Page 117 - Bridget Jones's Diary - by Helen FIELDING

single one of yours among them, leaving you feeling both impotent and cheated

with nothing to be done except crumple your ticket up and throw it defiantly on
the floor.

Not so with the Instants, which are very much a participation thing, with six
cash figures to be scratched off - often quite a hard and skilled job - and never

giving you the feeling that you didn't have a chance. Three amounts the same
secures a win, and in my experience you always get very close, often with as
many as two matching pairs for amounts as great as £50,000.

Anyway, you can't deny yourself all pleasures in life. I'm only on about four
or five a day and, besides, I'm going to stop soon.

Friday 28 April

Alcohol units 14, cigarettes 64, calories 8400 (v.g., though bad to have counted.
Slimming obsession v. bad), Instants 0.

At 8:45 last night I was running a relaxing aromatherapy bath and sipping
camomile tea when a car burglar alarm started up. I have been waging a
campaign on our street against car burglar alarms which are intolerable and
counterproductive since you are more likely to get your car broken into by an

angry neighbor trying to silence the burglar alarm than by a burglar This time,
however, instead of raging and calling the police, I merely breathed in through
flared nostrils and murmured, 'inner poise.' The doorbell rang. I picked up the

intercom. A v. posh sheep-voice bleated, 'He's having a fucking affair.' Then