Bridget Jones's diary

I feel a mixture of smug pride and rage at him for ruining our rant by his freakish good behaviour

Friday 23 June

8st 12lb, alcohol units 9, cigarettes 47, calories 6,876

12.15am Daniel has just ... Oh dear I think I'm going to be sick.

Saturday 24 June

8st 12lb 8oz (weird miracle), cigarettes 7, calories 1,145, Instants 5 (won pounds 2 therefore total Instants expenditure only pounds 3), lottery proper pounds 2 (number of correct numbers: 0)

How come have only put on 8oz after last night's over-consumption orgy? Maybe food and weight are the same as garlic and stenchful breath: if you eat several entire bulbs, your breath doesn't smell at all. V bad situation in head. Would welcome removal for thorough valeting. Still, was worth it for delicious night of feminist ranting with Sharon, Jude and Tina.

The generous girls had each brought an extra something from M&S as well as wine. Therefore, in addition to the three-course meal already bought - I mean prepared by entire day's slaving over stove - by me and and five bottles of wine, we had 1 tub hummus & pkt mini-pittas, 12 smoked salmon and cream cheese pinwheels, 12 mini-pizzas, 1 raspberry pavlova, 1 tiramisu (party size) and 2 Swiss mountain bars to get through.

Sharon was on top form. "Bastards," she was already yelling by 8.35, pouring a glass of Kir Royale straight down her throat. "Stupid, arrogant, manipulative, self-indulgent bastards. Oooh, pass me one of those mini- pizzas, will you?"

Jude was depressed because her ex-boyfriend, Richard (the one who chucked her for asking him to go on holiday with her), keeps ringing her up dropping verbal bait suggesting he wants to get back together, to keep her interested, meanwhile protecting himself by saying he just wants to be "friends". Last night he made an incredibly assumptive, patronising phone call asking if she was going to a mutual friend's party. "Ah well, in that case I won't come," he said. "No, it really wouldn't be fair on you. You see I was going to bring this sort of ... date with me. I mean it's nothing really, just some girl who's stupid enough to let me shag her for a couple of weeks."

"What?" exploded Sharon. "Arrogant little prat. That's the most repulsive thing I've ever heard anyone say about a woman."

"How dare he give himself licence to treat you any way he likes under the name of friendship, then make himself feel clever by trying to make you jealous," yelled Tina. "If he was really concerned about not hurting your feelings, he'd have just discreetly kept his stupid 'date' out of your way instead of waving her under your nose like he'd won on the Instants."

"Friends! Pah! Bastards more like!" I shouted happily, tucking into another Silk Cut and a salmon pinwheel.

By 11.30 the Greenpeace victory over Shell had been transformed by Sharon into an imminent feminist victory. I heard the phone ring at this point but left it to the answerphone. "Ten years ago people who cared about the environment were laughed at as sandal-wearing beardie weirdies, and now look at the power of the green consumer," Sharon was bellowing, scooping tiramisu into her mouth with her fingers. "The same will come to pass with feminism. There won't be any men leaving their post-menopausal wives for young mistresses, or trying to chat women up by showing off about the unwanted love of other deluded women, or trying to have sex without any niceness of commitment: because women will just tell them to sod right off and men won't get any sex unless they learn how to behave properly instead of cluttering up the seabed with their SHITTY, SMUG, SELF-INDULGENT BEHAVIOUR."

"Bastards!" yelled Tina, slurping her Pinot Grigio.

"Bastards!" I shouted through a mouthful of pavlova.

Just then the doorbell rang.

"I bet that's Daniel, the bloody bastard," I slurred, yelling "Wha' you want?" into the entryphone.

"Hello, darling," murmured Daniel in his gentlest, politest voice. "I'm really sorry to bother you. I did ring earlier and leave a message. I've been stuck in the most deadly board meeting you can imagine for the entire evening and I so much wanted to see you."

"All right," I said grumpily, lurching back to the table. "Bloody bastard."

"Culture of entitlement," Sharon suddenly shouted. "Cooking, shopping, succour, young girls' bodies when they're old and fat - they think they're entitled to all this stuff from us ... here, have we run out of wine?"

Then Daniel appeared up the stairs. He looked tired, clean-shaven and very neat in his suit. He was holding a box of Milk Tray.

"Oh. Hello. I bought you these," he mumbled, looking endearingly embarrassed. "Don't let me interrupt. I've done the shopping for the weekend," he said, taking eight Cullen's carrier bags through into the kitchen. At that moment the mini-cab firm the girls had just rung phoned back saying sorry, they weren't going to be able to come for another three hours. "I'll drive you home," said Daniel. "You can't hang around the streets looking for cabs at this time of night."

While he was gone I picked at the Milk Tray, feeling a bewildering mixture of smug pride at my perfect new boyfriend who all the girls fancy, and rage at the normally mad sexist drunk for ruining our ranting by being freakishly well behaved. Huh. We'll just see how long this lasts, I thought, going into the layer below for the hazelnut whirl. Huh.

Half an hour later he ran up the stairs, took me in his arms and kissed me with almost unbearable sexiness. "Bridget," he whispered into my neck, almost shyly, "would you think I was being sexist and trying to, like, take you over if I paid for you to come to Bali with me for three weeks in August?"