Page 297 - Bridget Jones's Diary - by Helen FIELDING

For ten days now have been living in state of permanent hangover and foraging
sub-existence without proper meals or hot food.

Christmas is like war. Going down to Oxford Street is hanging over me like
going over the top. Would that the Red Cross or Germans would come and find
me. Aaargh. It's 10 am. Have not done Christmas shopping. Have not sent
Christmas cards. Got to go to work. Right, am never, never going to drink again
for the rest of life. Aargh - field telephone.

Humph. It was Mum but might as well have been Goebbels trying to rush me
into invading Poland.

'Darling, I was just ringing to check what time you're arriving on Friday night.'

Mum, with dazzling bravado, has planned schmaltzy family Christmas, with
her and Dad pretending the whole of last year never happened 'for the sake of the
children' (i.e., me and Jamie, who is thirty-seven).

'Mum, as I think we've discussed, I'm not coming home on Friday, I'm coming
home on Christmas Eve. Remember all those conversations we've had on the
subject? That first one . . . back in August - '

'Oh, don't be silly, darling. You can't sit in the flat on your own all weekend
when it's Christmas. What are you going to eat?'

Grrr. I hate this. It's as if, just because you're single, you don't have a home or
any friends or responsibilities and the only possible reason you might have.for
not being at everyone else's beck and call for the entire Christmas period and
happy to sleep bent at odd angles in sleeping bags on teenagers' bedroom floors,
peel sprouts all day for fifty, and 'talk nicely' to perverts with the word 'Uncle'
before their name while they stare freely at your breasts is complete selfishness.