Monday 28 August
9st 6. (full of beer and baked potatoes), alcohol units 6, cigarettes 20, calories 2846,
Got back to message from Mum asking me what I thought about an electric mixer for Christmas, and to remember Christmas Day was a Monday this year so was I coming home on the Friday night or the Saturday?
Considerably less annoyingly, there was a letter from Richard Finch, the editor of Good Afternoon! offering me a job, I think. This is all it said:
OK, my darling. You're on.
Tuesday 29 August
9st2,, alcohol units 0 (v.g.), cigarettes 3 (g.), calories 1456 (pre-new-job healthy eating).
10:30 a.m. Office. Just called Richard Finch's assistant Patchouli and it is a job offer but must start in a week. I don't know anything about television but sod it, I'm stuck in a dead end here, and it is just too humiliating working with Daniel now. I had better go and tell him.
11:15 a.m. I can't believe this. Daniel stared at me, ashen-faced. 'You can't do this,' he said. 'Have you any idea how difficult the last few weeks have been for me?' Then Perpetua burst in – she must have been eavesdropping outside the door.
'Daniel,' she exploded. 'You selfish, self-indulgent, manipulative, emotional blackmailer. It was you – for God's sake – who chucked her. So you can just bloody well put up with it.'
Suddenly think I might love Perpetua, though not in a lesbian way.
SEPTEMBER. Up The Fireman's Pole
Monday 4 September
9st, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 27, calories 15, minutes spent having imaginary conversations with Daniel telling him what I think of him 145 (good, better).
8 a.m. First day at new job. Must begin as mean to go on, with new calm, authoritative image. And no smoking. Smoking is a sign of weakness and undermines one's personal authority.
8:30 a.m. Mum just rang, I assumed to wish me luck for the new job.
'Guess what, darling?' she began.
What?'
'Elaine has invited you to their ruby wedding!' she said, pausing breathlessly and expectantly.
My mind went blank. Elaine? Brian – and – Elaine? Cohn-and-Elaine? Elaine-named-to-Gordon-who-used-to-be-head-of-Tarmacadamin-Kettering-Elaine?
'She thought it might be nice to have one or two young 'uns there to keep Mark company.'
Ah. Malcolm and Elaine. Begetters of the overperfect Mark Darcy.
'Apparently he told Elaine he thought you were very attractive.'
'Durr! Don't lie,' I muttered. Pleased though.
'Well, I'm sure that's what he meant, anyway, darling.'
'What did he say?' I hissed, suddenly suspicious.
'He said you were very . . . '
'Mother . . . '
'Well, the word he actually used, darling, was 'bizarre.' But that's lovely, isn't it – 'bizarre'? Anyway, you can ask him all about it at the ruby wedding.'
'I'm not going all the way to Huntingdon to celebrate the ruby wedding of two people I have spoken to once for eight seconds since I was three, just to throw myself in the path of a rich divorce who describes me as bizarre.'