Page 157 - Bridget Jones's Diary - by Helen FIELDING

our climatic past that is to blame. Maybe we do not yet have the mentality to

deal with a sun and cloudless blue sky, which is anything other than a freak
incident. The instinct to panic, run out of the office, take most of your clothes off
and lie panting on the fire escape is still too strong.

But there, too, is confusion. It is not the thing to go out courting malignant

growths any more so what should you do? A shady barbecue, perhaps? Starve
your friends while you tamper with fire for hours then poison them with burnt
yet still quivering slices of underdone suckling pig? Or organize picnics in the
park and end up with all the women scraping squashed gobbets of mozzarella off
tinfoil and yelling at children with ozone asthma attacks; while the men swig

warm white wine in the fierce midday sun, staring at the nearby softball games
with left-out shame.

Envy summer life on the Continent, where men in smart lightweight suits and

designer sunglasses glide around calmly in smart air-conditioned cars, maybe
stopping for a citron pressé in a shady pavement café in an ancient square,

totally cool about the sun and ignoring it because they know for a fact that it will
still be shining at the weekend, when they can go and lie quietly on the yacht.

Feel certain this has been factor behind our waning national confidence ever

since we started to travel and notice it. I suppose things might change. More and
more tables are on pavements. Diners are managing to sit calmly at them, only
occasionally remembering the sun and turning their faces to it with closed eyes,
breaking into huge excited grins at passer-by - 'Look, look, we're enjoying a
refreshing drink in a pavement café, we can do it too' - their expressions of angst

merely brief and fleeting which say, 'Ought we to be at an outdoor performance
of A Midsummer Night's Dream?'

Somewhere at the back of my mind is a new-born, tremulous notion that
maybe Daniel is right: what you are supposed to do when it's hot is go to sleep

under a tree or watch cricket with the curtains drawn. But to my way of thinking,
to actually get to sleep you'd have to know that the next day would be hot as
well, and the one after that, and that enough hot days lay in store in your lifetime
to do all conceivable hot-day activities in a calm and measured manner with no
sense of urgency whatsoever. Fat chance.