Bridget joness diary and.., p.18
Bridget Jones's Diary (And Other Writing), page 18
When they heard I was going to the shop, a lot of reporters asked me if I’d bring them fags and sweets and so it took quite a while working it all out. I was just standing in the shop trying to keep all the change separate with the shopkeeper when this bloke walked in obviously in a real hurry and said, ‘Could you let me have a box of Quality Street?’ as if I wasn’t there. The poor shopkeeper looked at me as if not sure what to do.
‘Excuse me, does the word “queue” mean anything to you?’ I said in a hoity-toity voice, turning round to look at him. I made a weird noise. It was Mark Darcy all dressed up in his barrister outfit. He just stared at me, in that way he has.
‘Where in the name of arse were you last night?’ I said.
‘I might ask the same question of you,’ he said, icily.
At that moment the camera assistant burst into the shop. ‘Bridget!’ he yelled. ‘We’ve missed the interview. Elena Rossini’s come out and gone. Did you get my Minstrels?’
Speechless, I grabbed the edge of the sweet counter for support.
‘Missed it?’ I said as soon as I could steady my breathing. ‘Missed it? Oh God. This was my last chance after the fireman’s pole and I was buying sweets. I’ll be sacked. Did the others get interviews?’
‘Actually, nobody got any interviews with her,’ said Mark Darcy.
‘Didn’t they?’ I said, looking up at him desperately. ‘But how do you know?’
‘Because I was defending her, and I told her not to give any,’ he said casually. ‘Look, she’s out there in my car.’
As I looked, Elena Rossini put her head out of the car window and shouted in a foreign accent, ‘Mark, sorry. You bring me Dairy Box, please, instead of Quality Street?’ Just then our camera car drew up.
‘Derek!’ yelled the cameraman out of the window. ‘Get us a Twix and a Lion Bar, will you?’
‘So where were you last night?’ asked Mark Darcy.
‘Waiting for bloody you,’ I said between clenched teeth.
‘What, at five past eight? When I rang on your doorbell twelve times?’
‘Yes, I was . . .’ I said, feeling the first twinges of realization, ‘drying my hair.’
‘Big hairdryer?’ he said.
‘Yes, 1600 volts, Salon Selectives,’ I said proudly. ‘Why?’
‘Maybe you should get a quieter hairdryer or begin your toilette a little earlier. Anyway. Come on,’ he said laughing. ‘Get your cameraman ready, I’ll see what I can do for you.’
Oh God. How embarrassing. Am complete berk.
9 p.m. Cannot believe how marvellously everything has turned out. Have just played the Good Afternoon! headlines back for the fifth time.
‘And a Good Afternoon! exclusive,’ it says. ‘Good Afternoon!: the only television programme to bring you an exclusive interview with Elena Rossini, just minutes after today’s not guilty verdict. Our home news correspondent, Bridget Jones, brings you this exclusive report.’
I love that bit: ‘Our home news correspondent, Bridget Jones, brings you this exclusive report.’
I’ll just play it back once more, then I’ll definitely put it away.
Friday 6 October
9st (comfort eating), alcohol units 6 (drink problem), Instants 6 (comfort gambling), 1471 calls to see if Mark Darcy has rung 21 (curiosity only, obviously), number of times watched video 9 (better).
9 p.m. Humph. Left a message for Mum yesterday to tell her all about my scoop so when she rang tonight I assumed it would be to congratulate me, but no, she was just going on about the party. It was Una and Geoffrey this, Brian and Mavis that and how marvellous Mark was and why didn’t I talk to him, etc., etc.? Temptation to tell her what happened almost overwhelming but managed to control myself by envisaging consequences: screaming ecstasy at the making of the date and brutal murder of only daughter when she heard the actual outcome.
Keep hoping he might ring me up and ask me for another date after the hairdryer débaˆcle. Maybe I should write him a note to say thank you for the interview and sorry about the hairdryer. It’s not because I fancy him or anything. Simple good manners demands it.
Thursday 12 October
9st 1 (bad), alcohol units 3 (both healthy and normal), cigarettes 13, fat units 17 (wonder if it’s possible to calculate fat unit content of entire body? Hope otherwise), Instants 3 (fair), 1471 calls to see if Mark Darcy has rung 12 (better).
Humph. Incensed by patronizing article in the paper by Smug Married journalist. It was headlined, with subtle-as-a-Frankie-Howerd-sexual-innuendo-style irony: ‘The Joy of Single Life’.
‘They’re young, ambitious and rich but their lives hide an aching loneliness . . . When they leave work a gaping emotional hole opens up before them . . . Lonely style-obsessed individuals seek consolation in packeted comfort food of the kind their mother might have made.’
Huh. Bloody nerve. How does Mrs Smug Married-at-twenty-two think she knows, thank you very much?
I’m going to write an article based on ‘dozens of conversations’ with Smug Marrieds: ‘When they leave work, they always burst into tears because, though exhausted, they have to peel potatoes and put all the washing in while their porky bloater husbands slump burping in front of the football demanding plates of chips. On other nights they plop, wearing unstylish pinnies, into big black holes after their husbands have rung to say they’re working late again, with the sound of creaking leatherware and sexy Singletons tittering in the background.’
Met Sharon, Jude and Tom after work. Tom, too, was working on a furious imaginary article about the Smug Marrieds’ gaping emotional holes.
‘Their influence affects everything from the kind of houses being built to the kind of food that stocks the supermarket shelves,’ Tom’s appalled article was going to rant. ‘Everywhere we see Anne Summers shops catering for housewives trying pathetically to simulate the thrilling sex enjoyed by Singletons and ever-more exotic foodstuffs in Marks & Spencer for exhausted couples trying to pretend they’re in a lovely restaurant like the Singletons and don’t have to do the washing up.’
‘I’m bloody sick of this arrogant hand-wringing about single life!’ roared Sharon.
‘Yes, yes!’ I said.
‘You forgot the fuckwittage,’ burped Jude. ‘We always have fuckwittage.’
‘Anyway, we’re not lonely. We have extended families in the form of networks of friends connected by telephone,’ said Tom.
‘Yes! Hurrah! Singletons should not have to explain themselves all the time but should have an accepted status – like geisha girls do,’ 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 drunk. You’re just trying to escape from your yawning emotional hole into drunk.’
‘Well, so’s bloody well Shazzer,’ I said sulkily.
‘I’s not,’ said Sharon.
‘You’s blurr are,’ I said.
‘Look. Shuddup,’ said Jude, burping again. ‘Shagernothebol Chardonnay?’
Friday 13 October
9st 3 (but have temporarily turned into wine bag), alcohol units 0 (but feeding off wine bag), calories 0 (v.g.)*.
*Actually might as well be honest here. Not really v.g. as only 0 because puked up 5876 calories immediately after eating.
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.
Sunday 15 October
9st (better), alcohol units 5 (but special occasion), cigarettes 16, calories 2456, minutes spent thinking about Mr Darcy 245.
8.55 a.m. Just nipped out for fags prior to getting changed ready for BBC 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. Tom says football guru Nick Hornby says in his book that men’s obsession with football is not vicarious. The testosterone-crazed fans do not wish themselves on the pitch, claims Hornby, instead seeing 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.
10.30 a.m. Jude just called and we spent twenty minutes growling, ‘Fawaw, that Mr Darcy.’ I love the way he talks, sort of as if he can’t be bothered. Ding-dong! Then we had a long discussion about the comparative merits of Mr Darcy and Mark Darcy, both agreeing that Mr Darcy was more attractive because he was ruder but that being imaginary was a disadvantage that could not be overlooked.
Monday 23 October
9st 2, alcohol units 0 (v.g. Have discovered delicious new alcohol substitute drink called Smoothies – v. nice, fruity), cigarettes 0 (Smoothies removes need for cigarettes), Smoothies 22, calories 4265 (4135 of them Smoothies).
Ugh. Just about to watch Panorama on ‘The trend of 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 blonde Sloane hair, and linen trouser suit, he in striped polo neck and leather jacket with Shoestring-style moustache. Apparently they are already sleeping together. That is absolutely disgusting. Feel disorientated and worried, for surely Mr Darcy would never do anything so vain and frivolous as to be an actor and yet Mr Darcy is an actor. Hmmm. All v. confusing.
Tuesday 24 October
9st 3 (bloody Smoothies), alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0, Smoothies 32.
On marvellous roll with work. Ever since Elena whatserface interview, seems can do no wrong.
‘Come on! Come on! Rosemary West!’ Richard Finch was saying, when I got into the office (bit late, actually, sort of thing that could happen to anyone), holding up his fists like a boxer. ‘I’m thinking lesbian rape victims, I’m thinking Jeanette Winterson, I’m thinking Good Afternoon! 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?’ Everyone stared at me. ‘Come on, Bridget-fucking-late-again,’ he shouted impatiently. ‘What do lesbians actually do in bed?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Actually, I think we should be doing the off-screen romance between Darcy and Elizabeth.’
He looked me up and down slowly. ‘Brilliant,’ he said reverently. ‘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 said.
‘You, my darling,’ he said to one of my breasts, ‘are an absolute fucking genius.’
I always hoped I would turn out to be a genius, but I never believed it would actually happen to me – or my left breast.
NOVEMBER
A Criminal in the Family
Wednesday 1 November
8st 13lb 8oz (yesss! yesss!), alcohol units 2 (v.g.), cigarettes 4 (but could not smoke at Tom’s in case set Alternative Miss World costume alight), calories 1848 (g.), Smoothies 12 (excellent progress).
Just went round to Tom’s for top-level summit to discuss the Mark Darcy scenario. Found Tom, however, in a complete lather about the forthcoming Alternative Miss World contest. Having decided ages ago to go as ‘Miss Global Warming’, he was having a crisis of confidence.
‘I haven’t got a hope in hell,’ he was saying, looking in the mirror, then flouncing to the window. He was wearing a polystyrene sphere painted like map of the globe but with the polar ice-caps melting and a large burn mark on Brazil. In one hand he was holding a piece of tropical hardwood and a Lynx aerosol, and in the other an indeterminate furry item which he claimed was a dead ocelot. ‘Do you think I should have a melanoma?’ he asked.
‘Is it a beauty contest or a fancy dress contest?’
‘That’s just it, I don’t know, no one knows,’ said Tom, throwing down his headdress – a miniature tree which he was intending to set alight during the contest. ‘It’s both. It’s everything. Beauty. Originality. Artistry. It’s all ridiculously unclear.’
‘Do you have to be a poof to enter?’ I asked, fiddling with a bit of polystyrene.
‘No. Anyone can enter: women, animals, anything. That’s exactly the problem,’ he said, flouncing back to the mirror. ‘Sometimes I think I’d stand more chance trying to win with a really confident dog.’
Eventually we agreed that though the global warming theme in itself was faultless, the polystyrene sphere was not, perhaps, the most flattering shape for evening wear. In fact in the end we found we were thinking more towards a fluid sheath of shot-silk-effect Yves Klein blue, floating over smoke and earth shades to symbolize the melting of the polar ice-caps.
Deciding I wasn’t going to get the best out of Tom over Mark Darcy just at the moment, I excused myself before it got too late, promising to think hard about Swim and Daywear.
When I got back I called Jude but she started telling me about a marvellous new oriental idea in this month’s Cosmopolitan called Feng Shui, which helps you get everything you want in life. All you have to do, apparently, is clean out all the cupboards in your flat to unblock yourself, then divide the flat up into nine sections (which is called mapping the ba-gua), each of which represents a different area of your life: career, family, relationships, wealth, or offspring, for example. Whatever you have in that area of your house will govern how that area of your life performs. For example, if you keep finding you have no money it could be due to the presence of a wastepaper basket in your Wealth Corner.
V. excited by new theory as could explain a lot. Resolve to buy Cosmo at earliest opportunity. Jude says not to tell Sharon as, naturally, she thinks Feng Shui is bollocks. Managed, eventually, to bring conversation round to Mark Darcy.
‘Of course you don’t fancy him, Bridge, the thought never crossed my mind for a second,’ said Jude. She said the answer was obvious: I should have a dinner party and invite him.
‘It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘It’s not like asking him for a date, so it takes away all the pressure and you can show off like mad and get all your friends to pretend to think you’re marvellous.’
‘Jude,’ I said, hurt, ‘did you say, “pretend”?’
Friday 3 November
9st 2 (humph), alcohol units 2, cigarettes 8, Smoothies 13, calories 5245.
11 a.m. V. excited about dinner party. Have bought marvellous new recipe book by Marco Pierre White. At last understand the simple difference between home cooking and restaurant food. As Marco says, it is all to do with concentration of taste. The secret of sauces, of course, apart from taste concentration, lies in real stock. One must boil up large pans of fish bones, chicken carcasses, etc., then freeze them in form of ice-stockcubes. Then cooking to Michelin star standard becomes as easy as making shepherd’s pie: easier, in fact, as do not need to peel potatoes, merely confit them in goose fat. Cannot believe have not realized this before.
This will be the menu:
Velouté of Celery (v. simple and cheap when have made stock).
Char-grilled Tuna on Velouté of Cherry Tomatoes Coulis with Confit of Garlic and Fondant Potatoes.
Confit of Oranges. Grand Marnier Crème Anglaise.
Will be marvellous. Will become known as brilliant but apparently effortless cook.
People will flock to my dinner parties, enthusing, ‘It’s really great going to Bridget’s for dinner, one gets Michelin star-style food in a bohemian setting.’ Mark Darcy will be v. impressed and will realize I am not common or incompetent.
Sunday 5 November
9st (disaster), cigarettes 32, alcohol units 6 (shop has run out of Smoothies – careless bastards), calories 2266, Instants 4.
7 p.m. Humph. Bonfire night and not invited to any bonfires. Rockets going off tauntingly left, right and centre. Going round to Tom’s.
11 p.m. Bloody good evening at Tom’s, who was trying to deal with the fact that the Alternative Miss World title had gone to Joan of Bloody Arc.
‘The thing that makes me really angry is that they say it isn’t a beauty contest but really it is. I mean, I’m sure if it wasn’t for this nose . . .’ said Tom, staring at himself furiously in the mirror.
‘What?
‘My nose.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘What’s wrong with it? Chuh! Look at it.’
It turned out there was a very, very tiny bump where someone had shoved a glass in his face when he was seventeen. ‘Do you see what I mean?’
My feeling was, as I explained, that the bump in itself couldn’t be blamed for Joan of Arc snatching the title from directly beneath it, as it were, unless the judges were using a Hubble telescope, but then Tom started saying he was too fat as well and was going on a diet.
‘How many calories are you supposed to eat if you’re on a diet?’ he said.
‘About a thousand. Well, I usually aim for a thousand and come in at about fifteen hundred,’ I said, realizing as I said it that the last bit wasn’t strictly true.
