Unit 9. Bridget Jones’s Diary (by Helen Fielding)

I 1. Have you ever kept a diary? What did you write in it?

2. What do you think of people who keep diaries?

3. Study the words. Check up the pronunciation.

bellow – вопить, орать

circuitous – окольный, обходной

courtship – ухаживание

coy – скромный, прикидывающийся скромным

cut-throat – жестокий, беспощадный

dazzling – ослепительный

distraught – смущенный

ensue – следовать, являться результатом

glad rags – праздничная одежда

heady – опрометчивый, безрассудный

hunch – предчувствие, подозрение

immerse – погружаться, углубляться

insurmountable – непреодолимый

ludicrous – смехотворный, абсурдный

overbearing – властный, повелительный

quarry – добыча

resignedly – покорно

retrieve – вернуть себе, взять обратно

smugly – самодовольно

strident – резкий, крикливый

strut – ходить с важным видом

stunning – ошеломляющий, сногсшибательный

tatty – невзрачный, жалкий, оборванный

top-notch – первоклассный

transpire – выясниться, становиться явным

undaunted – неустрашимый, стойкий

virulent – опасный, злобный

zeal – рвение, энтузиазм

II 1. Read the following extracts from the book “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and do the tasks for each part.

Extract 1

Sunday 1 January

9st 3 (but post-Christmas), alcohol units 14 (but effectively covers 2 days as 4 hours of party was on New Year’s Day),cigarettes 22, calories 5424.

Noon. London: my flat. Ugh. The last thing on earth I feel physically, emotionally or mentally equipped to do is drive to Una and Geoffrey Alconbury’s New Year’s Day Turkey Curry Buffet in Grafton Underwood. Geoffrey and Una Alconbury are my parents’ best friends and, as Uncle Geoffrey never tires of reminding me, have known me since I was running round the lawn with no clothes on. My mother rang up at 8.30 in the morning last August Bank Holiday and forced me to promise to go. She approached it via a cunningly circuitous route.

“Oh, hello, darling. I was just ringing to see what you wanted for Christmas. ”

“Christmas?”

“Would you like a surprise, darling?”

“No!” I bellowed. ’Sorry. I mean . . .”

“I wondered if you’d like a set of wheels for your suitcase.”

“But I haven’t got a suitcase.”

“Why don’t I get you a little suitcase with wheels attached. You know, like air hostesses have.”

“I’ve already got a bag.”

“Oh, darling, you can’t go around with that tatty green canvas thing. You look like some sort of Mary Poppins person who’s fallen on hard times. Just a little compact case with a pull-out handle. It’s amazing how much you can get in. Do you want it in navy on red or red on navy?”

“Mum. It’s eight thirty in the morning. It’s summer. It’s very hot. I don’t want an air-hostess bag.”

“Julie Enderby’s got one. She says she never uses anything else.”

“Who’s Julie Enderby?”

“You know Julie, darling, Mavis Enderby’s daughter. Julie! The one that’s got that super-dooper job at Arthur Andersen . . .”

“Mum . . .”

“Always takes it on her trips . . .”

“I don’t want a little bag with wheels on.”

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t Jamie, Daddy and I all club together and get you a proper new big suitcase and a set of wheels?”

Exhausted, I held the phone away from my ear, puzzling about where the missionary luggage-Christmas-gift zeal had stemmed from. When I put the phone back she was saying: “ . . . in actual fact, you can get them with a compartment with bottles for your bubble bath and things. The other thing I thought of was a shopping trolley.”

“Is there anything you’d like for Christmas?” I said desperately, blinking in the dazzling Bank Holiday sunlight.

“No, no,” she said airily. “I’ve got everything I need. Now, darling,” she suddenly hissed, “you will be coming to Geoffrey and Una’s New Year’s Day Turkey Curry Buffet this year, won’t you?”

“Ah. Actually, I . . . I panicked wildly. What could I pretend to be doing? ” . . . think I might have to work on New Year’s Day. ”

“That doesn’t matter. You can drive up after work. Oh, did I mention? Malcolm and Elaine Darcy are coming and bringing Mark with them. Do you remember Mark, darling?He’s one of those top-notch barristers. Masses of money. Divorced. It doesn’t start till eight.”

Oh God. Not another strangely dressed opera freak with bushy hair burgeoning from a side-parting. “Mum, I’ve told you. I don’t need to be fixed up with . . . ”

“Now come along, darling. Una and Geoffrey have been holding the New Year Buffet since you were running round the lawn with no clothes on! Of course you’re going to come. And you’ll be able to use your new suitcase.”

a) When and why did Mrs. Jones phone Bridget?

b) How did Bridget feel about the call? How did she know that her mother was plotting something?

c) What else do we learn about Bridget and her family from this extract?

Extract 2

Saturday 18 February

9st, alcohol units 4, cigarettes 6, calories 2746, correct lottery numbers 2 (v.g.).

At last I got to the bottom of Mum and Dad. I was beginning to suspect a post-Portuguese-holiday Shirley-Valentine-style scenario and that I would open the Sunday People to see my mother sporting dyed blond hair and a leopard-skin top sitting on a sofa with someone in stone-washed jeans called Gonzales and explaining that, if you really love someone, a forty-six year age gap really doesn’t matter.

Today she asked me to meet her for lunch at the coffee place in Dickens and Jones and I asked her outright if she was seeing someone else.

“No. There is no one else,” she said, staring into the distance with a look of melancholy bravery I swear she has copied from Princess Diana.

“So why are you being so mean to Dad?” I said.

“Darling, it’s merely a question of realizing, when your father retired, that I had spent thirty-five years without a break running his home and bringing up his children.”

“Jamie and I are your children too,” I interjected, hurt.

“ – and that as far as he was concerned his lifetime’s work was over and mine was still carrying on, which is exactly how I used to feel when you were little and it got to the weekends. You only get one life. I’ve just made a decision to change things a bit and spend what’s left of mine looking after me for a change.”

As I went to the till to pay, I was thinking it all over and trying, as a feminist, to see Mum’s point of view. Then my eye was caught by a tall, distinguished-looking man with grey hair, a European-style leather jacket and one of those gentleman’s handbag things. He was looking into the café, tapping his watch and raising his eyebrows, I wheeled round and caught my mother mouthing, “Won’t be a mo,” and nodding towards me apologetically.

I didn’t say anything to Mum at the time, just said goodbye, then doubled back and followed her to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Sure enough, I eventually found her in the perfume department wandering round with the tall smoothie, spraying her wrists with everything in sight, holding them up to his face and laughing coquettishly.

Got home to answer phone message from my brother Jamie. Called him straight away and told him everything.

a) What was going on between Bridget’s mum and dad?

b) What did Bridget’s mother decide to change about her life? Why?

Extract 3

Sunday 19 February

8st 13 (v.g. but purely through worry), alcohol units 2 (but the Lord’s Day), cigarettes 7, calories 2100.

Called Mum up to confront her about the late-in-life smoothie I saw her with after our lunch.

“Oh, you must mean Julian,” she trilled.

This was an immediate giveaway. My parents do not describe their friends by their Christian names. It is always Una Alconbury, Audrey Coles, Brian Enderby: “You know David Ricketts, darling – married to Anthea Ricketts, who’s in the Lifeboat.” It’s a gesture to the fact that they know in their hearts I have no idea who Mavis Enderby is, even though they’re going to talk about Brian and Mavis Enderby for the next forty minutes as if I’ve known them intimately since I was four.

I knew straight away that Julian would not turn out to be involved in any Lifeboat luncheons, nor would he have a wife who was in any Lifeboats, Rotaries or Friends of St. George’s. I sensed also that she had met him in Portugal, before the trouble with Dad, and he might well turn out to be not so much Julian but Julio. I sensed that, let’s face it, Julio was the trouble with Dad.

I confronted her with this hunch. She denied it. She even came out with some elaborately concocted tale about ’Julian’ bumping into her in the Marble Arch Marks and Spencer, making her drop her new Le Creuset terrine dish on her foot and taking her for a coffee in Selfridges from which sprang a firm platonic friendship based entirely on department store coffee shops.

Why, when people are leaving their partners because they’re having an affair with someone else, do they think it will seem better to pretend there is no one else involved? Do they think it will be less hurtful for their partners to think they just walked out because they couldn’t stand them any more and then had the good fortune to meet some tall Omar Sharif-figure with a gentleman’s handbag two weeks afterwards while the ex-partner is spending his evenings bursting into tears at the sight of the toothbrush mug? It’s like those people who invent a lie as an excuse rather than the truth, even when the truth is better than the lie.

I once heard my friend Simon canceling a date with a girl - on whom he was really keen – because he had a spot with a yellow head just to the right of his nose, and because, owing to a laundry crisis he had gone to work in a ludicrous late-seventies jacket, assuming he could pick his normal jacket up from the cleaner’s at lunchtime, but the cleaners hadn’t done it.

He took it into his head, therefore, to tell the girl he couldn’t see her because his sister had turned up unexpectedly for the evening and he had to entertain her, adding wildly that he also had to watch some videos for work before the morning; at which point the girl reminded him that he’d told her he didn’t have any brothers or sisters and suggested he come and watch the videos at her place while she cooked him supper. However, there were no work videos to take round and watch, so he had to construct a further cobweb of lies. The incident culminated with the girl, convinced he was having an affair with someone else when it was only their second date, chucking him, and Simon spending the evening getting hammered alone with his spot, wearing his seventies jacket.

I tried to explain to Mum that she wasn’t telling the truth, but she was so suffused with lust that she had lost sight of, well, everything.

“You’re really becoming very cynical and suspicious, darling.” she said. “Julio” – aha! ahahahahahaha! – “is just a friend. I just need some space.”

So, it transpired, in order to oblige, Dad is moving into the Alconburys’ dead granny’s flat at the bottom of their garden.

a)Did Bridget have grounds for suspicion? What gave her mother away?

b)How did Mrs. Jones describe her relations with Julian?

c)What did Bridget think about telling lies to a partner? Compare her parents’ and Simon’s stories?

Extract 4

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.

a) What changes took place in Mrs. Jones’ life?

b) How did Bridget react to her mother’s behaviour?

Extract 5

Sunday 5 March

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.

a) What party did Bridget attend? Did she enjoy it?

b) Why did Bridget congratulate herself on being single?

Extract 6

Thursday 6 April

Went to meet Jude for quiet drink to talk about Flow some more and noticed a familiar besuited figure with knitting-pattern dark good looks sitting in a quiet corner having dinner: it was Magda’s Jeremy. Waved at him and just for split second saw expression of horror cross his face, which instantly made me look to his companion who was a) not Magda. b) not yet thirty, c) wearing a suit which I have tried on twice in Whistles and had to take off as too expensive. Bloody witch.

I could tell Jeremy was going to try to get away with the sort of quick “Hello not now” look which acknowledges your close, old and enduring friendship but at the same time demonstrates that this is not the moment to affirm it with kisses and an in-depth chat. I was about to play along with it but then I thought, hang on a minute! Sisters! Under the skin! Magda! If Magda’s husband has nothing to be ashamed of in dining with this worthless trollop in my suit, he will introduce me.

I altered my path to pass his table, at which he immersed himself deep in conversation with the trollop, glancing up as I walked past and giving me a firm, confident smile as if to say ‘business meeting.’ I gave him a look which said, “Don’t you business meeting me,” and strutted on.

What should I do now, though? Oh dear, oh dear. Tell Magda? Not tell Magda? Ring Magda and ask if everything’s OK? Ring Jeremy and ask him if everything’s OK? Ring Jeremy and threaten to tell Magda unless he drops the witch in my suit? Mind my own business?

I resolved serenely to tell no one, as gossip is a virulent spreading poison. Instead I will ring Magda a lot and be there for her so if anything is amiss (which she is bound, with woman’s intuition, to sense), she will tell me. Then if it seems the right thing to do, I will tell her what I saw.

a) Describe the incident that occurred between Bridget and Jeremy.

b) Why was Bridget in two minds?

Extract 7

Tuesday 11 April

8st alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0, Instants 9 (this must stop).

All seems normal with Magda and Jeremy so maybe it was just a business meeting. Am invited to a glittering literati launch of Kafka’s Motorbike next week at the Ivy. Determined, instead of fearing the scary party, panicking all the way through and going home pissed and depressed, am going to improve social skills, confidence and Make Parties Work for Me – as guided by article have just read in magazine.

Apparently, Tina Brown of The New Yorker is brilliant at dealing with parties, gliding prettily from group to group, saying, “Martin Aims! Nelson Mandela! Richard Gere!” in a tone which at once suggests, “My God, I have never been more enchanted to see anyone in my entire life! Have you met the most dazzling person at the party apart from you? Talk! Talk! Must network! Byeee!” Wish to be like Tina Brown, though not, obviously, quite so hardworking.

The article is full of useful tips. One should never, apparently, talk to anyone at a party for more than two minutes. When time is up, you simply say, “I think we’re expected to circulate. Nice to meet you,” and go off. If you get lost for words after asking someone what they do to which they reply “Undertaker” or “I work for the Child Support Agency,” you must simply ask, “Do you enjoy that?” When introducing people add a thoughtful detail or two about each person so that their interlocutor has a conversational kicking-off point. E.g., “This is John – he’s from New Zealand and enjoys windsurfing.” Or, “Gina is a keen skydiver and lives on a barge.”

Most importantly, one must never go to a party without a clear objective: `whether it be to ‘network,’ thereby adding to your spread of contacts to improve your career, to make friends with someone specific; or simply ‘clinch’ a top deal. Understand where have been going wrong by going to parties armed only with objective of not getting too pissed.

a) What useful information did Bridget find in the article?

b) Why does Bridget read such kind of articles?

Extract 8

Sunday 2 July

8st 10 (continuing good work), alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0, calories 995, Instants 0: perfect.

7.45 a.m. Mum just rang. “Oh, hello, darling, guess what?”

“I’ll just take the phone in the other room. Hang on,” I said, glancing over nervously at Daniel, unplugging the phone, creeping next door and plugging it in again only to find my mother had not noticed my absence for the last two and a half minutes and was still talking.

“So what do you think, darling?”

“Um, I don’t know. I was bringing the phone into the other room like I said,” I said.

“Ah. So you didn’t hear anything?”

“No.” There was a slight pause.

“Oh, hello, darling, guess what?” Sometimes I think my mother is part of the modern world and sometimes she seems a million miles away. Like when she leaves messages on my answerphone which just say, very loudly and clearly, “Bridget Jones’s mother.”

“Hello? Oh, hello, darling, guess what?” she said, again.

“What?” I said resignedly.

“Una and Geoffrey are having a Tarts and Vicars party in the garden on the twenty-ninth of July. Don’t you think that’s fun! Tarts and Vicars! Imagine!”

I tried hard not to, fighting off a vision of Una Alconbury in thigh boots, fishnet nights and a peephole bra. For sixty-year-olds to organize such an event seemed unnatural and wrong.

“Anyway, we thought it would be super if you and” – coy, loaded pause – “Daniel, could come. We’re all dying to meet him.”

My heart sank at the thought of my relationship with Daniel being dissected in dose and intimate detail amongst the Lifeboat luncheons of Northamptonshire.

“I don’t think it’s really Daniel’s – ” Just as I said that the chair I had, for some reason, been balancing on with my knees while I leaned over the table fell over with a crash.

When I retrieved the phone my mother was still talking.

“Yes, super. Mark Darcy’s going to be there, apparently, with someone, so . . . ”

“What’s going on?” Daniel was standing in the doorway. “Who are you talking to?”

“My mother,” I said, desperately, out of the corner of my mouth.

“Give it to me,” he said, taking the phone. I like it when he is authoritative without being cross like this.

“Mrs Jones,” he said, in his most charming voice. “It’s Daniel here.”

I could practically hear her going all fluttery.

“This is very bright and early on a Sunday morning for a phone call. Yes, it is an absolutely beautiful day. What can we do for you?”

He looked at me while she chattered for a few seconds then turned back to the receiver.

“Well, that’ll be lovely. I shall put that in the diary for the twenty-ninth and look out my dog collar. Now, we’d better get back and catch up on our sleep. You take care of yourself, now. Cheerio. Yes. Cheerio,” he said firmly, and put the phone down.

“You see,” he said smugly, “a firm hand, that’s all it needs.”

a) Where were Bridget and Daniel invited to? Why didn’t Bridget want to go there?

b) Compare the style in which Bridget and Daniel speak to Mrs. Jones.

Extract 9

Saturday 23 September

9st, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 0 (v.v.g.), draft replies written to Mark Darcy’s invitation 14 (but at least has replaced imaginary conversations with Daniel).

10 a.m.Right. I am going to reply to Mark Darcy’s invitation and say quite clearly and firmly that I will be unable to attend. There is no reason why I should go. I am not a close friend or relation, and would have to miss both Blind Date and Casualty.

Oh God, though. It is one of those mad invitations written in the third person, as if everyone is so posh that to acknowledge directly in person that they were having a party and wondered if you would like to come would be like calling the ladies’ powder room the toilet. Seem to remember from childhood am supposed to reply in same oblique style as if I am imaginary person employed by self to reply to invitations from imaginary people employed by friends to issue invitations. What to put?

Bridget Jones regrets that she will be unable . . .

Miss Bridget Jones is distraught, that she will be unable . . .

Devastated does not do justice to the feelings of Miss Bridget Jones . . .

It is with great regret that we must announce that so great was

Miss Budget Jones’s distress at not being able to accept the

kind invitation of Mr. Mark Darcy that she has topped herself

and will therefore, more certainly than ever, now, be unable to

accept Mr. Mark Darcy’s kind . . .

Ooh: telephone.

It was Dad: “Bridget, my dear, you are coming to the horror event next Saturday, aren’t you?”

“The Darcys’ ruby wedding, you mean.”

“What else? It’s been the only thing that has distracted your mother from the question of who’s getting the mahogany ornament cabinet and nesting coffee tables since she got the Lisa Leeson interview at the beginning of August.”

“I was kind of hoping to get out of it.”

The line went quiet at the other end.

“Dad?”

There was a muffled sob. Dad was crying. I think Dad is having a nervous breakdown. Mind you, if I’d been married to Mum for thirty-nine years I’d have had a nervous breakdown, even without her running off with a Portuguese tour operator.

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

“Oh, it’s just . . . Sony. It’s just . . . I was hoping to get out of it too.”

“Well, why don’t you? Hurray. Let’s go to the pictures instead.”

“It’s . . . ” he broke down again. “It’s the thought of her going with that greasy beperfumed bouffant wop, and all my friends and colleagues of forty years saying ‘cheers’ to the pair of them and writing me off as history.”

“They won’t . . . ”

“Oh yes, they will. I’m determined to go, Bridget. I’m going to get on my glad rags and hold my head up high and . . . but . . . ” Sobs again.

“What?”

“I need some moral support.”

A.m.

Miss Bridget Jones has great pleasure . . .

Ms. Bridget Jones thanks Mr. Mark Darcy for his . . .

It is with great pleasure that Miss Bridget Jones accepts . . .

Oh, for God’s sake.

Dear Mark,

Thank you for your invitation to your ruby wedding party for Malcolm and Elaine. I would love to come.

Yours, Bridget Jones