Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (25 page)

1.20 p.m.
Maybe they could have been on a road trip in the American West? Yes, surely as a car would be a nice change from a yacht?

4.30 p.m.
Think will call Brian the Agent and talk it through with him. I mean, that’s what you do with agents, right?

5 p.m.
Explained the whole thing to Brian the Agent, while maniacally scratching head.

‘So here’s the thing,’ said Brian. ‘Apparently, Greenlight hired a yacht in Hawaii for the
Puff the Magic Dragon
stoner movie, and now the stoner movie has fallen over, so they need another vehicle for a Hawaiian yacht.’

‘Oh,’ I said, crestfallen. I mean, I thought the reason Greenlight so loved
The Leaves in His Hair
was . . .

‘So what do we do?’ Brian said cheerfully. ‘We make
Hedda Gabbler
work on a Hawaiian yacht, right?’

‘Right,’ I said, nodding emphatically, even though Brian could not see emphatic nodding, infestering surrounding area with nits, as was on phone. Which was fortunate as otherwise would have also infestered Brian Katzenberg.

Thursday 25 April 2013

5 a.m.
In bed writing crazily. Surrounded by revolting mess of Nicorette packets, coffee cups, pages of script all over floor, Diet Coke, Red Bull cans, etc., etc. Feel completely disgusting. Stomach is just huge bulge of grated cheese, rye bread, Diet Coke and Red Bull, and head is constantly itching. And still have not finished any coherent pages and is all spelt wrong and spacing mad, etc, etc. Also cannot even text Roxster to cheer self up because he is asleep.

10 a.m.
Somehow spurred on by adrenalin rush of deadline, finished ‘pages’ and have emailed them off, even throwing in an extra, admittedly idiotic, scene I did in about twenty minutes flat, of Hedda throwing herself off the boat at the end, then Lovegood her alcoholic ex-lover doing the same and them both appearing putting on scuba gear at the bottom of the ocean like in
For Your Eyes Only
. But still, will give pleasing sense of more pages having been written.

Now am going back to sleep.

NIT-INFESTERED POWER MEETING

Friday 26 April 2013

12.30 p.m.
Greenlight boardroom. Oh God. There was a tense atmosphere when I walked in. They were all talking amongst themselves and suddenly stopped.

‘Bridget, hello! Come and sit down!’ said Imogen. ‘Thank you for the pages. There are some lovely things in there.’ (Have subsequently come to realize that ‘There are some lovely things in there’ means ‘It’s crap’.)

There was a flat, tired air of weariness, quite different from the excitement of last week. Felt overwhelming urge to scratch my head.

‘How is the road trip a good idea when these are people who like yachts?’ George bulldozed in.

‘That’s exactly what I thought!’ I said, quickly giving my head a scratch as if to illustrate the dilemma, but actually to squash the worst bit of itching. ‘If Hedda’s going to come back and be disappointed by her new yacht, how can she already have been on a honeymoon on it?’

‘Yes, but they don’t have to go on a road trip, they could go to . . . to . . .’

My phone vibrated. Talitha.

‘Vegas!’ said Damian eagerly.

‘Not
Vegas
,’ said George disparagingly. ‘People get married in Vegas, they don’t have their honeymoons in Vegas.’

‘What about Costa Rica?’ said Damian.

The phone vibrated again.

Was Tom.

‘Or the Mayan Riviera?’ said Imogen.

‘Not Mexico. Kidnappings,’ said George.

‘But does it matter?’ I ventured, trying not even to start with the chilling implications of Tom’s text. ‘Because we’re not going to actually see them on the honeymoon, only when they get back.’

Everyone stared at me, as if this was a totally brilliant, original thought.

‘She’s right,’ said George. ‘We don’t need to see the honeymoon.’

Suddenly had sinking sense that George was not actually interested in the quality of my writing so much as the filming locations. Felt should quickly text Tom back reassuringly about the crabs/nit distinction, though did not have a definitive answer. Simultaneously sensed I must seize my advantage, and take control of the meeting.

‘Look,’ I said, in what I could already tell was going to be an annoying, schoolmarmy voice, scratching my head, and having a lurching fear that the reason Roxster hadn’t texted was that he too now had nits or maybe even—

‘I think the yacht is a
great
idea,’ I fraudulently enthused, ‘but it does throw up some issues with the adaptation. It’s important that we remember that
The Nits in His Hair
is making an—’

‘
The Nits in His Hair
?’ said Imogen, suddenly reaching her hand to her head.

‘I mean
The Leaves in His Hair
,’ I said hurriedly. Damian was scratching his head now and George, who is bald, was looking at us as if we were completely mad. The phone vibrated. Roxster! No, it was Tom again.

‘The important thing,’ I ploughed on, ‘is it’s important that we don’t lose the important . . . Look,’ I said grandly, opening my laptop, ‘I’ve made some notes about the important themes.’

Everyone gathered round to look at my screen, though keeping a distance from my head. Just as I was adding, to fill the embarrassing
silence while I got the laptop to start up, ‘You see, this is, essentially, I believe, a
feminist
piece,’ the screen popped with the pink and lilac home page of Princess Bride Dress Up.

Gaah! How had Mabel got on my laptop?

Started fiddling around trying to find notes, then George said impatiently, ‘Look, while you’re looking for this stuff, why don’t we go off and read the pages and we can order in some lunch?’

‘Read the pages?’ I said, mind reeling. ‘But haven’t you already read the pages?’

I mean, we’d just been
discussing
the pages. WHAT was the point of me staying up all night drinking Red Bull and chewing Nicorette, if they haven’t even read the pages and—

‘We’ll see you after lunch,’ said George, and now they have all left the boardroom.

1.05 p.m.
Humph. Anyway. At least I can freely scratch my head now, and google crabs and head lice and try and make some emotional peace with the fact that insect life has terminally put Roxster off me.

1.15 p.m.
Just typed in ‘Are nits crabs?’ on Ask.com and was reading –

Head lice and ‘crabs’, also called pubic lice, are different things.

Head lice (usually found on the head) have longer and thinner body compared to pubic lice which have bigger and more robust bodies.

Head lice live on the head only and cannot live in the pubic region.

Crab lice live in the pubic region.

There is also a third kind of lice that lives in other hairy regions of the . . .

– when George’s assistant appeared behind me with a lunch menu before I had time to switch the screen back to Princess Bride Dress Up.

Snapped the laptop shut, ordered a Thai chicken salad and, once she’d gone – presumably to tell the entire company that I had pubic lice – emailed the crabs/lice link to Tom.

1.30 p.m.
No one has come back. Starting to panic now as I am doing school pickup today. I mean, surely it was reasonable to think a meeting about ten pages would not take quite as long. Ooh, text. Roxster?

Was Tom.

Gaah! George and Damian and Imogen are all coming back.

2.45 p.m.
Meeting is over and have seconds to spare to get to Infants Branch by 3.15. Cheeringly, meeting was slightly more
positive
after they’d read the pages, and eaten some food (you see, is exactly the same with Billy and Mabel!), except they want me to rewrite everything I’ve already rewritten because the humour is ‘not coming off the page’, and the only bit George actually wants to leave as it is is the ludicrous,
For Your Eyes Only
scuba-diving ending.

Of course, when they returned after lunch, I
still
did not have feminist notes up on screen. Instead when they gathered round they were greeted with:

Head lice and ‘crabs’, also called pubic lice, are different things . . .

Think managed to click it off before they actually read it, though they may have seen the pictures of the two kinds of lice.

Ensuing discussion was punctuated by texts from Talitha who had, of course, immediately found a Celebrity Nit Nurse in Notting Hill and was texting me a running commentary.

Was too polite to ask Talitha to stop texting, because felt guilty and clearly needed to support her.

Talitha texts got worse and worse.

Talitha really must be in a state because normally she would never do anything to make you feel guilty. Have ruined Talitha’s life and career. And character.

Felt was the least I could do to offer to take them out for her if she comes round.

Talitha then came up with the
brilliant
plan of us all going to the Celebrity Nit Nurse tomorrow. ‘So at least that’s one less thing for you to worry about! And it will be a nice outing for us all! It’ll be fun!’

11 p.m.
Fantastic evening taking out Talitha’s hair extensions. Was incredibly challenging, as had to rub oil into the glue bits, and pull out, then inspect for nits. Was a bit like Anne Hathaway dying of a bad haircut in
Les Misérables,
except more moaning and crying. We didn’t find any actual insects as the Celebrity Nit Nurse had got all of those, but we did find quite a lot of dark dots actually in the glue.

Worst is that hair extensions will cost hundreds of pounds to put in again.

‘It’s all my fault. I’ll pay for them,’ I said.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, darling,’ Talitha said. ‘That’s not the point. The point is, I can’t put them back in for a week in case we missed any, because the nit cycle is a week. What am I going to do?’

She seemed suddenly to lose heart, looking at herself with nit oil
smeared in her real hair. ‘Oh, good, I look a hundred years old. What is Sergei going to say? And I have to go on TV. Oh, darling, this is what I always feared would happen. I’ll get trapped on a desert island where they have no hair-extension specialist or Botox aesthetician and all my artifice will drain away.’

Trying not to think about my eighteenth-century wig theory, I pointed out that this was most unlikely to happen – no one looks at their best with their hair smeared down with hair-extension and nit oil – and washed Talitha’s hair and blow-dried it. Actually, she looked really sweet. It was all fluffy, like a little chicken.

‘I mean, the whole point about celebrities is that they
change their look
!’ I said encouragingly. ‘Look at Lady Gaga! Look at Jessie J. You could wear . . . a pink wig!’

‘I’m not
Jessie J
!’ said Talitha, at which Mabel, who had been watching solemnly, burst out, ‘Kerching, kerching! Berbling, berbling!’ while looking at us expectantly, as if we were going to say, ‘No, YOU are Jessie J!’ Then, crestfallen, she whispered, ‘Why does Talitha look so sad?’

Talitha surveyed our faces.

‘It’s all right, darlings,’ she said, as if we were both five-year-olds. ‘I’ll simply get some pieces put in at Harrods. They’ll come in useful later. As long as they don’t have nits in them.’

11.30 p.m.
Talitha just texted: – which is quite a sophisticated thing to say, because she was completely eradicating any sense of passive-aggressive guilt inducement, and actually making it seem as if I’d done her a favour.

Talitha really is a sophisticated human being. She has this theory about people who are in ‘primitive states’, i.e. they don’t really know how to behave.

Also am sure that if Talitha actually thought it was my fault, i.e. I’d knowingly hugged and nuzzled her, whilst aware I might have nits,
without telling her I knew I might have nits, then she’d have been completely straight about it.

Tom texted:

Saturday 27 April 2013

Nits and nit eggs extracted 32, pounds forked out per dead nit £8.59.

Nit-nurse expedition was, as Billy put it, ‘extreme, extreme fun’ and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Caring assistants, entirely swathed in white, sucked at all our hair with a vacuum, said they’d found nothing, and then blew us very fiercely with a very hot hairdryer. It was ‘extreme, extreme fun’, that is, until the bill came – 275 quid! We could all have gone to Euro Disney for that! – with the right amount of well-timed googling.

‘How does this actually work?’ I said. ‘Couldn’t I do it at home using the mini-vacuum, then blasting us all with a really hot hairdryer?’

‘Oh no,’ said the Celebrity Nit Nurse airily. ‘It’s all very specially designed. The vacuum comes from Atlanta, and the Heat Destroyer is made in Rio de Janeiro.’