I was late through no fault of my own. It was impossible to get into the TV studios as I had no pass and the door was run by the sort of security guards who think their job is to prevent the staff from entering the building. When I finally reached reception I wasn't allowed upstairs till someone came to get me. By this time it was 9:25 and the conference was at 9:30. Patchouli eventually appeared with two huge barking dogs, one of which started jumping up and licking my face while the other put its head straight up my skirt.
'They're Richard's. Aren't they, like, brilliant?' she said. 'I'll just take them to the car.'
'Won't I be late for the meeting?' I said desperately, holding on to the dog's head between my knees and trying to push it away. She looked me up and down as if to say, 'So?' and then disappeared, dragging the dogs.
By the time I got in to the office, therefore, the meeting had started and everyone stared except Richard, whose portly form was clad in a strange green woolen boilersuit.
'Come on, come on,' he was saying, jigging and beckoning the table towards him with both hands. 'I'm thinking Nine o'clock Service. I'm thinking dirty vicars. I'm thinking sexual acts in church. I'm thinking, why do women fall for vicars? Come on. I'm not paying you for nothing. Have an idea.'
'Why don't you interview Joanna Trollope?' I said.
'A trollop?' he said, staring at me blakly. 'What trollop?'
'Joanna Trollope. The woman who wrote The Rector's Wife that was on the telly. The Rector's Wife. She should know.'
A leery smile spread across his face. 'Brilliant,' he said to my breasts. 'Absolutely flicking brilliant. Anyone got a number for Joanna Trollope?'
There was a long pause. 'Er, actually I have,' I said eventually, feeling walls of hate vibes coming from the grunge youths.
When the meeting was over I rushed to the loo to recover my composure where Patchouli was making herself up next to her friend, who was wearing a sprayed-on dress that showed her underpants and midriff.
'This isn't too tarty, is it?' the girl was saying to Patchouli. 'You should have seen those bitch thirtysomethings' faces when I walked in . . . Oh!'
Both girls looked at me, horrified, with their hands over their mouths. 'We didn't mean you,' they said.
I am not sure if I am going to be able to stand this.
8st 12 (v.g. advantage of new job with attendant nervous tension), alcohol units 4, cigarettes 10, calories 1876, minutes spent having imaginary conversations with Daniel 24 (excellent), minutes spent imagining rerun of conversations with mother in which I come out on top 94.
11:30 a.m. Why oh why did! give my mother a key to my flat? I was just-for the first time in five weeks-starting a weekend without wanting to stare at the wall and burst into tears. I'd got through a week at work. I was starting to think maybe it was all going to be OK, maybe I wasn't necessarily going to be eaten by an Alsatian when she burst in carrying a sewing machine.
'What on earth are you doing, silly?' she trilled. I was weighing out 100 grams of cereal for my breakfast using a bar of chocolate (the weights for the scales are in ounces which is no good because the calorie chart is in grams).
'Guess what, darling?' she said, beginning to open and shut all the cupboard doors.
'What?' I said, standing in my socks and nightie trying to wipe the mascara from under my eyes.
'Malcolm and Elaine are having the ruby wedding in London now, on the twenty-third, so you will be able to come and keep Mark company.'
'I don't want to keep Mark company,' I said through clenched teeth. 'Oh. but he's very clever. Been to Cambridge. Apparently he made a fortune in America . . . '
'I'm not going.'
'Now, come along, darling, let's not start,' she said, as if I were thirteen. 'You see, Mark's completed the house in Holland Park and he's throwing the whole party for them, six floors, caterers and everything . . . What are you going to wear?'
'Are you going with Julio or Dad?' I said, to shut her up.
'Oh, darling, I don't know. Probably both of them,' she said in the special, breathy voice she reserves for when she thinks she is Diana Dors.
'You can't do that.'
'But Daddy and I are still fiends, darling. I'm just friends with Julio as well.'
Grr. Grr. Grrr. I absolutely cannot deal with her when she's like this.
'Anyway, I'll tell Elaine you'd love to come, shall I?' she said, picking up the inexplicable sewing machine as she headed for the door. 'Must fly. Byee!'
I am not going to spend another evening being danced about in front of Mark Darcy like a spoonful of puried turnip in front of a baby. I am going to have to leave the country or something.
8 p.m. Off to dinner party. All the Smug Marrieds keep inviting me on Saturday nights now I am alone again, seating me opposite an increasingly horrifying selection of single men. It is very kind of them and I appreciate it v. much but it only seems to highlight my emotional failure and isolation – though Magda says I should remember that being single is better than having an adulterous, sexually incontinent husband.
Midnight. Oh dear. Everyone was trying to cheer up the spare man (thirty-seven, newly divorced by wife, sample view: 'I have to say, I do think Michael Howard is somewhat unfairly maligned.').
'Don't know what you're complaining about,' Jeremy was holding forth to him. 'Men get more attractive when they get older and women get less attractive, so all those twenty-two-year-olds who wouldn't look at you when you were twenty-five will be gagging for it.'
I sat, head down, quivering furiously at their inferences of female sell-by dates and life as game of musical chairs where girls without a chair/man when the music stops/they pass thirty are 'out.' Huh. As if.
'Oh yes, I quite agree it's much the best to go for younger partners,' I burst out, airily. 'Men in their thirties are such bores with their hang-ups and obsessive delusions that all women are trying to trap them into marriage. These days I'm only really interested in men in their early twenties. They're so much better able to . . . well, you know . . . '
'Really?' said Magda, rather too eagerly. 'How . . . ?'
'Yes, you're interested,' interjected Jeremy, glaring at Magda. 'But the point is they're not interested in you.'
'Um. Excuse me. My current boyfriend is twenty-three,' I said, sweetly.
There was a stunned silence. 'Well, in that case,' said Alex, smirking, 'you can bring him to us next Saturday when you come to dinner, can't you?'
Bugger. Where am I going to find a twenty-three-year-old who will come to dinner with Smug Marrieds on a Saturday night instead of taking contaminated Ecstasy tablets?
9st, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 4 (v.g.), calories 3222 (British Rail sandwiches hideously impregnated), minutes spent imagining speech will make when resigning from new job 210.
Ugh. Hateful conference with bully-boss Richard Finch going, 'Right. Harrods one-pound-a-pee toilets. I'm thinking Fantasy Toilets. I'm thinking studio: Frank Skinner and Sir Richard Rogers on furry seats, armrests with TV screens, quilted loo paper. Bridget, you're Dole Youths Clampdown. I'm thinking the North. I'm thinking Dole Youths, loafing about, live down the line.'