Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

‘Right,’ said Mr Wallaker, when Nicolette and the boys had disappeared. ‘You’ve made yourself very clear. I apologize. I will go back, to not make a speech.’

He was starting to head off, then turned. ‘But just for the record, other people’s lives are not always as perfect as they appear, once you crack the shell.’

THE HORROR, THE HORROR

Friday 5 July 2013

Dating sites checked 5, winks 0, messages 0, likes 0, online shopping sites visited 12, words of rewrite written 0.

9.30 a.m. Humph. OhMyGod. Well. Humph. ‘Foundering’? Man-whore. Lecherous sexist married bastard. Humph. Right. Must get on with Hedda-ing up – i.e. finding all of Hedda’s lines in the rewritten version and putting them back to the way they were in the first place. Which is actually quite fun!

9.31 a.m. The thing about Internet dating is, the minute you start feeling lonely, confused or desperate you can simply click on one of the sites and it’s like a sweetie shop! There are just millions of other quite plausible people all actually available, at least in theory. Have vision of offices up and down the country full of people pretending to work but clicking on Match.com and OkCupid and somehow getting through the lonely tedium of the day. Right, must get on.

10.31 a.m. Oh God. What was he DOING, Mr Wallaker? Does he do that all the time? It’s completely unprofessional.

What did he mean, ‘foundering’?

10.35 a.m. Just looked up foundering: ‘to proceed in confusion’.

Humph. Am going to go back online.

10.45 a.m. Just logged on:

0 people winked at you. 0 people chose you as their favourite.

0 people sent you a message.

Great.

11 a.m. Look at all these men-tarts. Married, but in an open relationship. You see?

12.15 p.m. Jude’s Internet dating was a nightmare – strings of communication with strangers suddenly left unanswered. I don’t want strange bits of men all over the place. Far better to get on with Leaves. Must figure out how the yacht/honeymoon could work in Sweden rather than Hawaii. I mean, Stockholm is warm in the summer, right? Doesn’t one of the girls from Abba live on an island off Stockholm?

12.30 p.m. Maybe will go on Net-a-Porter and look at the sale.

12.45 p.m. What is happening to me? Just put three dresses into my shopping basket. Then logged off. Then logged on again and realized I felt hurt because none of the dresses had winked back.

1 p.m. Maybe will just look at cute thirty-year-olds on Match.com for a minute.

Mmmm.

1.05 p.m. Just spooled down the line of cute thirty-year-olds and screamed out loud.

There, bold as you please, was a picture of . . . Roxster.

MID-MATCH COLLISION

Friday 5 July 2013 (continued)

‘Roxster30’ was grinning cheerfully, the same picture he has on Twitter. He is, apparently, looking for women aged twenty-five to fifty-five – so it wasn’t because I was too old, it was just because he didn’t . . . he didn’t . . . OH MY GOD. His profile says he has ‘particular fondness for walks on Hampstead Heath’ and ‘people who make me laugh’ and . . . ‘mini-breaks in pubs by rivers, with Full English Breakfasts’. And he really likes skydiving? SKYDIVING?

I mean, it’s OK, isn’t it? It’s just what people do? It’s quite funny, it’s . . .

Suddenly doubled over in pain, in my armchair, over the laptop.

1.10 p.m. Roxster is Online Now! But then I’m Online Now too! Oh God.

1.11 p.m. Quickly logged off and paced deranged around the room, stuffing bits of half-eaten cheese and crushed Nutribars from the bottom of my handbag into my mouth.

What am I to do? What is the etiquette? Cannot possibly log on again and have another look at Roxster, or he will think I am stalking him, or worse – better? – looking at pictures of cute thirty-year-olds to smoothly replace him with another toy boy.

1.15 p.m. Just checked my email which is now, of course, as well as being overrun by Ocado emails, and ‘Staff Present’ emails, and emails from various country pubs I have imagined staying in with Roxster, also inundated with endless emails from SingleParentMix.com and OkCupid and Match.com saying: Wow! You’re proving popular today! and Someone just checked out your profile! and Jonesey49 Someone just winked at you.

Stared closely at two recent emails from Match.com. Jonesey49 Wow! Someone just checked out your profile.

1.17 p.m. Could not find out who they were from because have not paid to properly sign on to Match.com. One of them was from someone aged fifty-nine. And the other aged thirty. It had to be Roxster. It was too much of a coincidence.

1.20 p.m. Wow! Jonesey49. Somebody just winked at you! Again aged thirty.