't believe it: terrifying telephonic teenager with patronising south London sing-song going, "Hel-lo Bridget, Richard Finch's office here. Richard's in Blackpool this morning so he won't be able to make the meeting." Rescheduled for next Tuesday.
Sunday
Finding it hard to concentrate on my current affairs revision as repeatedly distracted by "Stocking Filla" catalogues tumbling out of the newspapers. Particularly keen on the shield-shaped, burnished metal, "funfur"-lined spectacles holder stand: "all too often spectacles are put down flat on a table, inviting an accident". The Sleekly Designed "Black Cat" Key Chain Light does indeed have a simple flip-down mechanism, as it "casts a powerful red light on the keyhole of any cat lover". Bonsai Kits! Hurrah. "Practise the ancient art of Bonsai with this tub of pre-planted Persian Pink Silk Tree seeds." Nice, very nice. Hmmm. Must press on with Saddam's Hold on Iraq.
8.55 Just nipped out for fags ready for Pride and Prejudice. Hard to believe there are so many cars out on the roads. Shouldn't they be at home getting ready? Love the nation being so addicted. The basis of my own addiction, I know, is my simple human need for Darcy to get off with Elizabeth. The football guru Nick Hornby states in his book Fever Pitch that men's obsession with football is not vicarious. The testosterone-crazed fans do not wish themselves on the pitch, claims Hornby. Instead they see their team as their chosen representatives, rather like Parliament. That is precisely my feeling about Darcy and Elizabeth. They are my chosen representatives in the field of shagging, or rather courtship. I do not, however, wish to see any actual goals. I would hate to see Darcy and Elizabeth in bed smoking a cigarette afterwards. That would be unnatural and wrong and I would quickly lose interest. Hmm. Anyway. Why More Top Firms are Halting Donations to the Tories. This is not to say, however, I would not delight in sleeping with the actor Colin Firth. Sharon just called and we spent 20 minutes growling, "Fwaw, that Mr Darcy." I love the way he talks, sort of as if he can't be bothered. Ding-dong!
Monday
Ugh. Just about to watch Panorama on "the trend for well-qualified
female breadwinners - stealing all the best jobs" (one of which I pray to the Lord in Heaven Above and all his Seraphims I am about to become), "does the solution lie in redesigning the educational syllabus?" - when I stumbled upon a photograph in The Standard of Darcy and Elizabeth, hideous, dressed as modern-day luvvies, draped all over each other in a meadow: she with blond Sloane hair and linen trouser-suit, he in monstrous striped polo neck and mad leather jacket with shoestring-style moustache. Apparently they are already sleeping together. That is absolutely disgusting.
Tuesday
I cannot believe the situation I am in. Instead of being ushered into the office to meet the great Richard Finch, who has merged bewilderingly with Mr Darcy in my mind, I was left, pouring sweat, in reception for 40 minutes, before being picked up by the terrifying sing-song secretary, sporting Lycra cycle shorts and a nose stud, who blanched at my Jigsaw suit as if in a hideously misjudged attempt to be formal I had turned up in a floor-length, shot-silk, off-the-shoulder Laura Ashley ball gown. "Yeah, Richard says to come to the conference, right," she muttered, powering off down a corridor, while I scurried after her. She burst through a pink door into a vast open-plan office strewn with piles of scripts, TV screens suspended from the ceiling, charts all over the walls and mountain bikes propped against the desks. At the far end was a large oblong table where the meeting was in progress. Everyone turned and stared as we approached. A plump, middle-aged man with curly blond hair, a denim shirt and red Christopher Biggins spectacles was jigging up and down at the end of the table. "Come on! Come on! Rosemary West," he was saying, holding up his fists like a boxer. "I'm thinking lesbian rape victims, I'm thinking Jeanette Winterson, I'm thinking Wake Up Britain doctor, I'm thinking what lesbians actually do. That's it! What do lesbians actually do in bed?" Suddenly he was looking straight at me. "Do you know?" The entire table of grunge youths stared at me. "You. You must be Bridget," he shouted impatiently. "What do lesbians actually do in bed?"
I took a deep breath. "Actually, I think we should be doing the offscreen romance between Darcy and Elizabeth."
He looked me up and down slowly. "Brilliant," he said suddenly. "Absolutely fucking brilliant. OK. The actors who play Darcy and Elizabeth? Come on, come on," he said, boxing at the meeting.
"Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle," I blurted.
A slow leer spread across his features. "Bridget Jones," he said, oilily. "Welcome to Wake Up Britain. Take a seat, my darling," and then he winked.
Thursday 19 October
9st 4 (bad), alcohol units 3 (both healthy and normal), cigarettes 33, fat units 17 (fat unit concept depressingly repulsive, resolve to return to calorie-counting tomorrow. Wonder is it possible to calculate fat unit content of entire body? Hope otherwise), Instants 3 (fair), calls to 1471 to see if Daniel has rung 21 (excellent progress)
Humph. Incensed by patronising article in the paper by Smug Married journalist. It was headlined with subtle-as-a-Nick-Ross "Or is it?" style irony: The Joy of Single Life. "They're young, ambitious and rich, but their lives hide an aching loneliness."
Later Met Sharon, Rebecca and Tom in Cafe Rouge after work. Tom, too, was working on a furious article about the Smug Marrieds' gaping emotional holes. "Their influence affects everything from the kind of houses being built to the food that stocks the supermarket shelves," Tom's article rants. "Everywhere we see Anne Summers shops catering for housewives trying pathetically to stimulate the thrilling sex enjoyed by Singletons and ever-more-exotic foodstuffs in M&S for couples trying to pretend they're in a lovely restaurant like Singletons and don't have to do the washing up."
"I am bloody sick of this arrogant hand-wringing about single life," roared Sharon.
"Shh, shh," we went, putting our faces right on to the menus.
"It's about time everybody realised that a quarter of all households are single and that instead of seeing the single state as some tragic dysfunctional cock-up and single women as desperate barren spinsters, they recognised that many women - because at last they can and don't need a stupid man to survive economically - might prefer to be single than come home from a full day's work to cook and wash socks for some determinedly unevolving, domestically retarded, emotional freeloader."
"Hurrah!" I said.
"Anyway we're not lonely, as we have extended families in the form of networks of friends connected by telephone," said Rebecca.
"Yes! Hurrah! Singletons should have an accepted status - like
geisha girls do - instead of having to explain ourselves all the time," I shouted happily, slurping on my tumbler of Chilean Chardonnay.
"Geisha girls?" said Sharon, looking at me coldly.
"Shut up Bridge," slurred Tom. "You're just trying to escape from your yawning emotional hole into drunkenness."
"Well, so's bloody well Shazza," I said.
"Fs not," said Sharon.
"You's blurr are," I said.
"Look. Shuddup," said Rebecca, burping. "Shagernothebol Chardonnay?"
Friday 20 October
9st 6 (inflated with wine box interior-style wine bag therefore very misleading statistic), alcohol units 4, cigarettes 25, Instants 5 (but stayed in), 1471 calls 22 (OK), hours spent imagining Daniel begging me to come back 1.5 (excellent), hours spent imagining Daniel's face when he finds out I'm going out with Mr Darcy 3 (poor), hours spent imagining sleeping or shopping in supermarkets with Mr Darcy 4 (v. bad)
Oh, God I'm so lonely. An entire weekend stretching ahead with no one to love or have fun with. Anyway I don't care. I've got a lovely steamed ginger pudding from M&S to put in the microwave.
Saturday 21 October
9st 1 (Brilliant. Have lost 6lb in one day. Brilliant), cigarettes 30, alcohol units 6, calories 1,598 (v.g.), number of correct Lottery numbers 2 (v.g.), items purchased through shopping then returned to the shop for refund in sick cycle 4, items subsequently repurchased 2 (though intend to take shiny black PVC jeans back again — whole PVC trouser concept suggests intolerable sense ofsweatiness and lack of hygiene)
Hurray. This morning received a letter from Richard Finch, the editor of Wake Up Britain, offering me a job. I think... anyway. This is all it
said: "OK, my darling, dicks on the table time, you're on."
Monday 23 October
10.30am office Just called Richard Finch's insufferable teenage assistant Zoe and it is a job offer. I am going to be paid an unimaginable £32,000 a year (knee-length boots, certainly, fake ponyskin coat, possibly) but must start in a week. I don't know anything about television, but sod it, I'm stuck in a dead end here and it is just too humiliating working with Daniel since we split up. I had better go tell him.
11.151 can't believe this. Daniel stared at me, ashen-faced. "You're heartless," he said. "Do you have any idea how hurtful these last few weeks have been for me? You can't leave me." He looked as if he was going to cry. I thought my heart was going to break, felt so guilty and cruel. Just about to say I'd stay when Perpetua burst in: "Daniel, you selfish, self-indulgent, manipulative, emotional fuckwit. It was you, for God's sake, who chucked her. So bloody well put up with it."
Sunday 29 October
10.02pm I cannot believe the irresponsibility of the BBC. I have been looking forward to the Elizabeth and Darcy wedding episode for six weeks, got changed specially, a nice bottle of wine, phone unplugged and what did they do? Ruin it.
My points are as follows:
1) Why, when Jane asked when she first fell for Mr Darcy, did Elizabeth, instead of giving one of the 487 reasons any woman in this country could instantly have given for falling for Mr Darcy, simper: "It was when I first saw his grounds at Pemberley" - as if she were some gold-digging airhead?
2) Why, when Elizabeth and Darcy got engaged, did they immediately start wittering about their last row instead of exhibiting rapport, bursting sexual tension and kissing?
3) Why, when they finally did kiss after the wedding, instead of it being the sexually charged kiss of the decade, was it both repulsive and flaccid?
I am disgusted and would write to the BBC were it not for the fact that such behaviour is akin to having more than three cats. I'm not sure I haven't gone off Mr Darcy now if all he does is moan when he gets engaged, and kiss flaccidly when he gets married.
10.15 My mother rang to wish me luck for my new job tomorrow. I raised the Pride and Prejudice debacle, and she just said, "Oh, don't be silly, darling, no one's the slightest bit interested in love once the pursuit is over. As my father used to say, 'You don't run after the bus when you've caught it, do you?' "
Still, I feel irrationally depressed. Maybe because I have realised there are no such men as Mr Darcy any more. Even Mr Darcy himself -who would never do anything so flighty as to be an actor - is, in fact, an actor. Hmm.
Monday 30 October
I had forgotten how hideous it is starting a new job when nobody knows you so your entire character is defined by every chance remark or slightly peculiar thing you say, and you can't even go to the toilet without asking where it is.
I was late through no fault of my own. It was impossible to get into the TV studios as I had no pass and the door was run by one of those security guards who think their job is to stop the staff going to work. When I finally reached reception I wasn't allowed upstairs till someone came to get me. By this time it was 9.25 and the conference was 9.30. Richard Finch's cycle-shorted torturess PA eventually appeared with two big barking dogs, one of which started jumping up and licking my face while the other put its head up my skirt. "They're Richard's. Aren't they, like, brilliant?" she said. "I'll just take them to the car." "Won't I be late for the meeting?" I said desperately, holding on to the dog's head. The torturess looked me up and down offensively as if to say "so?" and disappeared, dragging the dogs.
So by the time I got to the office the meeting had started and
everyone stared except Richard, whose portly form was clad in a strange green woollen boiler suit. "Come on, come on," he was saying, jigging and beckoning the table towards him with both hands. "Rosemary West. I'm thinking sex at 14, I'm thinking Mandy Smith; I'm thinking hymens, I'm thinking horse riding." Then, without looking round, he yelled, "Bridget, you're late on your first bleedin' morning. Ring up the Queen."
"What?" I stammered. I hadn't been given a desk. I didn't even know where the stationery cupboard was.
"Ring up the Queen. Tell her you're Queen Noor of the Netherlands. And you're worried that the British aren't buying enough Belgian chocolates."
My mind was racing. Surely Belgium isn't in the Netherlands? Surely Queen Noor is of Jordan?
"Come on, come on," yelled Richard. "Cat got your dick? Don't you know your elbow from your little arse?"
I stared speechless at the table of right-on youths. Wasn't this sexual harassment? Why were they sitting mute in their black-and-white nylon sports gear like stuffed puppies? Right. This was the new me.
"Let's leave our 'arses' out of this, shall we?" I said hoity toitily, staring pointedly at the bulbous form bursting out of the rear of his boiler suit.
"Oh, cut the crap, darling," he said "Call the Queen, then get me a lesbian who was raped by a man when she was 14, down the line at 4.30."
I didn't know what to do. So I found an empty desk, and rang the Palace press office.
"Her Majesty's on her way to New Zealand," they said. "She's taking her first flight on a commercial plane."
When the meeting was over I went up to Richard, told him my scoop and said, "Can't you see it? Mock-up first-class cabin, air hostess, Queen look-alike, anecdotes about dealing with celebs inflight?"
A leery smile spread across his face. "You know, darling," he said to my breasts, "you could be the mother of my child if you played your cards right. Go to it."
After lengthy directions, I rushed to the loo to recover my composure, where two teenagers, one of whom was wearing a sprayed-on dress that showed both her pants and midriff, were making themselves up.
"This isn't too tarty, is it?" she was saying to her Mend. "You should have seen those bitch thirtysomethings' faces when I walked in.... Oh!"
Both girls looked at me horrified, with their hands over their mouths. "We didn't mean you," they said.
I am not sure how much longer I can stand this.
Wednesday 1 November
9st3, alcohol units 5 (but fine wine, so healthful), cigarettes 15 (but Silk Cut Extra Mild), calories — utterly irrelevant since only correct mindset can make difference, Instants 5 (but victim of "Forget it All for an Instant" advertising campaign — member of "at risk" group owing to no boyfriend)
New TV job v. fulfilling etcetera etcetera, but simultaneously hateful owing to necessity of working hysterically from morning till night. Too drained and listless to go out and find myself inventively eating bizarre and unnatural things as there is no normal food in the house. Should go to Sainsbury's and stock up for an entire week instead of buying items individually from overpriced late-night supermarkets in hand-to-mouth manner. But fear consuming entire lot in neurotic eating binge on first night. Also feel there is more chance of "meeting people" in Cullen's. Right. I am just going to put some make-up on, a short A-line black — or maybe leopardskin — skirt and Sixties-style leather boots, then I'm going to Cullen's for a Lean Cuisine and some peas.
Later Humph. Was just trying to work out whether yoghurts contained yeast - because I am not supposed to have yeast on my current diet (or, more accurately, "Achieve your ideal health and weight without dieting" diet as diets no longer work, apparently, since one's body fat compensates by reproducing its disappearing self) when I suddenly realised I was feeling incredibly Christmassy. I was imagining Christmas trees, firesides, carols, mince pies and that marvellous poem by Wendy Cope which goes "At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle/ the cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle/ And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle/ And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful if you're single."
Then I realised what it was. The air vents by the entrance that
usually pump out baking-bread smells were pumping out baking mince-pies smells instead. Honestly. It is only November.
Thursday 2 November
9st 2 (v.g.), cigarettes 20 (Jo Brand new role model - does not care), alcohol units 3 (healthy minimum daily intake)
Hope the Tory stalwarts who are blocking the Mackay bill and trying to get everyone back into nuclear families did not watch Top of the Pops tonight. Straight in at No 11 was Madonna singing "All by myself. And then at No 1 two big fat black guys singing about a gangster's paradise. Personally I am very much in favour of the hits promoting solitary self-sufficiency in the face of urban alienation: transforming me in Cinderellaesque manner from sad lonely figure into a walking bloody fashion statement.
However, if the Tories get wind of this, they will ban songs about female self-sufficiency altogether. "I will survive", "All I wanna do is have some fun" etc straight down the toilet; and there will be tax incentives for buying the likes of Harry Nilsson's "Can't live (if living is without you)", Al Green's "Let's get married" and Dr Hook's "Who's going to iron my shirts?"
Friday 3 November
How young is too young? I mean... well, put it this way. There's this youth called Matt in the office, I think he might be 23. Very clever, very smart and trendy in a way that is incomprehensible to me, which makes it strangely alluring. (Although, of course, I have learnt my lesson about affairs at work. Besides, I'm old enough to be his great-aunt.)
Anyway, this morning at the meeting Richard Finch was at his most alarming.
"OK. Come on. Come on. Fireworks. What about the kid who had his penis burnt off by bangers in his pockets in the Sixties? Where is he now? Bridget, find me the Fireworks Kid with no Penis. Find me the Sixties Guy Fawkes Bobbit."
I must have looked pretty ashen because after the meeting Matt came up and put his arm round my shoulders in a rather stiff, self-conscious attempt at office camaraderie, and said, "Look - can I just say...?" (They all preface everything they say in this office with "Can I just say...?" It is the happening meeting-speak, it would seem.)
"Can I just say," said Matt, "that Richard is basically speeding till lunchtime so you should just say yes to everything, decide what story you're into and set it up, then tell him about it at 3 when he's come down."
"Hey, thanks," I murmured, leaning back on the wall, and giving him a slow smile I had been practising.
"Why don't you put up a cinema slot?" he said. "Disney have got a couple of controversial ones coming up."
"Oh yeah?" I said. (Much better and more fashionable than "what?")
"Yeah. There's one in the pipeline on Will Carling and Diana."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. It's called Pocaprincess."
I thought he might be making some complicated ironic dig at me because I was a hated new person in the office. But he grinned and said: "It's very, like, post-modern hip to pretend to be non-PC" -which I sensed, from his expression, to be an incredibly ironic postmodern hip remark in itself. Then he said: "You wanna have dinner?" Oh dear. Of course I do. But unless Matt can see my post-modern hips as a sort of incredibly hip ironic post-modern fashion statement -I don't think we're going to get very far post-dinner.
Wednesday 8 November
9st 7 (from where? seem exactly the same size, but evidently denser or have eaten something heavy), alcohol units 4 (fair), Instants 2 (excellent)
8pm Off to dinner party. All the Smug Marrieds keep inviting me -now I am chucked in manner of orphan at Christmas - and seating me opposite bizarre single men. Unfortunately, the work-free hot meals mean I must eventually host a return event involving horror hours frenziedly shoving Jackie Collins novels and storage jars with bunnies on under the sofa, purging the bathroom of embarrassing creams and
contraceptives and treading in pans of risotto on die kitchen floor, so by the time the guests arrive I feel like shouting: "Oh, go screw yourselves."
Midnight Humph. Everyone was trying to cheer up the spare man (37, newly divorced by wife. Sample view: "I have to say, I do think Michael Howard is somewhat unfairly maligned"). "Don't know what you're complaining about," Magda's husband, Jeremy, was bellowing. "Men get more attractive when they get older and women get less attractive so all those 22-year-olds who wouldn't look at you when you were 25 will be gagging for it."
I sat, head down, quivering furiously at their inferences of female sell-by dates and life as game of musical chairs where girls without a chair/man when the music stops/they pass 30 are "out". Huh. As if.
"Oh yes, I quite agree it's much the best to go for younger partners," I burst out, airily, "Men in their thirties are such bores, with their hang-ups and obsessive delusions that women are trying to trap them into marriage. These days I'm only really interested in men in their early twenties. They're so much better able to... well, you know..."
"Really?" said Magda, rather too eagerly.
"Yeah, you're interested," snapped Jeremy quickly, glaring at Magda.
"But the point is they're not interested in you."
"Um. Excuse me. My current boyfriend is 23." I said, sweetly. There was a stunned silence.
"Well in that case," said Alex, smirking, "you can bring him to us on Friday when you come to dinner, can't you?"
Bugger. Where am I going to find a 23-year-old who will come to dinner with Smug Marrieds on Friday night instead of taking contaminated Ecstasy tablets? Cannot ask Matt from work as have sworn never again to have affair in office and cannot trust self alone in taxi with divine young whippersnapper. Hmm.
Friday 10 November
9st 0 (heavy internal mystery. Weight gone - but where?), cigarettes 19 but merely smoked half of each (v.g. new no-smoking scheme similar to Half-Plateful Diet), so effectively 9.5
Marvellous article by Germaine Greer on how annoying it is for we working women shopping in Sainsbury's. I love the sense Greer gives of my maturity and feminist gravitas, since when I was younger I considered her inaccessibly, aggressively feminist, whereas now that I have suffered, I totally relate to her. Quite agree, for example, that there is often a long way for us to walk from the car to the entrance and trolleys are hard to steer. "This working woman," Greer argued, as I nodded, thinking, yup, yup, that's me, "who has her own eggs from her own hens." I looked up, startled. Was this something I had missed? Career, hatchback, own flat, tampons, Gold Blend, workouts... and hens? Hmmm. Best ring Sharon.
Later. Office. Hateful conference with bully boss Richard Finch going, "Right. Harrods £l-a-pee toilets. I'm thinking Fantasy Toilets. I'm thinking studio Frank Skinner and Sir Richard Rogers on furry seats, armrests with TV screens, quilted loo paper, New Labour Dole Clampdown. I'm thinking the North. Bridget you're loafing about -live down the line."
"But... but," I stammered.
"Patchouli!" he shouted, at which point the dogs under his desk woke up and started jumping about and barking.
"Wha?" yelled his Lycra cycle-shorted assistant above the din.
"Where's the Dole Youths' OB?"
"Liverpool."
"Liverpool. OK, darling. OB crew outside Boots in the shopping centre, live at 5.30pm Get me six Dole Youths."
Later, as I was leaving to get the train, Patchouli yelled casually:"Oh yeah, Bridget, it's not Liverpool, it's Manchester, right?"
Manchester 4.15pm Number of youths approached 44, number of unemployed youths agreed to be interviewed 0.
By 4.45pm, I was running hysterically between concrete flower tubs, gabbling, "Scuse me are you employed? Never mind, Thanks!" "What are we doing then?" asked the cameraman, with no attempt to feign interest. "Ahm, unemployed youths," I said gaily. "Back in a mo!" then rushed round the corner and hit my serf on the forehead. I could hear Richard over my earpiece, "Bridget... where the hell? Dole Youths." Then I spotted a cashpoint.
By 5.20pm, six youths claiming to be unemployed were neatly lined up in front of the camera - a crisp £20 note in each of their pockets while I flapped around, trying to make oblique amends for
being middle-class. At 5.30pm, I heard the signature tune bonging and crashing, then Richard yelling.
"Sorry, Manchester, we're dropping you."
"Urm..." I began, to the expectant faces. The youths clearly thought I was a madwoman with a syndrome that made me want to pretend I worked in TV. Worse, with coming up to Manchester I had been unable to do anything about the no-date trauma tonight. Then suddenly as I glanced across at the divine young whippersnappers, with the cashpoint machine in the background, the germ of a sick and morally suspect idea began to form itself in my mind.
Friday 17 November
9st 4, cigarettes 12 (v.g.), alcohol units 4 (v.g.), calories 2,000 (g.), Instants 3 (g.)
I am so excited about Princess Diana on Monday. I love things like this which bring the whole nation together, like VE Day and Pride and Prejudice. Magda and Jeremy are having a "Dianarama" party, but I am going to watch it on my own so I can really enjoy it, then ring everyone after. Blimey, must hurry. About to go on date with Diet Coke-esque young whippersnapper. Got myself into a mess last week by boasting fraudulently to the Smug Marrieds that I had a youthful boyfriend, at which they demanded his presence at one of their dinner parties. Happily, Tom came up trumps by producing the divine "Gav", who behaved exquisitely, flirting with all the wives and fawning over me.
Unfortunately, I was so overcome with gratitude* in the taxi on the way back I was powerless to resist his advances**. I did, however, manage to get a grip of myself*** and not accept his invitation to go in for coffee. Subsequently, however, I felt guilty about being a prickteaser****, so when Gav rang and asked me round to dinner tonight I accepted graciously.*****
* Lust. ** Put my hand on his knee. *** Panic. **** Couldn't stop thinking "damn, damn, damn". ***** Could barely contain my excitement.
Later. Feel like Old Woman of the Hills. Made a complete arse of myself on the way by boasting to taxi driver that my boyfriend was cooking me supper, then not being able to find his house.
Once there, started discussing Princess Diana. "It seemed such a
fairy-tale, I remember sitting on that wall outside St Paul's," I said. "Were you there?" Gav looked embarrassed. "Um, I was only six at the time."
Eventually we gave up on conversation and Gav, with tremendous excitement (this, I recall, the fabulous thing about 22-year-olds), began to kiss me and simultaneously try to find entrances to my clothes. Eventually he managed to slide his hand over my stomach, at which point he said - Oh God, it was so humiliating - "Mmmmmm. You're all squashy."
Monday 20 November
9st, cigarettes 40 (but Special Day), alcohol units 6 (ditto), calories (but see later)
9.35pm Hurry up, I have been ready since 9 o'clock. Am in danger of getting all my treats before it even begins - have already eaten four smoked salmon pinwheels and three Belgian chocolates. Just looked out of the window and it's like Christmas - the streets deserted and everyone cosily united in front of the telly in a common purpose. "Twas the hour before Princess Diana interview/And all through the house/Not a creature was stirring/ Not even a mouse." Really, it is so generous of Her to do this for Her subjects just when it has turned freezing cold.
Fantastic. Second it finished had to nip out for fags and bumped into the guy who runs the Greek restaurant round the corner. "Bloody witch," he said. "Queen of Hearts? She want to love me? - she empty my whole bloody restaurant all evening." On return, Tom rang up, livid because she had taken "the boys" to see someone dying of Aids and told them it was cancer. He also considered she had too much blusher on. Simon said she was nauseous. But Sharon and I think she made a profound feminist statement and is the patron saint or mascot of Singletons.
"She is a walking bloody symbol of our experience," bellowed Sharon. "Start off thinking one's purpose is to marry a handsome prince, get undermined and hurt by alleged princes, who are jealous of any ability you have, find out you are better off on your own, get branded a basket case: did you hear her? 'People think that a man is the only answer. Actually a fulfilling job is better for me.'
"Hurrah!" I shouted.
Princess Diana, in my view, is a champion of women's instinctive emotional intuitive response to the world such as has always been dismissed by men as neurotic nonsense compared with merchant banking, etc. But it is not nonsense, it is the way half the world operates, and it is outrageous that men have for so long got away with arrogantly dismissing and neglecting our needs and differing approach. Huh... Princess Diana vs the old-style Royals is like new Labour as opposed to Thatcherism. "Maybe there's a lot of women out there who suffer on the same level but are unable to stand up for themselves," she says. Yes.
Also, what is the monarchy about if not emotion and symbolism? What is the royal job if not morale-boosting, fund-raising and awareness-spreading? Princess Diana is a million times better at it than anyone else. If she does another broadcast and says everyone has to ring in and pledge money to "battered this or battered that" before she will tell us if she slept with Will Carling, then Children in Need eat your heart out. Maybe she'll do it on Christmas Day instead of the Queen's Speech.
Ugh. Feel sick though. I have eaten 12 salmon pinwheels, a piece of Parmesan, 4 Hobnobs and the whole box of Belgian chocolates. Ugh, ugh (think I will definitely start wearing lip-gloss again, by the way).
Later. Eating all those treats was great at the time, but then my stomach felt completely bloated and I was miserable and disgusted with myself. Then I remembered Princess Diana and knew exactly what I should do. Feeling much better and emptier now.
Sunday 26 November
8st 13 (Princess Diana Diet v.g.), cigarettes 44 - but need to get money's worth before Budget, alcohol units 4 (ditto), calories eaten 3,845, calories left in stomach 0 (v.g.), No of correct lottery numbers 4 (but on different lines)
Oh no. Christmas horror has started already. My mum rang at 7.45 this morning.
"Oh hello, darling," she said, brightly. "I was just ringing to see what you wanted for Christmas."
"Christmas? Wha...?"
"Would you like a surprise, darling?"
"No!" I bellowed, horrified out of sleeplessness. "Sorry, I mean...."
"I wondered if you'd like a set of wheels for your suitcase."
"Mum, please. It's quarter to eight. It's Sunday. I haven't got a suitcase."
"Why don't I get you a little suitcase with wheels attached - you know, like air hostesses have."
"But I've already got a bag."
"Oh darling, you can't go around with that tatty green canvas thing. You look like some sort of Mary Poppins person who's fallen on hard times. Just a little compact case - with a pull-out handle. It's amazing how much you can get in. Do you want it in navy on red or red on navy?"
"But I don't want an air hostess bag..."
"Well, Julie Enderby's got one! She says she never uses anything else."
"Who's Julie Enderby?"
"You know Julie, darling! Mavis Enderby's daughter. Julie! The one who's got a super-dooper job at Arthur Andersen."
"Mum..."
"Always takes it on her trips."
"But I don't want a little bag with wheels on," I whispered weakly.
"I'll tell you what. Why don't Andrew, Daddy and I all club together and get you a proper new big suitcase and a set of wheels?"
I held the phone away from my ear, bewildered as to where the missionary luggage-Christmas-gift-zeal had sprung from. When I put the phone back she was saying: "In actual fact you can get them with a compartment with bottles for your bubble bath and things. The other thing I thought of was a shopping trolley."
"Is there anything you'd like for Christmas?" I said, desperately, wondering if it was too early for a little drinky.
"No, no," she said airily. "I've got everything I need. Now, darling," she suddenly hissed, "you will be coming to Geoffrey and Una's New Year's Day turkey curry buffet this year, won't you?"
"Ah. Actually I..." I panicked wildly. What could I pretend to be doing? "... think I might have to work on New Year's Day."
"Well, that doesn't matter. You can come up after work. Oh, did I mention? Malcolm and Elaine Darcy are coming and bringing Mark with them. Do you remember Mark, darling? He's one of these top-notch businessmen. Single. It doesn't start till eight."
"Mum. I've told you. I don't need to be fixed up with..."
"Now come along, darling. Una and Geoffrey have been holding the New Year buffet since you were a baby. Of course you're going to come."
Monday 27 November
9st4(hmmm, that's funny), cigarettes 33 (thereby making considerable saving before tomorrow), alcohol units 2 (excellent)
Ugh. Had no sooner got home from work than I got my brother's girlfriend on the phone.
"We've had this really great idea - we thought you'd like a muff." "What?" I said, panicking. "A muff. You know - furry, like in Dr Zhivago." "Er, but I don't usually, you know, as a rule, wear, er, muffs." "Or a yoghurt-maker," she said huffily, "but we thought a muff. You like unusual clothes."
I think she might have been thinking of when I turned up at the Alconburys' wearing bunny ears and a tail under the misapprehension that it was a tarts and vicars party, but still. Why -just because it is the anniversary of the birth of our Lord the Baby Jesus - does my entire family think they can start analysing my life and ferreting out the most bizarre things they can think of, such as muffs and yoghurt-makers, which are absent from it and trying to force them in as if in a moral crusade: instead of just giving me something simple they know I'll like which is easily obtainable from the off-licence round the corner? Oh God, I can't believe I'm going to spend Christmas Eve -again - sleeping in a single bed in my parents' house. It is so humiliating at my age. Mum and Dad have decided on a hideous getting back together day for the sake of the children (ie me and my 38-year-old brother) but then there is going to be some indescribable post-Xmas lunch when the whole family is supposed to sit down with Dad and Julio in a ghastly American post-nuclear-family-style scenario. Would that I had a boyfriend and could be daintily removed to Gstaad and be given nylons and diamonds. 11.45 Just got off to sleep as had decided on early night, and the phone rang. Grabbed at it thinking it must be Daniel. Or maybe Gav. But it was Mum.
"Oh hello, darling. Just suddenly thought. Did I tell you Malcolm and Elaine's son Mark is going to be at the Alconburys' on New Year's Day? You remember them, don't you darling? They came to stay when we lived in Buckingham and you and Mark played in the paddling pool. He's done ever so well for himself. Not married."
She might as well come out and say: "You will shag Mark at the party, won't you darling. He's frightfully rich."
"Mum, I don't know if I'll..."
"Now don't start that darling - of course you're going to come," she hissed. "You can use your new suitcase. And your muff."
Friday 1 December
9st 3 (must lose half-stone in order to put back on over Christmas), alcohol units 4 (v.g.), cigarettes 19 (almost New Year so no point giving up yet; better to smoke more, in fact, in order to disgust self), number of chocolate Christmas tree shapes consumed out of Advent calendar 21 (bad but can always buy some more)
Today was my first chance to do an interview on camera. Ever since the desperate Police Action Live programme the other Saturday night, which had cameras attached to police units all over the country cutting excitedly live to nothing whatsoever happening, Richard Finch has been wild for some copycat live action on Wake Up Britain. Much to our relief, he has been turned down by every accident and emergency unit police and ambulance force in the land. But this morning, I shambled into the office, hungover, to find him yelling "Bridget, we're on. Fire. I want you on camera. I'm thinking fireman's helmet, I'm thinking pointing the hose."
At 5 o'clock I found myself perched at the top of the pole in Lewisham police station ready to slide down into shot on cue. Then suddenly in my earpiece I heard Richard shouting: "Go go go go..." So I let go of the pole and started to slide. Then he continued: "... go go go, Newcastle. Bridget, standing by. We're coming to you in 30 seconds."
I managed to stop myself halfway down and started to pull myself up again, then suddenly there was a great bellow in my ear: "OK and cue Lewisham. AND CUT TO LEWISHAM. Bridget... what the hell are you doing? You're meant to be sliding down the pole, not
climbing up. Go go go."
Hysterically I turned to the camera, grinned fixedly, and dropped myself down, landing, as scheduled, by the feet of the chief fire officer to start my interview, at which point Richard Finch yelled: "OK, we're out of time, wind it up!" So I said, "Now back to the studio," and that was it.
Sunday 3 December
I wonder if I should start visiting people late at night in hospital like Princess Diana. Sometimes I think if I did more good things for other people instead of living a selfish single life it would be easier to lose weight. But then how do I know that the lonely people coming round from operations would want to see me? I often feel sorry for friends who give birth and are trapped in hospital beds at the mercy of their least favourite people who turn up and bore them to death for entire afternoons.
Who knows what celebrities might start turning up in search of warm glows in their heart if this becomes a craze? One might open one's eyes, still in one's oxygen mask and drip, bloated, black and blue and mad-haired, and find oneself staring at Rolf Harris or Paula Yates, or even with your hand being grabbed alternately by Prince Charles and Princess Diana hissing "Get off, she wants me to love her, not you."
I am with Private Eye, which some time ago issued donor-type wallet cards saying: "In the event of an accident I do not wish to be visited by Mrs Thatcher." I would add: "Further no's: Jane Seymour (hair-flicking: unhygienic); Paddy Ashdown (false gravitas, bad if nauseous); Emma Thompson (smug smiling); Perperua. Yes: Mr Darcy.
11.30pm
Just went to see GoldenEye with Sharon and Jude. Thought it was v.g., except did not fancy Pierce Brosnan, who's humourless apart from pathetic one-liners. Mr Darcy would clearly have been better. The women were much more up-to-date than usual, but Russian baddy woman named Ms Onatop a pathetically sycophantically
obvious nod in the direction of feminism. If Bondmakers had really wanted to show that they understand modern women she should have been called Ms Onadiet.
We were trying to work out which woman we most identified with: Judi Dench as the head of MIS, the thin, wicked beauty who crushed men to death with her thighs, or the thin, kind beauty who was a computer expert and got off with James Bond. In the end we decided it was the woman about halfway through, walking down the street with a shopping bag, who got crushed by James Bond's tank.
Friday 8 December
9st 5 (disaster); alcohol units 4 (g.); cigarettes 12 (excellent); number of Christmas presents purchased 0 (bad); cards sent 0.
4pm Jude just rang in tears on her portable phone from the loos at work (Jude is Head of Futures at Salomon Brothers). She had just rung the Parisian hotel room of her boyfriend, Vile Richard, where he is trapped by the rising up of the oppressed masses, and been answered by a woman with an Essex accent who knew what time he would be back. Just before we said goodbye she said, between snuffles, "See you at Rebecca's on Sunday."
"Rebecca's? Sunday? What Rebecca's? What?"
"Oh hasn't... ? She's just having a few... I think it's just a dinner party."
"I'm busy on Sunday anyway," I lied, brittlely. At last - a chance to get into those awkward corners with the duster. I had thought that Jude and I were equal friends of Rebecca, but everyone can't invite everyone to everything.
9pm Popped to Cafe" Rouge for a refreshing glass of wine with Sharon and she said: "What are you wearing to Rebecca's party?" Party? So it is a party party, and Sharon hardly even knows Rebecca. Anyway, I'm not going to get upset about it. People should be able to invite whoever they want to their parties.
Saturday 9 December
5.30am Why hasn't Rebecca invited me to her party? Why? Why? How many more parties are going on that everyone has been invited to except me? I bet everyone is at one now, laughing and taking drugs. No one likes me. Christmas is a total party desert apart from a three-party pile-up on 20 December, when I am booked into an editing session all evening.
8am Woken by Mum at 7.45. "Hello darling -just rang quickly because Una and Geoffrey were asking what you wanted for Christmas and I wondered about a facial sauna. By the way, are you coming to the Vibrant TV party on Tuesday?" My heart clunked down like a big pebble in a glass of Ribena. I work for Vibrant TV, for God's sake. "I haven't been invited," I mumbled, ashamedly. There is nothing worse than having to admit to your Mum that you are not very popular. "Oh darling, of course you've been invited - everyone's going." "I haven't been." "Well, maybe you haven't worked there long enough. Anyway..." "But Mum," I interrupted, "You don't work there at all." "Well that's different, darling. I'm in front of the cameras."
9am Brief moment of party oasis when an invitation arrived in the post but turned out to be party mirage: invitation to a Sale of Designer Eyewear.
11.30 Called Tom in paranoid desperation to see if he wanted to go out tonight. "Sorry," he chirped, "I'm taking Jerome to the PACT party at the Groucho Club." I hate it when Tom is happy, confident and shagging someone, much preferring him having a panic attack or in tears about being sexually repellent. "I'll see you tomorrow, anyway," he gushed on, "at Rebecca's." Tom has only ever met Rebecca twice, both times at my house and I've known her for nine years. "It must have got lost in the post or something," he said lamely. Decided to go shopping and stop obsessing.
2pm Bumped into Rebecca in Graham & Greene buying a scarf for £169. (What is going on with the scarves? One minute they were stocking filler-style items that cost £9.99, next minute they have to be
fancy velvet, costing as much as televisions. Next year it will probably happen to socks or pants and we will feel left out if we are not wearing £145 English Eccentrics knickers in textured black velvet.)
"Hi," I said excitedly, thinking at last the party nightmare would be over and she, too, would say, "see you on Sunday". "Oh hello," she said coldly, not meeting my eye. "Can't stop. I'm in a real rush."
As she left the shop they were playing "Chestnuts roasting by the fireside" and I stared hard at a £185 Philippe Starck colander, blinking back tears. I hate Christmas. Everything is designed for families, romance, warmth, emotion and presents, and if you have no boyfriend, no money, your mother is going out with a Portuguese tour operator and your friends don't want to be your friend any more, it makes you want to emigrate to a vicious Muslim regime. Anyway, I don't care. I am going to read a book quietly all weekend and listen to classical music.
8.30pm Blind Date was v.g. Just going out for another bottle of wine.
Monday 11 December
Returned from work to icy answerphone message.
"Bridget. This is Rebecca. I know you work in TV now. I know you have much more glamorous parties to go to every night but I would have thought you could at least manage the courtesy to reply to an invitation from a friend even if you are too grand to deign to come to her party."
Frantically called Rebecca but no reply or answerphone. Decided to go round and leave a note and bumped into Bruce - the Australian guy from downstairs who I once snogged - on the way out.
"Hi. Merry Christmas," he said leerily, standing too close. "Did you get your mail?" I looked at him blankly. "I've been putting it under your door so you don't have to get cold in your nightie in the mornings." I shot back upstairs, grabbed back the doormat and there, nestling underneath like a Christmas miracle, was a little pile of cards and letters all addressed to me.
Thursday 14 December
9st 3, alcohol units 2 (bad, as did not drink any units yesterday. Must make up extra tomorrow to avoid heart attack), cigarettes 14 (bad? Or maybe good? Yes: a sensible level of nicotine units is probably good for me as long as do not binge-smoke), calories 1,500 (excellent), Instants 4 (bad but would have been good if Richard Branson had won non-profit-making Lottery bid), cards sent, 0, presents purchased 0.
V. confused. Want to be pleased by Stephen DorreU's generous alcohol unit increase but feel exactly the same as when I got down to 8st 7 and everyone said I looked better before. It is like having a rug pulled from under your feet: you don't know what you are aiming for or who you are any more. Am going to have to go back over every week's records now and will probably find was worrying about consuming too much when in fact was underdrinking all along.
Hmm. No, actually, I think I was OK. Easily doing 21. Fortunately.
Anyway, it is obviously just another pathetic attempt to suck up to us, like the tax cuts. If the Government really wants to ingratiate itself, why doesn't it reassure us that we are OK and not wrong or inadequate? All it ever does is criticise, criticise and make us people feel we are not good enough - failing to play nicely at happy families and not having jobs with large salaries as captains of industry. Anyone who has studied self-help books in even the most perfunctory way will know that people always respond best to encouragement rather than undermining.
I would like to see Richard Branson as our Leader. It is impossible to believe that Richard Branson would not be telling the truth about his bribe since he has built up such a store of decency and honesty. I, too, would wish to build up such a store if he were in charge, instead of wishing, as now, that I were thin, rich and more drunk.
I hate the Government: with its arrogant, manipulative "them and us" attitude. Huh. In fact, I am going to join the Labour Party... ooooh, telephone.
Ding dong! Matt from the office asking if I'm going to the Christmas lunch on Tuesday. He can't fancy me - I'm old enough to be his great aunt - but then why did he ring me in the evening? And why did he ask me what I was wearing?
Must not get excited as v. bad to have affair with young whippersnapper in office, however intelligent and divine.
Best ring Sharon immediately. Sexually tantalising Christmas lunch followed bizarrely by disco-dancing in afternoon (such being Editor's idea of a good time) involves severe outfit choice complexity.
Tuesday 19 December
9st 7 (but still nearly 1 week to lose half-stone before Christmas); alcohol units 9 (v.g.), cigarettes 30, calories 4,000; Instants 1 (excellent), cards sent 0, cards received 11 but including 2 from paper boy, 1 from dustmen, 1 from Peugeot garage and 1 from hotel spent night in for work 4 years ago. Am unpopular. Or maybe everyone sending cards later this year.
9am Oh God, feel awful: horrible sick acidic hangover and today is office disco lunch. Cannot go on. Am going to burst with pressure of unperformed Christmas tasks, like revision for finals. Have failed to do cards or Christmas shopping, apart from doomed panic buy yesterday lunchtime as realised was going to see girls for last time before Christmas at Magda and Jeremy's last night.
Dread the exchange of presents with friends as, unlike with the family, there is no way of knowing who is and isn't going to give and whether they will be tokens or proper presents so all becomes hideous exchange of sealed bids. Two years ago I bought Magda lovely Dinny Hall ear-rings, rendering her embarrassed and miserable because she hadn't bought me anything, so last year I didn't get her anything and she bought me an expensive bottle of Chanel. This year, therefore, I bought her a big v.g. bottle of Double Never-So-Much-As-Seen-A-Man Olive Oil and a distressed wire soap dish and she went into a complete grump, muttering obvious lies about not having done her Christmas shopping yet. Last year Sharon gave me bubble bath shaped like Santa - so last night I just gave her Body Shop Algae and Polyp oil shower, at which point she presented me with a handbag. I had wrapped up a spare bottle of posh olive oil as a generalised emergency gift, which fell out of my coat and broke on Magda's £500 Conran Shop dhurrie. Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be without presents. It is just
so stupid everyone exhausting themselves miserably haemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants, no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. Humph.
Just had Mum on the phone. "Darling, I've just rung to say I've decided. I'm not doing presents this year. You and Jamie know there isn't a Santa now and we're all far too busy. We can just appreciate each others' company."
But we always get presents from Santa in sacks at the bottom of our beds. World seems bleak and grey. Won't seem like Christmas any more.
Oh God, better go to work - but will not have anything to drink at disco lunch, just be friendly and professional to Matt, stay till about 3.30pm then leave and do my Christmas cards.
Tuesday/Wednesday night, 2am
Course is OK - everyone drunks office Chrstmas parties. Is a goodfun. Must gust sleep — doen mattr about clothesoff.
5.30am. Oh my God. OH MY GOD. Where am I?
Thursday 21 December
9st 7, disaster (though actually no reason why should not lose weight over Christmas, since it is possibly the one time of year when it is OK not to eat socially on grounds of being too full), cigarettes 71, calories 8, alcohol units - merged into more of a river, presents bought 1 (but for self- so bad), panic attacks 6 (v.g.)
For ten days now have been in a state of permanent hangover and foraging sub-existence without proper meals or hot food. Badly need water but seems better to keep eyes closed and head stationary on pillow so as not to disturb bits of machinery and pheasants in head.
Christmas seems like war. Going down to Oxford Street is hanging over me like going over the top. Would that the Red Cross or Germans would come and find me. Aaargh. It's 10am. Have not done Christmas shopping. Have not sent Christmas cards. Got to go to
work. Am never, never going to drink again for the rest of my life. Mmmmtnmmrn. Could really fancy some chips.
Aaargh - field telephone.
Humph. It was Mum but might as well have been Goebbels trying to rush me into invading Poland.
"Darling, I was just ringing to check what time you're arriving on Friday night."
"Mum, I'm not coming home on Friday, I'm coming home on Christmas Eve. Remember all those conversations we've had on the subject? That first one... back in July when it was red hot..."
"Oh don't be silly. You can't sit in the flat on your own all weekend when it's Christmas. What are you going to eat?" Grrr. I hate this. As if just because you're single you don't have a home or friends or responsibilities or washing to put in and the only possible reason you might have for not being available for entire Christmas fortnight to sleep crammed into odd angles in sleeping bags on teenagers' bedroom floors, peel sprouts all day and "talk nicely" to perverts with the words uncle before their name while they stare at your breasts is complete selfishness or sad tragicity, whereas my brother can come and go as he likes with everyone's respect and blessing just because he happens to be able to stomach living with a Stepford-wife-wannabe called Becca.
Anyway. Hah. Victory over Mum spurred me into fetching glass of water. Could feel it flowing like crystal stream into section of head where most required. Though am not sure if water can actually get in your head... Maybe, since hangovers are caused by dehydration, water is drawn into the brain by a form of capillary action. Must put sheets on bed. Wish had some food.
Saturday 23 December
9st 5 (v.g.), cigarettes 40 (excellent), alcohol units 12 (v.g.), calories 10
6pm So glad decided to stay home.
6:05 Where is everyone? I suppose they are with their boyfriends or families or tiny fluffy children in pyjamas looking at the tree excitedly. Or maybe they are all at a big party except me. Anyway,
I'm fine...
6:45 OH GOD, I'M SO LONELY.
7pm Emergency: Jude is coming round. Her vile boyfriend, Richard, has gone back with his ex-girlfriend.
7:15 Tom rang and is coming round. Jerome has chucked him and gone off with a member of chorus in Cats.
7:17 Simon's girlfriend has gone back to her husband. He is coming round. Thank God I stayed at home like fashionable Diana-esque festive Home Alone Singleton. Am clearly Emissary of Baby Jesus, here to help those Persecuted at Christmas by Herod-wannabes (eg, Vile Richard). That is the kind of person I am - giving love.
7:18 Oh my God. Daniel on the phone saying whole thing with new girlfriend (what new girlfriend?) is sham and now it is Christmas realises it is me he loves. He is coming round. But damn, bloody damn, will not be able to have festive reconciliatory shag as Tom, Jude and Simon will be here moaning.
10pm Humph. None of them turned up. Vile Richard changed his mind and came back to Jude, as did Jerome with Tom and Simon's girlfriend with him. It was just the emotionally charged spirit of Christmas Past making everyone wobbly about ex-partners. Anyway, now Daniel and I can have wild shag - when he arrives, that is.
2am Daniel finally rang. Said sorry, it was just Christmas making him feel sentimental about ex-partners. He has changed his mind and is staying with his new girlfriend. I hate Christmas.
Christmas Eve, Northamptonshire
Sam V. confused about what is and is not reality. There is a pillowcase at the bottom of my bed which Mum put there at bedtime, cooing, "Let's see if Santa comes," which is now full of presents. Mum and Dad, who split up last June - she into the arms of Julio the Portuguese tour operator, he into the granny flat at the bottom of Alconburys' garden - are sleeping in the same bed. In sharp contrast, my brother and his girlfriend, who have been living together for four years, are sleeping in separate rooms. The reason for all of this is
unclear, but possibly to avoid upsetting granny who is not here. The only thing which connects me to the real world is that once again I am humiliated, spending Christmas Eve alone in my parents' house in a single bed. Maybe Dad is at this moment attempting to mount Mum. Ugh, ugh, no, no. Why did my brain think such a thought?
Christmas Day
Staggered down stairs to be greeted by Mum. "Ah, there you are darling, what are you going to put on for Christmas Day?"
"Er... this."
"Don't be silly, darling, you can't wear that on Christmas Day. Now are you going to come into the lounge and say hello to Uncle Geoffrey and Auntie Una before you change?" she said in the special bright, breathy isn't-everything-super? voice, which means, "Do what I say or I'll Magimix your face."
"So, come on, Bridget! How's yer love life!" quipped Geoffrey, giving me the sort of hug Boots would send straight to the police station, then going all pink and adjusting his slacks.
"Fine."
"So you still haven't got a chap. Durrr! What are we going to do with you!"
"Stand up straight, darling," hissed Mum.
Dear God, please help me. Let me just go home. I want to watch the telly. I need to know what is happening with Princess Diana. I haven't heard anything about her for two days and feel all weird. I want my own life again. I don't feel like an adult, I feel like a teenage boy who everyone's annoyed with.
"So what are you going to do about babies, Bridget?" said Una.
"Just going up to change!" I said, smiling smarmily at Mum. Rushed up to the bedroom, opened the window and lit up a fag (no one else smokes). Then I noticed Jamie's head sticking out of the window on the floor below, also having a fag. Two minutes later, the bathroom window opened and an auburn coiffed head stuck out and lit up - it was bloody Mum.
Gift exchange was nightmare. Spent the whole time pretending four copies of the making of Pride and Prejudice book were just one and sitting on the other three whilst cooing over it so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. Always over-compensate for bad presents - yelping with delight, which means I get more horrid gifts each year. Thus Becca - who when I worked in publishing gave me a worsening series of book-shaped clothes brushes, shoe horns and hair ornaments
- this year in a complicated marriage between my last job and my new TV career gave me matching book and clapperboard fridge magnets. Una, who thinks I wish no household task to remain ungadgeted, gave me a series of mini-spanners to fit different jar or bottle lids in the kitchen which may become stuck, while Mum, who gives me presents to try and make my life more like hers, gave me a slo-cooker for one person. "All you have to do is brown the meat before you go to work and stick some veg in." (Has she any idea how hard it is some mornings to make a glass of water without vomiting?)
"At least we haven't got to put up with Auntie Fay's presents now she's in Marbella," said Jamie, reading my mind.
"Chuh, yeah. Did you see that phallic onyx statue she bought me last year," I tittered. "I was so embarrassed."
There was silence as everyone stared at me.
"Um... darling," said Mum, "Wasn't that a kitchen-roll holder?" I could feel myself going bright red.
"Chuh, only Bridget could decide a kitchen-roll holder was a penis," scoffed Jamie. "That's sad old spinsters for you. Watch out, Mum, she'll be telling everyone this is a penis as well," he said, holding up a tube of Smarties.
"I think this gravy is going to need sieving Pam," said Una, coming out of the kitchen. Oh no. Not this.
"I don't think it will, dear," Mum was already spitting murderously through clenched teeth. "Have you tried stirring it?"
"Don't patronise me, Pam," said Una, smiling dangerously. There was a terrified pause. This happens every year with the gravy. Mercifully there was a distraction: a great crash and scream as a figure burst through the French windows. It was Julio - unshaven and clutching a bottle of sherry. He stumbled over to Dad and drew himself up to his full height.
"You sleep with my woman."
"Ah," replied dad, "Merry Christmas, er... can I get you a sherry? Ah, got one already. Jolly good. Mince pie?"
"You sleep," said Julio dangerously, "with my woman."
"Oh, he's so Latin, hahahaha," said Mum coquettishly while everyone else stared in horror. The only time I've ever seen Julio before was in the coffee bar in Dickens & Jones when he was cleaned and coiffed beyond all sense and carrying a gentleman's handbag. Now he was wild, drunk, unkempt and quite frankly just the type I fall for. No wonder Mum seemed more aroused than mortified.
"Julio, you naughty person," she cooed.
At which, Julio replied, "You sleep with him," spat on the Chinese carpet and bounded upstairs, pursued by Mum, trilling back at us,
"Could you carve, Daddy, please, and get everyone sitting down?" We all ended up sitting at the table pulling crackers and putting on our paper hats at if it was just a normal Christmas and my mother had not just rushed upstairs after a Portuguese and not come down again. The worst of it was that Mum and Dad's bedroom is just above the dining-room and for a while there was a slight but unmistakeable rhythmic creaking noise directly above us. About 20 minutes later Mum appeared with the top of her Country Casuals two-piece on inside-out but otherwise exactly as normal. "I've found some savoury dollies for the bread rolls, Una. Shall I make some more gravy? No trouble!"
I really thought for a while she was going to get away with it, but then as we were clearing away she got overconfident and thrilled, "Anyone want to play charades?" There was an almost imperceptible shudder. "I was under the impression," said my father, "that we already were." There was silence apart from a faint, rhythmic snoring directly above us.
"Oh, don't be silly, Daddy, what on earth do you mean?" said Mum.
"Your top - Mummy - is inside out," said Dad witheringly.
"Oh, aren't I silly? I got so hot with the turkey I had to go pop some talc on," she battled on.
"Did you 'pop some talc' on that filthy wop in my bed?" said Dad. I felt as though my whole world was collapsing around my ears. Then there was a loud banging on the table. It was granny, who had risen shakily to her feet and was thumping with her stick on the Portmeirion butter dish.
"Colin, Pamela," she announced. "I order you, for the honour of this family, to seek divorce."
"No," I want to scream. "No. Mum and Dad love each other. It's just a phase with Julio. They're going to get back together."
Instead of which I stood mute and frozen. Mum burst into tears and rushed off upstairs, and Dad rushed after her. Then there was sound of more of the broken glass falling out of the French windows as they were opened by an incandescently beautiful youth silhouetted in the winter sunlight, clad from head to toe in leather and holding two crash helmets. I blinked and looked again. It was Matt from the office. "Bridget," he said, holding out his hand, "I love you. I've come to take you away."
I hesitated. Christmas is a time for families, and one must not put
one's own selfish needs and happiness before the tradition of family Christmas. But then there was another crash above us and the end of Dad's log-cutting hatchet appeared through the ceiling. It was that which decided me. I took Matt's hand and picked my way through the broken glass towards the gleaming Harley-Davidson parked among the dahlias, turned with -1 think - a rather gracious smile and said,
"Merry Christmas, everyone."
Next year I am leaving the country on 1 November and not coming back until the daffodils are out.