Excerpt from Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Hmmm. No. Bad move. But then what if I'm late? Had better ring.

11.35 a.m. Humph. Conversation went like this:
Mark: Yes? Darcy here.
Me: It's Bridget.
Mark: (pause) Right. Er. Everything OK?
Me: Yes. It was nice last night, wasn't it? I mean - you know, when we . . .
Mark: I do know, yes. Exquisite. (Pause) I'm actually with the Indonesian Ambassador, the Head of Amnesty International and the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry just at the moment.
Me: Oh. Sorry. I'm just going to Leicestershire. I thought I'd let you know in case anything happens to me.
Mark: In case anything . . . ? What?
Me: I mean in case I'm . . . late. (I finished lamely.)
Mark: Right. Well, why not ring with an ETA when you're through? Jolly good. Bye now.
Hmmm. Don't think I should have done that. It says specifically in Loving Your Separated Man Without Losing Your Mind that the one thing they really do not like is being called up for no real reason when they are busy.

7 p.m. Back in flat. Nightmare rest of day. After challenging traffic and rain-blocked journey, found self in rain-swept Leicestershire, knocking on the door of a big square house surrounded by horseboxes, with only thirty minutes to go till transmission. Suddenly the door burst open, and a tall man was standing in corduroy trousers and a quite sexy baggy jumper.

"Humph," he said, eyeing me up and down. "Better bloody well come in. Your chaps are out the back. Where have you bloody well been?"

"I have been suddenly diverted from a top political story," I said hoity-toitily, as he led me into a big kitchen full of dogs and bits of saddle. Suddenly he turned and stared at me furiously, then biffed the table.

"It's supposed to be a free country. Once they start telling us we can't even bloody hunt on a Sunday where will it end? Baaaah!"

"Well, you could say that about people keeping slaves, couldn't you?" I muttered. "Or cutting the ears off cats. It just doesn't seem very gentlemanly to me, a crowd of people and dogs careering after one frightened little creature for fun."

"Have you ever bloody seen what a fox does to a chicken?" Sir Hugo bellowed, turning red in the face. "If we don't hunt "em the countryside will be overrun."

"Shoot them then," I said, staring at him murderously. "Humanely. And chase something else on Sundays, like in greyhound racing. Fasten a little fluffy animal impregnated with fox smell on to a wire."

"Shoot them? Have you ever tried to shoot a bloody fox? There'll be your little frightened foxes left wounded in agony all over the bloody shop. Fluffy animal. Grrrrr!"

Suddenly he grabbed the phone and dialed. "Finch, you total arse!" he bellowed. "What have you sent me . . . some bloody little pinko? If you think you're coming out with the Quorn next Sunday . . ." At which moment the cameraman put his head round the door and said huffily, "Oh you're here, are you?" Then looked at his watch. "Don't feel you have to let us know or anything."

"Finch wants to talk to you," said Sir Hugo.

Twenty minutes later, under pain of sacking, I was on a horse preparing to trot into shot and interview the Rt Hon. Bossybottom, also on a horse.

"OK, Bridget, we're coming to you in fifteen, go, go, go," yelled Richard Finch in my earpiece from London, at which I squeezed my knees into the horse, as instructed. Unfortunately, however, the horse would not set off.

"Go, go, go, go, go!" yelled Richard. "I thought you said you could bloody ride."

"I said I had a natural seat," I hissed, digging frantically with my knees.

"OK, Leicester, tighter on Sir Hugo till fucking Bridget gets it together five, four, three, two . . . go."

At this the Hon. Purpleface launched into a bellowing pro-hunting advertisement as I dug frantically with my heels until the horse reared up neurotically, cantering sideways into the shot as I clung to its neck.

Reprinted from Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding by permission of Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 2000 by Helen Fielding. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.