The Bridget Jones years

I had been telling him how I used to walk home alone, along a busy main road when I was in Primary 7, but I wouldn’t be happy for my son to do the same nowadays.

‘‘There was probably a lot less traffic in your day!’’ he quipped, and laughed a little too hard I thought, at his own rapier-like wit.

‘‘Well, of course it was mostly chariots back then,’’ I replied through gritted teeth, quelling the urge to add, ‘‘Baldy!’’ at the end of my sentence as resentment built inside me.

When I got home I found myself looking in the mirror and thinking; am I really that old looking?

I don’t feel old, yet here was this stranger joking (and I use the word lightly!) about my advancing years, plus, he was older than me, which seemed to make it worse!

Our minds tend to live in a timeless zone. We never seem to feel any older. It’s a bit of a shock when we first realise that others are beginning to regard us in the same way they would a period piece on the Antiques Roadshow.

Another reminder of the fact that I’m ageing is the release of the latest Bridget Jones movie, opening this Friday in cinemas nationwide.

It’s been 12 years since we last watched Bridget’s antics. When I first read the book, Bridget Jones’ Diary, I wholeheartedly identified with her. It was as though someone had written about me!

Like her, I too was despairing of finding Mr Right, drank too much, smoked too much and was the owner of a pair of decidedly, sturdy, pull-it-all-in knickers.

I was in my mid-thirties and had come to terms with the fact that I was unlikely to become a mother. Many a night I spent drunkenly singing along to the song; All by Myself, just like Bridget and writing diary entries about my weight and my woeful love life.

Now, years later, Bridget is back and she’s going to be a mum!

In the past 12 years my life has changed tremendously, like Bridget’s. During the passing years I’ve got married, became a mother and a writer and had two books published. In short, I achieved all the things I was dreaming of 12 years ago that I thought were impossible. Everything came right, but I’d never stopped to think of that. I had been too busy sweating the small stuff.

I analysed my face in the mirror, yes, I have a few lines and wrinkles, so what? Isn’t that expected as we age?

I think back to those nights 12 years ago spent competing in Desperation Derby with the rest of the singletons, moving around the Belfast pubs trying to find a man, because obviously, that was the answer to everything!

I may have been younger and line-free, but I wouldn’t want to go back to the person I was then.

Yes, I’m older and I’m glad I am, because with age I realised that a man wasn’t the answer to everything.

I stopped looking for oblivion in the bottom of a glass, I gave up smoking.

I began to spend time doing things I enjoyed like embroidery, rather than things I felt I should be doing, like frequenting bars under duress.

And gradually, when I stopped desperately searching, everything I dreamed of miraculously appeared.

My first love arrived on my doorstep, I hadn’t seen him for 14 years and amazingly, we resumed our romance.

We married and had our wonderful son, then the first publisher I went to with a book proposal loved my idea. Within 10 months my book was on the shelves!

Suddenly I was grateful to Baldy for making a crack about my maturity, because he had made me stop and take stock of all the things that have come with age, and each and every one of them were precious, deeply longed for things.

Back in my Bridget Jones days, mostly all I felt was hopelessness and sorrow.

Now I’m loved and fulfilled and yes older, but life is so much better than it was back then.

I’ve realised ageing isn’t shameful, though what is rather a shame is the fact that our society so vehemently equates happiness with youth.