New Year's Resolutions

I WILL NOT
Drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week.
Smoke.
Waste money on: pasta-makers, ice-cream machines or other culinary devices which will never use;
books by unreadable literary authors to put impressively on shelves; exotic underwear, since pointless as
have no boyfriend.
Behave sluttishly around the house, but instead imagine others are watching.
Spend more than earn.
Allow in-tray to rage out of control.
Fall for any of following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or
wives, misogynists, megalomaniacs, chauvinists, emotional fuckwits or freeloaders, perverts.
Get annoyed with Mum, Una Alconbury or Perpetua.
Get upset over men, but instead be poised and cool ice-queen.
Have crushes on men, but instead form relationships based on mature assessment of character.
Bitch about anyone behind their backs, but be positive about everyone.
Obsess about Daniel Cleaver as pathetic to have a crush on boss in manner of Miss Moneypenny or
similar.
Sulk about having no boyfriend, but develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as woman of
substance, complete without boyfriend, as best way to obtain boyfriend.
I WILL
Stop smoking.
Drink no more than fourteen alcohol units a week.
Reduce circumference of thighs by 3 inches (i.e. 1 inches each), using anti-cellulite diet.
Purge flat of all extraneous matter
Give all clothes which have not worn for two years or more to homeless.
Improve career and find new job with potential.
Save up money in form of savings. Poss start pension-also.
Be more confident.
Be more assertive.
Make better use of time.

Not go out every night but stay in and read books and listen to classical music.
Give proportion of earnings to charity.
Be kinder and help others more.
Eat more pulses.
Get up straight away when wake up m mornings.
Go to gym three times a week not merely to buy sandwich. Put photographs in photograph albums.
Make up compilation 'mood' tapes so can have tapes ready with all favourite
romantic/dancing/rousing/feminist etc, tracks assembled instead of turning into drink-sodden DJ-style
person with tapes scattered all over floor.
Form functional relationship with responsible adult.
Learn to programme video.
JANUARY
An Exceptionally Bad Start
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.
11.45 p.m. Ugh. First day of New Year has been day of horror. Cannot quite believe I am once again
starting the year in a single bed in my parents' house. It is too humiliating at my age. I wonder if they'll
smell it if I have a fag out of the window. Having skulked at home all day, hoping hangover would clear, I
eventually gave up and set off for the Turkey Curry Buffet far too late. When I got to the Alconburys' and
rang their entire-tune-of-town-hallclock-style doorbell I was still in a strange world of my
own nauseous, vile-headed, acidic. I was also suffering from road-rage residue after inadvertently
getting on to the M6 instead of the M1 and having to drive halfway to Birmingham before I could find
anywhere to turn round. I was so furious I kept jamming my foot down to the floor on the accelerator pedal
to give vent to my feelings, which is very dangerous. I watched resignedly as Una Alconbury's
form intriguingly deformed through the ripply glass door bore down on me in a fuchsia two-piece.
'Bridget! We'd almost given you up for lost! Happy New Year! Just about to start without you.'
She seemed to manage to kiss me, get my coat off, hang it over the banister, wipe her lipstick off my
cheek and make me feel incredibly guilty all in one movement, while I leaned against the ornament shelf
for support.
'Sorry. I got lost.'
It was all right, I suppose. I would have felt a bit mean if I hadn't turned up, but Mark Darcy. . . Yuk.
Every time my mother's rung up for weeks it's been, 'Of course you remember the Darcys, darling. They
came over when we were living in Buckingham and you and Mark played in the paddling pool!' or, 'Oh!
Did I mention Malcolm and Elaine are bringing Mark with them to Una's New Year's Day Turkey Curry
Buffet? He's just back from America, apparently. Divorced. He's looking for a house in Holland Park.
Apparently he had the most terrible time with his wife. Japanese. Very cruel race.'
Then next time, as if out of the blue, 'Do you remember Mark Darcy, darling? Malcolm and Elaine's
son? He's one of these super-dooper top-notch lawyers. Divorced. Elaine says he works all the time and he's
terribly lonely. I think he might be coming to Una's New Year's Day Turkey Curry Buffet, actually.'
I don't know why she didn't just come out with it and say, 'Darling, do shag Mark Darcy over the
turkey curry, won't you? He's very rich.'

'Come along and meet Mark,' Una Alconbury sing-songed before I'd even had time to get a drink down
me.
Being set up with a man against your will is one level of humiliation, but being literally dragged into it
by Una Alconbury while caring for an acidic hangover, watched by an entire roomful of friends of your
parents, is on another plane altogether.
The rich, divorced-by-cruel-wife Mark quite tall was standing with his back to the room,
scrutinizing the contents of the Alconburys' bookshelves: mainly leather-bound series of books about the
Third Reich, which Geoffrey sends off for from Reader's Digest. It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be
called Mr Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and
insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting 'Cathy' and banging your head against a
tree.
He turned round, revealing that what had seemed from the back like a harmless navy sweater was
actually a V-neck diamond-pattern in shades of yellow and blue as favoured by the more elderly of the
nation's sports reporters. As my friend Tom often remarks, it's amazing how much time and money can be
saved in the world of dating by close attention to detail. A white sock here, a pair of red braces there, a grey
slip-on shoe, a swastika, are as often as not all one needs to tell you there's no point writing down phone
numbers and forking out for expensive lunches because it's never going to be a runner.
'Well, I'll leave you two young people together', said Una. rolling her eyes, putting a hand to her
bosom and giving a gay tinkling laugh, abandoned us with a toss of her head to a hideous silence.
'I. Um. Are you reading any' ah . . . Have you read any good books lately?' he said.
Oh, for God's sake.
I racked my brain frantically to think when I last read a proper book. The trouble with working in
publishing is that reading in your spare time is a bit like being a dustman and snuffling through the pig bin
in the evening. I'm halfway through Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which Jude lent me, but I
didn't think Mark Darcy, though clearly odd, was ready to accept himself as a Martian quite yet. Then I had
a brainwave.
'Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi,' I said triumphantly. Hah! I haven't exactly read it as such, but
feel I have as Sharon has been ranting about it so much. Anyway, completely safe option as no way
diamond-pattern-jumpered goody-goody would have read five-hundred-page feminist treatise.
'Maybe you should get something to eat,' he said, then suddenly bolted off towards the buffet, leaving
me standing on my own by the bookshelf while everybody stared at me, thinking, 'So that's why Bridget
isn't married. She repulses men.'
The worst of it was that Una Alconbury and Mum wouldn't leave it at that. They kept making me walk
round with trays of gherkins and glasses of cream sherry in a desperate bid to throw me into Mark Darcy's
path yet again. In the end they were so crazed with frustration that the second I got within four feet of him
with the gherkins Una threw herself across the room like Will Carling and said, 'Mark, you must take
Bridget's telephone number before you go, then you can get in touch when you're in London.'
I couldn't stop myself turning bright red. I could feel it climbing up my neck. Now Mark would think
I'd put her up to it.
'I'm sure Bridget's life in London is quite full enough already, Mrs Alconbury,' he said. Humph. It's not
that I wanted him to take my phone number or anything, but I didn't want him to make it perfectly obvious
to everyone that he didn't want to. As I looked down I saw that he was wearing white socks with a yellow
bumblebee motif.
2 a.m. Oh, why am I so unattractive? Why? Even a man who wears bumblebee socks thinks I am
horrible. Hate the New Year. Hate everyone. On way home in end-of-Christmas denial I bought a packet of
cut-price chocolate tree decorations and a 3.69 bottle of sparkling wine from Norway, Pakistan or similar.
I guzzled them by the light of the Christmas tree, together with a couple of mince pies, the last of the
Christmas cake and some Stilton, while watching EastEnders, imagining it was a Christmas special.
Now, though, I feel ashamed and repulsive. I can actually feel the fat splurging out from my body.
Never mind. Sometimes you have to sink to a nadir of toxic fat envelopment in order to emerge, phoenixlike, from the chemical wasteland as a purged and beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer figure. Tomorrow new
Spartan health and beauty regime will begin.