Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

10 a.m. Right, must get down to work!

10.05 a.m. Maybe will just check news.

10.15 a.m. Oooh. Really like Michelle Obama’s new haircut with fringe, or ‘bangs’, as they are known. Maybe I should get fringe or bangs? Also, of course, delighted by Obama’s second term of presidency.

10.20 a.m. Really has started to seem as if nice people are in charge: Obama, that new Archbishop of Canterbury who had a proper job before and speaks out against the banks being greedy, and William and Kate. Right, work. Ooh, phone!

11 a.m. Was Talitha. ‘Darling! Have you finished your screenplay?’

‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Well, sort of.’ The truth is, what with the whole Leatherjacketman thing, and the dating study thing, and then the Twitter thing, The Leaves in His Hair seems to have rather gone to seed. Oh, though, can leaves go to seed? Maybe if sycamores?

‘Bridget? Are you still there? Is it in some sort of shape?’

‘Yes!’ I lied.

‘Well, send it to me. Sergei’s doing some “dealings” in the film business and I think I can use it to get you an agent.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, very touched.

‘Send it today?’

‘Um. Yes! Just give me a couple of days?’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘But get on with it, OK? Between tweets to toy boys? Remember, we do not let Twitter become an obsession.’

11.15 a.m. Right. Is absolutely imperative not to tweet today, but finish screenplay. Have just got to do the ending. Oh, and the middle bit. And sort out the start. Maybe will just look quickly at Twitter to see if @_Roxster has tweeted again. Gaah! Telephone.

‘Oh, hello, darling’ – my mum. ‘I’m just ringing about the Cruise Slideshow Event and Hard-Hats-Offing a week on Saturday. It was super doing the Christmas-After-Christmas at Chats and I thought . . .’

Tried to resist the temptation to immediately tweet hilariously about the Mum/Cruise Event conversation whilst being in the middle of it. Of course Mum would never be on Twitter.

‘Bridget?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ I said, trying to drag myself away from Twitter.

‘Oh! So you ARE going to come?’

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Can you just run through it again?’

She sighed. ‘It’s the Hard-Hats-Offing for the completion of the new Gatehouse Lodges! All the St Oswald’s establishments do them when they’ve finished a new build. We all wear hard hats, and then just toss them in the air!’

‘When is it again?’

‘A week on Saturday. You will come, darling, because Mavis is having Julie and Michael and all the grandchildren.’

‘So I can bring the kids?’

There was a slight pause. ‘Yes, of course, darling, that’s the whole idea but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘Nothing, nothing, darling. You’ll make sure Mabel wears the dress I sent?’

I sighed. No matter how many cool shorts-tights-and-biker-boots outfits from H&M kids, or sticky-outy party dresses from Mum I try to coax Mabel into, Mabel has her own ideas about what she wants to wear: usually some sort of Hamish-meets-Disney look involving a glittery T-shirt, leggings and an ankle-length tiered skirt. Feel am from totally Other Generation, which doesn’t understand the look of the young people.

‘Bridget!’ said Mum, understandably, perhaps, exasperated. ‘You must come, darling, it doesn’t matter how badly they behave.’

‘They don’t behave badly!’

‘Well, the other grandchildren are older because of you having them so late in life, and of course when you’re on your own with them it’s harder to—’

‘I’m not sure I can make Saturday week.’

‘Everyone else will have their grandchildren there and it’s terribly hard for me being on my own.’

‘OK. Now, Mum, I’ve got to go.’

‘Did I tell you about the trouble we’ve been having . . .?’ she started to gabble, as she always does when I say I have to go. ‘We’ve got one of these men going into all the bedrooms. Kenneth Garside? He keeps getting into bed with all the women.’

‘Do you like Kenneth Garside, Mum?’ I said innocently.

‘Oh, don’t be silly, darling. You don’t want a man when you get to my age. They just want looking after.’

It’s an interesting thing, the ages at which men and women want each other more than the other does:

Twenties: Women have the upper hand because pretty much everyone wants to shag them so they have a lot of power. And twenty-something men are super-horny but haven’t made it in their careers yet.

Thirties: Men definitely have the upper hand. Thirties is the worst possible time for a woman to be dating: whole thing increasingly loaded by biologically unfair ticking clock: a clock which will hopefully soon be transformed, by the perfection of Jude-style egg-freezing, into silent digital clock with no need for an alarm. Meanwhile, men sense it like sharks scenting blood and are also simultaneously perfecting their careers, so the balance tips more and more in their favour until . . .