hold on

In recent months I was re-experiencing and -enjoying "If," the poem by Rudyard Kipling, then, recent weeks, I read some in Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, by Helen Fielding and found that Kipling poem, bobbing up in a wild, typically Jonesian scene.

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[Bridget's on phone with her gay friend Tom -- Tom wants Bridget's mother's phone #]:
"What do you want it for?" I said suspiciously.
"Isn't she in a book club?"
"Dunno. Anything's possible. Why?"
"Jerome's sensing his poems are ready, so I'm finding him book club venues. He did one last week in Stoke Newington and it was awesome."
"Awesome?"...

"What is it about book clubs?" I said when I'd put the phone down. "Is it just me, or have they suddenly sprung up from nowhere? Should we be in one or do you have to be Smug Married?"
"You have to be Smug Married," said Shaz definitively.
...

"Oh, hello, darling. Guess what?" My mother. "Your friend Tom -- you know the 'homo' -- well, he's bringing a poet to read at the Lifeboat Book Club! He's going to read us romantic poems. Like Lord Byron! Isn't that fun?"
"Er...yes?" I floundered.
"Actually, it's nothing special," she sniffed airily. "We often have visiting authors."
"Really? Like who?"
"Oh, lots of them, darling. Penny's very good friends with Salman Rushdie. Anyway, you will be coming, darling, won't you?"

"When is it?"
"A week on Friday. Una and I are doing vol-au-vents hot with Chunky Chicken."
A sudden fear convulsed me. "Are Admiral and Elaine Darcy coming?"
"Durr! No boys allowed, silly. Elaine's coming but the chaps are turning up later."
"But Tom and Jerome are coming."
"Oh, they're not boys, darling."

"Are you sure Jerome's poems will be the sort of thing that..."
"Bridget. I don't know what you're trying to say. We weren't born yesterday, you know. And the whole point about literature is free expression. Ooh, and I think Mark's coming along later. He's up doing Malcolm's will with him -- you never know!"

-------------------- [and on the Night-Of]:
Was greeted by Mum, wearing a very strange maroon velvet kaftan which presume she intended to be literary.
"How's Salman?" I said as she tut-tutted about my lateness.
"Oh, we decided to do chicken instead," she said sniffily, leading me through the ripply-glassed French doors, into the lounge where the first thing I noticed was a garish new "family crest" above the fake stone fireplace saying "Hakuna Matata."

"Shh," said Una, holding a finger up, enraptured.
Pretentious Jerome, pierced nipple clearly visible through black wet-look vest, was standing in front of the cut-glass dish collection, bellowing belligerently: "I watch his hard, bony, horny...{some of my own deletions here}...I grab," --

at a semicircle of appalled Jaeger-be-two-pieced Lifeboat Luncheon Book Club ladies on reproduction Regency dining chairs. Across the room I saw Mark Darcy's mum, Elaine, sporting an expression of suppressed amusement.

"I want," Jerome bellowed on. "I seize his...{can't type it inthisblogtryingtobeopenminded}..
"Well! I think that's been absolutely smashing!" said Mum, jumping to her feet. "Does anyone fancy a vol-au-vent?"
Is amazing the way the world of middle-class ladies manages to smooth everything into its own, turning all the chaos and complication of the world into a lovely secure mummy stream, rather as lavatory cleaner turns everything in the toilet pink.

"Oh, I love the spoken and written word! It makes me feel so free!" Una was gushing to Elaine as Penny Husbands-Bosworth and Mavis Enderbury fussed over Pretentious Jerome as if he were T.S. Eliot.
"But I hadn't finished," whined Jerome. ...
Just then there was a roar.

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you." It was Dad, and Admiral Darcy. Both paralytic. Oh God. Every time I see Dad these days, he seems to be completely pissed, in bizarre father-daughter role-reversal scenario.

"If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you," Admiral Darcy bellowed, leaping on to a chair to a flutter from the assembled ladies.
"And make allowance for their doubting too," added Dad, almost tearfully, leaning against the admiral for support.

The pissed duo proceeded to recite the whole of Rudyard Kipling's "If" in manner of Sir Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud to the fury of Mum and Pretentious Jerome who started throwing simultaneous hissy fits.
"It's typical, typical, typical," hissed Mum as Admiral Darcy, on his knees, beating his breast, intoned, "Or being lied about, don't deal in lies."
"It's regressive, colonialist doggerel," hissed Jerome.
"If you can force your heart, and nerve and sinew."
"I mean it fucking rhymes," rehissed Jerome.

"Jerome, I will not have that word in my house," also rehissed Mum.
"To serve their turn long after they are gone," said Dad, then flung himself on the swirly carpet in mock death.
"Well, why did you invite me then?" hissed Jerome really hissily.
"And so keep on, when there is nothing in you," roared the admiral.
"Except your nerve," growled Dad from the carpet. "Which says to you" -- he leapt to his knees and raised his arms -- "hold on!"

There was a huge cheer and round of applause from the ladies as Jerome flounced out slamming the door and Tom rushed after him. I looked despairingly back at the room straight into the eyes of Mark Darcy.
"Well! That was interesting!" said Elaine Darcy, coming to stand by me as I bent my head, trying to recover my composure. "Poetry uniting the old and young."
"The pissed and sober," I added.
At this Admiral Darcy lurched over, clutching his poem.
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Excerpt from Bridget Jones: The Edge Of
Reason, by Helen Fielding. Copy-
right, 1999. Penguin Group, New York.

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