Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (17 page)

11.15 p.m.
<
@JoneseyBJ
Hate birds. Look at that movie ‘The Birds’! Birds can turn MAN-EATING.>

11.16 p.m.
<
@JoneseyBJ
Peecking people’s eyes out with 60s hairdos. Vicious nasty birds.>

11.30 p.m.
<
@JoneseyBJ
85 followess gone waway. Why? Why’wasi hwohave I don? comebac!k>

<
@JoneseyBJ
Noo! Follwers draining away as if through sieve.>

<
@JoneseyBJ
Nooo! Hate bireds Hatetweetings Hate drainqine away follwoers. An goingsoto bed!>

TWUNKEN AFTERMATH

Friday 11 January 2013

Twitter followers lost 551, Twitter followers remaining 101, number of words of screenplay written 0.

6.35 a.m.
Will just check my Twi— Gaaah! Just remembered twunking incoherent drunken rant last night, slagging off birds for no reason to hundreds of complete strangers. Oh God. Have clouting hangover and have got to do school run. Oh, is OK because Chloe is doing school run. Am going back to sleep.

10 a.m.
Look, this can be salvaged, like any other PR disaster. With exception, possibly, of current Lance Armstrong PR disaster.

10.15 a.m.
Right.
The Leaves in His Hair
. Must get on.

11.15 a.m.
Actually, maybe I could have a career in PR! Oh, shit, is 11.15, must get on with screenplay. First, though, clearly I quickly need to make a full and frank Twitter apology to my few remaining followers.

<
@JoneseyBJ
Very sorry re #twunk last night re birds.>

11.16 a.m.
<
@JoneseyBJ
Birds delight our ears and eyes with their feathers and song! And control worms. Leave birds alone!>

11.45 a.m.
Maybe will just throw in quote from Dalai Lama for good measure:

<
@JoneseyBJ
Just as a snake sheds its skin so we can shed our past and begin anew. (@DalaiLama)>

9.15 p.m.
Right. Children are asleep. Am going to get back on Twitter.

9.16 p.m.
OMG. Tweet from @_Roxster! Yesss! At least Roxster has not left in disgust.

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ @DalaiLama Once the hangover has cleared? Do you realize you’ve been singled out in a #Twunk thread?>

9.17 p.m.
Oh God. Everyone is ridiculing me and retweeting my drunken birds tweet. Must try and do damage control.

<
@JoneseyBJ
#twunkbirds Look, sorry, I really wish I hadn’t – what is the past tense of tweet? Tweeted? Twittered?>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ I believe the appropriate term is ‘Twat’.>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster Are you being grammatical or rude?>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ The former *pretentious voice*: from the Latin, Twitto, Twittarse, Twittat.>

He’s funny. And pic is handsome. And young-looking. I wonder who he is?

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster Roxster, if you carry on like this, your 103 remaining Twitterati will be demanding sick bags.>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ Why? Are they all hung-over because they too were twunking about birds last night?>

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Cheeky young whippersnapper.

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster Please stop being so impertinent, or I shall have to tweak you.>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ Tweak or tweet? Best not the latter. You’ve just lost 48 more followers.>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster Oh no! They think I’m a really neurotic Twitterer and fat.>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ Did you just say ‘and fart’?>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster No, Roxster, I said ‘and fat’. You seem unhealthily obsessed with farting and vomiting.>

Roxster just retweeted me from one of his followers: <
@Raef_P
@Rory See you in five, yar? Outside the Fartage?> adding:

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ Posh bastards are skiing in France.>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster But what is Fartage?>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ Waxing.>

10 p.m.
Waxing? France? Suddenly have lurching fear that Roxster is not a cute younger man who finds me entertaining, but gay, and is drawn to me and Talitha as tragic ironic ruined drag acts, like Lily Savage.

10.05 p.m.
Just called Talitha to get her opinion.

‘Roxster? That rings a bell. Is he one of my followers?’

‘He’s MY follower!’ I said indignantly, then conceded, ‘Though he may have jumped across from you.’

‘He’s adorable. Roxster. Roxby someone. I had a man on the show who was plugging designer food-recycling caddies and Roxby came with him. He works for some green eco-charity. Nice young chap. Very handsome. Go for it!’

10.15 p.m.
<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster Do you go to France and get waxed, Roxster?>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ *Deep masculine voice* Jonesey, I am very far from gay. I am talking about waxing snowboards.>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster ‘Oh oh, look at me, I’m a young person. I do snowboarding in baggy trousers showing my underpants.’>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster ‘Instead of skiing elegantly with a furlined hood.’>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ Do you like younger men, Jonesey?>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster *Icy, almost to point of glacier-esque* Excuse me? What EXACTLY are you implying?>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ *Hides behind sofa* How old are you, Jonesey?>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster Oscar Wilde: Never trust a woman who will tell you her age. If she tells you that she will tell you anything.>

<
@JoneseyBJ
@_Roxster How old are you, Roxster?>

<
@_Roxster
@JoneseyBJ 29.>

SCREENWRITER

Monday 14 January 2013

Twitter followers 793 (am #Twunken heroine), tweets 17, disastrous social occasions agreed to 1 (or maybe 3 all in one), words of screenplay written 0.

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 . . .

Forties:
Not sure about this because I was with Mark most of the time. Maybe about equal? If you take babies out of the equation. Or maybe men think they’re on top because they think they want younger women and think age-equivalent women want them. But actually secretly the women equally want younger men. And the younger men like the older women because they’re refreshingly not looking to them to be breadwinners and not thinking about babies any more.

Fifties:
It used to be the age of Germaine Greer’s ‘Invisible Woman’, branded as non-viable, post-menopausal sitcom fodder. But now with the Talitha school of branding combined with Kim Cattrall, Julianne and Demi Moore, etc. is all starting to change!

Sixties:
Balance completely shifting, as men realize they’ve got as far as they’re going to get in their careers and that they’ve never really made friends in the way women do, but just talked about golf and stuff. And women take better care of themselves – look at Helen Mirren and Joanna Lumley!

Seventies:
Definitely women have the upper hand, and still do themselves out nicely, and make a nice home and cook and—

‘Bridget, are you still there?’

Upshot of it is, have agreed to take the children to Hard-Hats-Offing for the new Gatehouse Lodges and the Cruise Slideshow Event followed by Family Tea at Chats. And have still not even made a start on screenplay.

Tuesday 15 January 2013

11.55 p.m.
Have spent all of last night and all of today writing writing writing and just emailed
The Leaves in His Hair
to Talitha.

Wednesday 16 January 2013

134lb (bad: too much time sitting on arse), agents, though, 1!

11 a.m.
Just had phone call from agent! Unfortunately had mouth full of grated cheese but did not matter as did not seem imperative to talk.

‘I have Brian Katzenberg for you,’ said the assistant.

‘So,’ Brian Katzenberg crashed straight in. ‘We have Sergei in common, and I know Sergei wants to get this spec out.’

‘Have you read it?’ I said excitedly. ‘Do you like it?’

‘I think it’s fascinating and I’m going to get it out to appropriate people immediately. So you can let Sergei know that straight away and it’s a pleasure to meet you.’

‘Thank you,’ I stammered.

‘So you’ll tell Sergei I did it?’

‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Will do!’

11.05 a.m.
Just called Talitha to thank her.

‘You will tell Sergei?’ I said. ‘He seemed very anxious that I tell him straight away.’

‘Oh God. Yes, I’ll tell Sergei. Fuck knows what’s going on there. But, darling, I’m very proud of you for finishing.’

LET IT SNOW!