Saturday 25 February

8st 10 (miracle: sex proved indeed to be best form of exercise), alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0, calories 200 (at last have found the secret of not eating: simply replace food with sex).

6 p.m. 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 after it was over Daniel said, 'Damn. I meant to take the car into the Citroën 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 realize I am waiting for the phone again. How can it be that the situation between the sexes after a first night remains so agonizingly imbalanced? Feel as if I have just sat an exam and must wait for my results.

11 p.m. Oh God. Why hasn't Daniel rung? Are we going out now, or what? How come my mum can slip easily from one relationship to another and I can't even get the simplest thing off the ground. Maybe their generation is just better at getting on with relationships? Maybe they don't mooch about being all paranoid and diffident. Maybe it helps if you've never read a self-help book in your life.

Sunday 26 February

9st, alcohol units 5 (drowning sorrows), cigarettes 23 (fumigating sorrows), calories 3856 (smothering sorrows in fat-duvet).

Awake, alone, to find myself imagining my mother in bed with Julio Consumed with repulsion at vision of parental, or rather demi-parental sex; outrage on behalf of father; heady, selfish optimism at example of another thirty years of unbridled passion ahead of me (not unrelated to frequent thoughts of Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon); but mainly extreme sense of jealousy of failure and foolishness at being in bed alone on Sunday morning while my mother aged over sixty is probably just about to do it for the second . . . Oh my God. No. I can't bear to think about it.

MARCH

Severe Birthday-Related

Thirties Panic

Saturday 4 March

9st (what is point of dieting for whole of Feb when end up exactly same weight at start of March as start of Feb? Huh. Am going to stop getting weighed and counting things every day as no sodding point).

My mother has become a force I no longer recognize. She burst into my flat this 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 trilled, 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-colored bra-slip, mascara-ing her eyelashes with her mouth wide open (necessity of open mouth during mascara application great unexplained mystery of nature).

'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 makeup 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 have a life of their own, behaving perfectly sensibly all day, then waiting till I drop off to sleep and starting to run and jump about childishly, saying, 'Now what shall we do?'

'You know,' said Mum, dabbing Givenchy II in her cleavage, 'all these years your father's made such a fuss about doing the bills and the taxes — as if that excused him from thirty 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 tax office. The man was really quite overbearing with me. `Really, Mrs. Jones,' he said. 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 fifteen minutes. Anyway, he's taking me out to lunch today. A tax man! Imagine!'

'What?' I stammered, grabbing at the door frame. 'What about Julio?'

'Just because I'm "friends" with Julio doesn't mean I can't have other "fiends",' 'she said sweetly, slipping into a yellow two-piece. 'Do you like this? Just bought it. Super lemon, don't you think? Anyway, must fly. I'm meeting him in Debenhams coffee shop at one fifteen.'

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 fudge.

I know what her secret is: she's discovered power. She has power over Dad: he wants her back. She has power over Julio, and the tax man, and everyone is sensing her power and wanting a bit of it, which makes her even more irresistible. So all I've got to do is find someone or something to have power over and then . . . oh God. I haven't even got power over my own hair.

I am so depressed. Daniel, though perfectly chatty, friendly, even flirty all week, has given me no hint as to what is going on between us, as though it is perfectly normal to sleep with one of your colleagues and just leave it at that. Work — once merely an annoying nuisance — has become an agonizing torture. I have major trauma every time he disappears for lunch or puts his coat on to go at end of day: to where? with whom? whom?

Perpetua seems to have managed to dump all her work on to me and spends the entire time in full telephonic auto-witter to Arabella or Piggy, discussing the half-million-pound Fulham flat she's about to buy with Hugo. 'Yars. No. Yars. No, I quite agree. But the question is: Does one want to pay another thirty grand for a fourth bedroom?'

At 4:15 on Friday evening Sharon rang me in the office. 'Are you coming out with me and Jude tomorrow?'

'Er . . . ' I silently panicked, thinking, Surely Daniel will ask to see me this weekend before he leaves the office?

'Call me if he doesn't ask,' said Shazzer drily after a pause.

At 5:45 saw Daniel with his coat on heading out of the door. My traumatized expression must have shamed even him because he smiled shiftily, nodded at the computer screen and shot out.

Sure enough, Message Pending was flashing. I pressed RMS. It said:

Message Jones

Have a good weekend. Pip pip.

Cleave

Miserably, I picked up the phone and dialed Sharon.

'What time are we meeting tomorrow?' I mumbled sheepishly.

'Eight-thirty. Cafe Rouge. Don't worry, we love you. Tell him to bugger off from me. Emotional fuckwit.'

2 a.m. Argor sworeal brilleve with Shazzan Jude. Dun stupid care about Daniel stupid prat. Feel sicky though. Oops.

Sunday 5 March

8 a.m. Ugh. Wish was dead. Am never, ever going to drink again for the rest of life.

8.30 a.m. Oooh. Could really fancy some chips.

11.30 a.m. 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.

Noon. Bloody good fun but v. confused re: advice re: Daniel. Had to go through Jude's problems with Vile Richard first as clearly they are more serious since they have been going out for eighteen months rather than just shagged once. I waited humbly, therefore, till it was my turn to recount the latest Daniel instalment. The unani­mous initial verdict was, 'Bastard fuckwittage.'

Interestingly, however, Jude introduced the concept of Boy Time — as introduced in the film Clueless: namely five days ('seven', I interjected) during which new relationship is left hanging in air after sex does not seem agonizing lifetime to males of species, but a normal cooling-down period in which to gather emotions, before proceeding. Daniel, argued Jude, was bound to be anxious about work situation, etc., etc., so give him a chance, be friendly and flirty: so as to reassure him that you trust him and are not going to become needy or fly off the handle.

At this Sharon practically spat into the shaved Parmesan and said it was inhuman to leave a woman hanging in air for two weekends after sex and an appalling breach of confidence and I should tell him what I think of him. Hmmm. Anyway. Going to have another little sleep.

2 p.m.Just triumphantly returned from heroic expedition to go downstairs for newspaper and glass of water. Could feel water flowing like crystal stream into section of head where most required. Though am not sure, come to think of it, if water can actually get in your head. Possibly it enters through the bloodstream. Maybe since hangovers are caused by dehydration water is drawn into the brain by a form of capillary action.

2.15 p.m. Story in papers about two-year-olds having to take tests to get into nursery school just made me jump out of skin. Am supposed to be at tea party for godson Harry's birthday.

6 p.m. Drove at breakneck speed feeling like I was dying, across grey, rain-sodden London to Magda's, stopping at Waterstone's for birthday gifts. Heart was sinking at thought of being late and hungover, surrounded by 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, ten minutes in, she cracked and started yelling, 'Give me the drugs, you fat cow.'

Tea party was 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 AGPAR?

I don't know what the big deal is about tests for two — ­this AGPAR is a test they have to do at two minutes. Magda embarrassed herself two years ago by boasting at a dinner party that Harry got ten in his, at which one of the other guests, who happens to be a nurse, pointed out that the AGPAR test only goes up to nine.

Undaunted, however, Magda has started boasting around the nanny circuit that her son is a defecational prodigy, triggering off a round of boast and counter-boast. The toddlers, therefore, dearly at 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 ten minutes before there were three turds on the carpet. A superficially humorous but vicious dispute ensued about who had done the turds, following by a tense stripping off of towelling pants, immediately sparking another contest over the size of the boys' genitals 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?'

Thought head was going to burst with the racket. Eventually made my excuses and drove home, congratulat­ing myself on being single.

Monday 6 March

11 a.m. Office. Completely exhausted. Last night was just lying in nice hot bath with some Geranium essential oil and a vodka and tonic when the doorbell rang. It was my mother, on the doorstep in floods of tears. It took me some time to establish what the matter was as she flopped all over the kitchen, breaking into ever louder outbursts of tears and saying she didn't want to talk about it, until I began to wonder if her 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 (the second she sensed I was losing interest in the breakdown) revealed. 'And now it's 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.

'1 want a career,' she said. And some horrible mean part of me felt happy and smug because I had a career. Well — a job, anyway. I was a grasshopper collecting a big pile of grass, or flies, or whatever it is grasshoppers eat ready for the winter, even if I didn't have a boyfriend.

Eventually I managed to cheer Mum up by allowing her to go through my wardrobe and criticize all my clothes, then tell me why I should start getting everything from Jaeger and Country Casuals. It worked a treat and eventually she was so much back on form she was actually able to call up Julio and arrange to meet him for a 'nightcap.'

By the time she left it was after ten so I called Tom to report the hideous news that Daniel had not rung all weekend and asked him what he thought about Jude and Sharon's conflicting advice. Tom said I should listen to neither of them, not flirt, not lecture but merely be an aloof, coolly professional ice-queen. Men, he claims, view themselves as permanently on some sort of sexual ladder with all women either above them or below them. If the woman is 'below' (i.e. willing to sleep with him, very keen on him) then in a Groucho Marx kind of way he does not want to be a member of her 'club.' This whole mentality depresses me enormously but Tom said not to be naïve and if I really love Daniel and want to win his heart I have to ignore him and be as cold and distant to him as possible. Eventually got to bed at midnight, v. confused, but was woken three times in the night by phone calls from Dad.

'When someone loves you it's like having a blanket all round your heart,' he said, 'and then when it's taken away . . . ' and he burst into tears. He was speaking from the granny flat at the bottom of the Alconburys' garden, where he's staying, as he says hopefully, 'Just till things are sorted out.'

I suddenly realize everything has shifted and now I am looking after my parents instead of them looking after me, which seems unnatural and wrong. Surely I am not that old?

Monday 6 March

8st 12 (v.v.g. — have realized secret of dieting is not weighing oneself).

Can officially confirm that the way to a man s heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.

Took no notice of Daniel whatsoever all day at work and pretended to be busy (try not to laugh). Message Pending kept flashing but I just kept sighing and tossing my hair about as if I were a very glamorous, important person under a great deal of pressure. By the end of the day I realized, like a school chemistry lab miracle (phosphorus, litmus test or similar), it was working. He kept staring at me and giving me meaningful glances. Eventually, when Perpetua was out, be walked past my desk, stopped for a moment and murmured, 'Jones, you gorgeous creature. Why are you ignoring me?'

In a rush of joy and affection I was just about to blurt out the whole story of Tom, Jude and Shazzer's conflicting theories, but the heavens were smiling on me and the phone rang. I rolled my eyes apologetically, picked it up, then Perpetua bustled up, knocking a pile of proofs off the desk with her bottom, and bellowed, 'Ah, Daniel. Now . . . ' and swept him away, which was fortunate because the phone call was Tom, who said I had to keep up the ice-­queen act and gave me a mantra to repeat when I felt myself weakening. 'Aloof, unavailable ice-queen; Aloof, unavailable ice-queen.'

March

9st 4, 2 or 5?? alcohol units 0, cigarettes 20, calories 1500, Instants 6 (poor).

9 a.m. Aargh. How can I have put on 3lb since the middle of the night? I was 9st 4 when I went to bed, 9st 2 at 4 a.m. and 9st 5 when I got up. I can understand weight coming off — it could have evaporated or passed out of the body into the toilet — but how could it be put on? Could food react chemically with other food, double its density and volume, and solidify into every heavier and denser hard fat? I don't look fatter. I can fasten the button, though not, alas, the zipper on my '89 jeans. So maybe my whole body is getting smaller but denser. The whole thing smacks of female body-builders and makes me feel strangely sick. Call up Jude to complain about diet failure, who says write down everything you've eaten, honestly, and see if you stuck to the diet. Here is list.

Breakfast: hot-cross bun (Scarsdale Diet — slight variation on specified piece of wholemeal toast); Mars Bar (Scarsdale Diet — slight 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 spuds 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, fish and chips (Scarsdale Diet and also Hay Diet — protein forming); portion tiramisu; peppermint Aero (pissed)

I realize it has become too easy to find a diet to fit in with whatever you happen to feel like eating 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 chocolate croissant.

Tuesday 14 March

Disaster. Complete disaster. Flushed with the success of Tom's ice-queen theory I began to rather brim over, as it were, into Jude's, and starting messaging Daniel again, to reassure him that I trust him and am not going to become needy or fly off the handle without just cause.

By midmorning, so successful was the ice-queen combined with Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus approach that Daniel walked right up to me by the coffee machine and said, 'Will you come to Prague next weekend?'

'What? Er hahahaha, you mean the weekend after this one?'

'Yeeeeees,, next weekend,' he said, with an encouraging, slightly patronizing air, as if he had been teaching me to speak English.

'Oooh. Yes, please,' I said, forgetting the ice-queen mantra in the excitement.

Next thing he came up and asked if I wanted to come round the corner for lunch. We arranged to meet outside the building so no one would suspect anything and it was all rather thrilling and clandestine until he said, as we walked towards the pub, 'Listen, Bridge, I'm really sorry, I've fucked up.'

'Why? What?' I said, even, as I spoke, remembering my mum and wondering if I ought to be saying 'Pardon?'

'I can't make Prague next weekend. I don't know what I was thinking about. But maybe we'll do it another time.' A siren blared in my head and a huge neon sign started flashing with Sharon's head in the middle going, 'FUCK­WITTAGE, FUCKWITTAGE'.

I stood stock still on the pavement, glowering up at him.

'What's the matter?' he said, looking amused.

'I'm fed up with you,' I said furiously. 'I told you quite specifically the first time you tried to undo my skirt that I am not into emotional fuckwittage. It was very bad to carry on flirting, sleep with me then not even follow it up with a phone call, and try to pretend the whole thing never happened. Did you just ask me to Prague to make sure you could still sleep with me if you wanted to as if we were on some sort of ladder?'

'A ladder, Bridge?, said Daniel, What sort of ladder?'

'Shut up,' I bristled crossly. 'It's all chop-change chop­-change with you. Either go out with me and treat me nicely, or leave me alone. As I say, I am not interested in fuckwittage.'

'What about you, this week? First you completely ignore me like some Hitler Youth ice-maiden, then you turn into an irresistible sex kitten, looking at me over the computer with not so much 'come-to-bed' as just 'come' eyes, and now suddenly you're Jeremy Paxman.'

We stared at each other transfixed like two African animals at the start of a fight on a David Attenborough programme. Then suddenly Daniel turned on his heel and walked off to the pub, leaving me to stagger, stunned, back to the office, where I dived to the loo, locked the door and sat down, staring crazily at the door with one eye. Oh God.

5 p.m. Har har. Am marvellous. Feeling v. pleased with self. Had top-level post-works crisis meeting in Café Rouge with Sharon, Jude and Tom, who were all delighted with, the Daniel outcome, each convinced it was because I had followed their advice. Also Jude had heard survey on the radio that by the turn of the millennium a third of all households will be single, therefore proving that at last we are no longer tragic freaks. Shazzer guffawed and said, 'One in three? Nine out of ten, more like.' Sharon maintains men — present company (i.e. Tom) excepted, obviously — are so catastrophically unevolved that soon they will just be kept by women as pets for sex, therefore presumably these will not count as shared households as the men will be kept outside in kennels. Anyway, feeling v. empowered. Tre­mendous. Think might read bit of Susan Faludi's Backlash.

5 a.m. Oh God, am so unhappy about Daniel. I love him.

Wednesday 15 March

9st, alcohol units 5 (disgrace: urine of Satan), cigarettes 14 (weed of Satan — will give up on birthday), calories 1795.

Humph. Have woken up v. fed up. On top of everything, only two weeks to go until birthday, when will have to face up to the fact that another entire year has gone by, during which everyone else except me has mutated into Smug Married, having children plop, plop, plop, left right and centre and making hundreds of thousands of pounds and inroads into very hub of establishment, while I career rudderless and, boyfriendless through dysfunctional relationships and professional stagnation.

Find self constantly scanning face in mirror for wrinkles and frantically reading Hello!, checking out everyone's ages in desperate search for role models (Jane Seymour is forty-­two!), fighting long-impacted fear that one day in your thirties you will suddenly, without warning, grow a big fat crimplene dress, shopping bag, tight perm and face collaps­ing in manner of movie special-effect, and that will be it. Try to concentrate hard on Joanna Lumley and Susan Sarandon.

Also worried about how to celebrate birthday. Size of flat and bank balance prohibits actual party. Maybe dinner party? But then would have to spend birthday slaving and would hate all guests on arrival. Could all go out for meal but then feel guilty asking everyone to pay, selfishly pre­suming to force costly and dull evening on others merely to celebrate own birthday — yet cannot afford to pay for everyone. Oh God. What to do? Wish had not been born but immaculately burst into being in similar, though not identical, manner to Jesus, then would not have had to have birthday. Sympathize with Jesus in sense of embar­rassment he must, and perhaps should, feel over two­-millennium-old social imposition of own birthday on large areas of globe.

Midnight. Have had v.g. idea about birthday. Am going to ask everyone round for cocktails, perhaps Manhattans. Will then have given to guests something in manner of grand society hostess, and if everyone wishes to go to dinner afterwards:why, they may do so. Not sure what Manhattan is, come to think of it. But could buy book of cocktails maybe. Probably won't, to be perfectly honest.

Thursday 16 March

9st 1, alcohol units 2, cigarettes 3 (v.g.), calories 2140 (but mainly fruit), minutes spent doing party guest list 237 (bad).

MeShazzer

JudeVile Richard

TomJerome (yuk)

Michael

MagdaJeremy

Simon

RebeccaMartin Crashing Bore

WoneyCosmo

Joanna

Daniel?Perpetua? (eek) and Hugo?

Oh no. Oh no. What am I going to do?

Friday 17 March

Just called Tom who says, very wisely, 'It is your birthday and you should invite exactly and only who you want.' So am just going to ask the following:

Shazzer

Jude

Tom

Magda and Jeremy

— and cook supper for everyone myself.

Called Tom back to tell him the plan and he said, 'and Jerome?'

'What?'

'And Jerome?'

'I thought, like we said, I'd just ask who I . . . ' I tailed off, realizing if I said 'wanted' it would mean I didn't 'want' i.e. 'like' Tom's insufferable, pretentious boyfriend.

'Oh!' I said, over-compensating madly. 'You mean your Jerome? Course Jerome's invited, yer ninny. Chuh! But do you think it's OK not to ask Jude's Vile Richard? And Sloaney Woney —even though she had me to her birthday last week?'

'She'll never know.'

When I told Jude who was coming she said perkily, 'Oh, so we're bringing other halves?' which means Vile Richard. Also now that it's not just six I will have to ask Michael. Oh well. I mean nine is fine. Ten. It'll be fine.

Next thing Sharon rang. 'I hope I haven't put my foot in it. I just saw Rebecca and asked her if she was coming to your birthday and she looked really offended.'

Oh no, I'll have to ask Rebecca and Martin Crashing Bore now. But that means I'll have to ask Joanna as well. Shit. shit. Now I've said I'm cooking I can't suddenly announce we're going out to a restaurant or I'll seem both bone idle and mean.

Oh God. Just got home to icy offended-sounding answer­phone message from Woney.

'Cosmo and I were wondering what you'd like for your birthday this year. Would you call us back, please?'

Realize I am going to spend my birthday cooking food for sixteen people.

Saturday 18 March

8st 13, alcohol units 4 (fed up), cigarettes 23 (v.v. bad, esp. in two hours), Calories 3827 (repulsive).

2 p.m. Humph. Just what I needed. My mother burst into my flat, last week's Grasshopper Who Sang All Summer crisis miraculously forgotten.

'My godfathers, darling!' she said breathily, steaming through my flat and heading for the kitchen. 'Have you had a bad week or something? You took dreadful. You look about ninety. Anyway, guess what, darling,' she said, turn­ing, holding the kettle, dropping her eyes modestly, then looking up, beaming like Bonnie Langford about to embark upon a tap-dancing routine.

'What?' I muttered grumpily.

'I've got a job as a TV presenter.'

I'm going shopping.

Sunday 19 March

8st 12 alcohol units 3, cigarettes 10, calories 2465 (but mainly chocolate).

Hurray. Whole new 'positive perspective' on birthday. Have been talking to Jude about book she has been reading about festivals and rites of passage in primitive cultures and am feeling happy and serene.

Realize it is shallow and wrong to feel that flat is too small to entertain nineteen, and that cannot be arsed to spend birthday cooking and would rather dress up and be taken to posh restaurant by sex-god with enormous gold credit card. Instead am going to think of my friends as a huge, warm, African, or possibly Turkish, family.

Our culture is too obsessed with outward appearance, age and status. Love is what matters. These nineteen people are my friends; they want to be welcomed into my home to celebrate with affection and simple homely fare — not to judge. Am going to cook shepherd's pie for them all —British Home Cooking. It will be a marvellous, warm, Third-World-style ethnic family party.

Monday 20 March

9st, alcohol units 4 (getting into mood), cigarettes 27 (hut last day before giving up), calories 2455.

Have decided to serve the shepherds pie with Chargrilled Belgian Endive Salad, Roquefort Lardons and Frizzled Chorizo, to add a fashionable touch (have not tried before but sure it will be easy), followed by individual Grand, Marnier soufflés, V. much looking forward to the birthday. Expect to become known as brilliant cook and hostess.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 827