Bridget Jones's Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)

by Helen Fielding

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?

Tom has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding: both being accustomed to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society.

Being a woman is worse than being a farmer—there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed.

“So,” bellowed Cosmo, pouring me a drink. “How’s your love life?” Oh no. Why do they do this? Why? Maybe the Smug Marrieds only mix with other Smug Marrieds and don’t know how to relate to individuals anymore.

Oh God. Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Why? Why? Why is entire world geared to make people not involved in romance feel stupid when everyone knows romance does not work anyway.

Was suddenly overwhelmed by urge to rush out and ask all the diners how old they thought I was: like at school once, when I conceived private conviction that I was mentally subnormal and went round asking everyone in the playground, “Am I mental?” and twenty-eight of them said, “Yes.”

Aargh aargh. Have reached the age when men of my own age no longer find their contemporaries attractive.

Realize, as the long hot days freakishly repeat themselves, one after the other, that whatever I am doing I really think I ought to be doing something else.

The more the sun shines the more obvious it seems that others are making fuller, better use of it elsewhere: possibly at some giant softball game to which everyone is invited except me; possibly alone with their lover in a rustic glade by waterfalls where Bambis graze, or at some large public celebratory event, probably including the Queen Mother and one or more of the football tenors, to mark the exquisite summer which I am failing to get the best out of. Maybe it is our climatic past that is to blame. Maybe we do not yet have the mentality to deal with a sun and cloudless blue sky, which is anything other than a freak incident. The instinct to panic, run out of the office, take most of your clothes off and lie panting on the fire escape is still too strong. But there, too, is confusion. It is not the thing to go out courting malignant growths anymore so what should you do? A shady barbecue, perhaps? Starve your friends while you tamper with fire for hours then poison them with burnt yet still quivering slices of underdone suckling pig? Or organize picnics in the park and end up with all the women scraping squashed gobbets of mozzarella off tinfoil and yelling at children with ozone asthma attacks; while the men swig warm white wine in the fierce midday sun, staring at the nearby softball games with left-out shame. Envy summer life on the Continent, where men in smart lightweight suits and designer sunglasses glide around calmly in smart air-conditioned cars, maybe stoppi...

Why is it that men have not yet learned to fantasize about holidays, choose them from brochures and plan and fantasize about them in the way that they (or some of them) have learned to cook or sew? The single-handed mini-break responsibility is hideous for me.

It’s no good. When someone leaves 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 adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love.

Seem to remember from childhood am supposed to reply in same oblique style as if I am imaginary person employed by self to reply to invitations from imaginary people employed by friends to issue invitations. What to put? Bridget Jones regrets that she will be unable . . . Miss Bridget Jones is distraught, that she will be unable . . . Devastated does not do justice to the feelings of Miss Bridget Jones . . . It is with great regret that we must announce that so great was Miss Bridget Jones’s distress at not being able to accept the kind invitation of Mr. Mark Darcy that she has offed herself and will therefore, more certainly than ever, now, be unable to accept Mr. Mark Darcy’s kind . . .

I think Dad is having a nervous breakdown. Mind you, if I’d been married to Mum for thirty-nine years I’d have had a nervous breakdown, even without her running off with a Portuguese tour operator.

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably hemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems.