by Sue Townsend
My mother is reading another sex book, it is called The Second Sex, by a frog writer called Simone De Beauvoir. She left it on the coffee table in the living room where anybody could have seen it, even my grandma!
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 21ST
Had a dead good dream that Sabre was brutally savaging Barry Kent. Mr Scruton and Miss Elf were watching. Pandora was there, she was wearing her split skirt. She put her arms round me and said, ‘I am of the second sex.’ Then I woke up to find I had had my second W. D. I have to put my pyjamas in the washing machine so my mother doesn’t find out.
Had a good look at my face in the bathroom mirror today. I have got five spots as well as the one on my chin. I have got a few hairs on my lip. It looks as if I shall have to start shaving soon.
Went to the garage with my father, he expected to get the car back today but it still isn’t ready. All the bits are on the work-bench. My father’s eyes filled up with tears. I was ashamed of him. We walked to Sainsbury’s. My father bought tins of salmon, crab and shrimps and a black forest cake and some dead yukky white cheese covered in grape pips. My mother was dead mad at him when we got home because he had forgotten the bread, butter and toilet paper. She says he can’t be trusted to go on his own again. My father cheered up a bit.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 22ND
Sexagesima
My father has gone fishing with the dog. Mr Lucas came for dinner and stayed for tea. He ate three slices of the black forest cake. We played Monopoly. Mr Lucas was banker. My mother kept going into jail. I won because I was the only one concentrating properly. My father came in the front door and Mr Lucas went out of the back door. My father said he had been looking forward to the black forest cake all day. There was none left. My father said he had not had a bite to eat or a bite on his fishing line all day. My mother gave him grape-pip cheese on Ry-king for his supper. He threw it at the wall and said he wasn’t a ******* mouse he was a ******* man and my mother said it was a long time since he had done any *******! I was sent out of the room then. It is a terrible thing to hear your own mother swearing. I blame it on all those books she has been reading. She hasn’t ironed my school uniform yet, I hope she remembers.
I let the dog sleep in my room tonight, it doesn’t like quarrelling.
MONDAY FEBRUARY 23RD
Got a letter from Mr Cherry the newsagent to say I can start a paper round tomorrow. Worse luck!
Bert Baxter is worried about Sabre because he is off his food and not trying to bite anybody. He asked me to take him to the PDSA for a check-up. I said I would take him tomorrow if his condition hadn’t improved.
I’m fed up with washing up for Bert. He seems to live off fried eggs, it is no joke trying to wash up in cold water without any washing-up liquid. Also there is never a dry tea towel. In fact there are never any tea towels and Sabre has ripped up all the bath towels so I don’t know how Bert can even have a wash! I think I’ll see if I can get Bert a home help.
I have got to concentrate on getting my GCEs if I want to be a vet.
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 24TH
St Matthias
Got up at six o’clock for my paper round. I have got Elm Tree Avenue. It is dead posh. All the papers they read are very heavy: The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. Just my luck!
Bert said Sabre is better, he tried to bite the milkman.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 25TH
Bed early tonight because of my paper round. Delivered twenty-five Punches as well as the papers.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 26TH
The papers got mixed up today. Elm Tree Avenue got the Sun and the Mirror and Corporation Row got the heavy papers.
I don’t know why everybody went so mad. You’d think they would enjoy reading a different paper for a change.
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 27TH
Last Quarter
Early this morning I saw Pandora walking down the drive of 69 Elm Tree Avenue. She had a riding hat and jodphurs on so she couldn’t have been on her way to school. I didn’t let her see me. I don’t want her to know that I am doing a menial job.
So now I know where Pandora lives! I had a good look at the house. It is much bigger than ours. It has got rolled-up wooden blinds at all the windows, and the rooms look like jungles because of all the green plants. I looked through the letterbox and saw the big ginger cat eating something on the kitchen table. They have the Guardian, Punch, Private Eye and New Society. Pandora reads Jackie, the comic for girls; she is not an intellectual, like me. But I don’t suppose Malcolm Muggeridge’s wife is either.
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 28TH
Pandora has got a little fat horse called ‘Blossom’. She feeds it and makes it jump over barrels every morning before school. I know because I hid behind her father’s Volvo and then followed her to a field next to the disused railway line. I hid behind a scrap car in the corner of the field and watched her. She looked dead good in her riding stuff, her chest was wobbling like mad. She will need to wear a bra soon. My heart was beating so loudly in my throat that I felt like a stereo loudspeaker, so I left before she heard me.
People complained because the papers were late. I had a Guardian left over in my paper bag so I took it home to read. It was full of spelling mistakes. It is disgusting when you think of how many people who can spell are out of work.
SUNDAY MARCH 1ST
Quinguagesima. St David’s Day
I took some sugar to Blossom before I did my paper round. It brought me closer to Pandora somehow.
Have strained my back because of carrying all the Sunday supplements. Took the leftover Sunday People home as a present to my mother but she said it was only fit for lining the dustbin. Got my two pounds and six pence for six mornings, it is slave labour! And I have to give Barry Kent half of it. Mr Cherry said he had a complaint from number 69 Elm Tree Avenue, that they didn’t get a Guardian yesterday. Mr Cherry sent a Daily Express round with his apologies, but Pandora’s father brought it back to the shop and said he ‘would rather go without’.
Didn’t bother reading the papers today, I am fed up with papers. Had chow mein and beansprouts for Sunday dinner.
Mr Lucas came round when my father had gone to visit Grandma. He was wearing a plastic daffodil in his sports jacket.
My spots have completely gone. It must be the early morning air.
MONDAY MARCH 2ND
My mother has just come into my room and said she had something awful to tell me. I sat up in bed and put a dead serious expression on my face just in case she’d got six months to live or she’d been caught shoplifting or something. She fiddled with the curtains, dropped cigarette ash all over my Concorde model and started mumbling on about ‘adult relationships’ and ‘life being complicated’ and how she must ‘find herself’. She said she was fond of me. Fond!!! And would hate to hurt me. And then she said that for some women marriage was like being in prison. Then she went out.
Marriage is nothing like being in prison! Women are let out every day to go to the shops and stuff, and quite a lot go to work. I think my mother is being a bit melodramatic.
Finished Animal Farm. It is dead symbolic. I cried when Boxer was taken to the vet’s. From now on I shall treat pigs with the contempt they deserve. I am boycotting pork of all kinds.
TUESDAY MARCH 3RD
Shrove Tuesday
I gave Barry Kent his protection money today. I don’t see how there can be a God. If there was surely he wouldn’t let people like Barry Kent walk about menacing intellectuals? Why are bigger youths unpleasant to smaller youths? Perhaps their brains are easily worn out with all the extra work they have to do making bigger bones and stuff, or it could be that the big youths have got brain damage because of all the sport they play, or perhaps big youths just like menacing and fighting. When I go to university I may study the problem.
I will have my thesis published and I will send a copy to Barry Kent. Perhaps by then he will have learnt to read.
My mother had forgotten that today was pancake day. I remi
nded her at 11 p.m. I’m sure she burnt them deliberately. I will be fourteen in one month’s time.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 4TH
Ash Wednesday
Had a nasty shock this morning. Took my empty paper sack back to Mr Cherry’s newsagent’s and saw Mr Lucas looking at those magazines on the top shelf. I stood behind the Mills and Boon rack and distinctly saw him choose Big and Bouncy, pay for it and leave the shop with it hidden inside his coat. Big and Bouncy is extremely indecent. It is full of disgusting pictures. My mother should be informed.
THURSDAY MARCH 5TH
My father got his car back from the garage today. He was cleaning it and gloating over it for a whole two hours. I noticed that the stick-on waving hand I bought him for Christmas was missing from the rear window. I told him he ought to complain to the garage but he said he didn’t want to make a fuss. We went to my grandma’s to test-drive the car. She gave us a cup of Bovril and a piece of yukky seedcake. She didn’t ask how my mother was, she said my father was looking thin and pale and needed ‘feeding up’.
She told me that Bert Baxter had been thrown out of the Evergreens because of his bad behaviour at Skegness. The coach was waiting for two hours for him at the coach station. A search party was sent out to look in the pubs, then Bert came back, drunk but alone and another search party was sent out to look for the first search party. In the end the police had to be sent for and they took hours to round up all the pensioners and get them in the coach.
My grandma said the journey back was a nightmare. All the pensioners kept falling out (with each other not out of the coach). Bert Baxter was reciting a dirty poem about an Eskimo and Mrs Harriman had a funny turn and had to have her corsets loosened.
Grandma said two pensioners had passed on since the outing, she blamed Bert Baxter and said, ‘He as good as murdered them,’ but I think it was more likely that the cold wind at Skegness killed them off. I said, ‘Bert Baxter is not so bad when you get to know him.’ She said she didn’t understand why the Good Lord took my grandad and left scum like Baxter. Then she pulled her lips tight and dabbled her eyes with a handkerchief, so we left.
My mother was out when we got home, she has joined some women’s group.
Heard my father say ‘goodnight’, to the car. He must be cracking up!
FRIDAY MARCH 6TH
New Moon
Mr Cherry is very pleased with my work and he has raised my wages by two and a half pence an hour. He also offered me the Corporation Row evening round, but I declined his offer. Corporation Row is where the council put all the bad tenants. Barry Kent lives at number 13.
Mr Cherry gave me two back copies of Big and Bouncy. He told me not tell my mother. As if I would! I have put them under my mattress. Intellectuals like me are allowed to be interested in sex. It is ordinary people like Mr Lucas who should be ashamed of themselves.
Phoned Social Services today and asked about a home help for Bert Baxter. I told a lie and said I was his grandson. They are sending a social worker to see him on Monday.
Used my father’s library tickets to get War and Peace out. I have lost my own.
Took dog to meet Blossom. They got on well.
SATURDAY MARCH 7TH
After paper round went back to bed and stayed there all morning reading Big and Bouncy. Felt like I have never felt before.
Went to Sainsbury’s with my mother and father but the women in there reminded me of Big and Bouncy, even the ones over thirty! My mother said I looked hot and bothered and sent me back to the multi-storey car park to keep the dog company.
The dog already had company, it was barking and whining so loudly that a crowd of people were standing around saying ‘the poor thing’ and ‘how cruel to leave it tied up in such a fashion’. The dog had twisted its collar on the gear lever and its eyes were bulging out of its head. When it saw me it tried to jump up and nearly killed itself.
I tried to explain to the people that I was going to be a vet when I grew up, but they wouldn’t listen and started to say things about the RSPCA. The car was locked so I was forced to break the little window open and unlock the door by putting my hand through. The dog went mad with joy when I untangled him, so the people went away. But my father didn’t go mad with joy when he saw the damage, he went mad with rage. He threw the Sainsbury’s bags down, broke the eggs, squashed the cakes and drove home too fast. Nobody said anything on the way home, and only the dog was smiling.
Finished War and Peace. It was quite good.
SUNDAY MARCH 8TH
First in Lent
My mother has gone to a woman’s workshop on assertiveness training. Men aren’t allowed. I asked my father what ‘assertiveness training’ is. He said, ‘God knows, but whatever it is, it’s bad news for me.’
We had boil-in-the-bag cod in butter sauce and oven-cooked chips for Sunday dinner, followed by tinned peaches and Dream-topping. My father opened a bottle of white wine and let me have some. I don’t know much about wine but it seemed a pleasant enough vintage. We watched a film on television, then my mother came home and started bossing us around. She said, ‘The worm has turned,’ and ‘Things are going to be different around here,’ and things like that. Then she went into the kitchen and started making a chart dividing all the housework into three. I pointed out to her that I already had a paper round to do, an old age pensioner to look after and a dog to feed, as well as my school work, but she didn’t listen, she put the chart on the wall and said, ‘We start tomorrow.’
MONDAY MARCH 9TH
Commonwealth Day
Cleaned toilet, washed basin and bath before doing my paper round. Came home, made breakfast, put washing in machine, went to school. Gave Barry Kent his menaces money, went to Bert Baxter’s, waited for social worker who didn’t come, had school dinner. Had Domestic Science – made apple crumble. Came home. Vacuumed hall, lounge and breakfast room. Peeled potatoes, chopped up cabbage, cut finger, rinsed blood off cabbage. Put chops under grill, looked in cookery book for a recipe for gravy. Made gravy. Strained lumps out with a colander. Set table, served dinner, washed up. Put burnt saucepans in to soak. Got washing out of machine; everything blue, including white underwear and handkerchiefs. Hung washing on clothes-horse. Fed dog. Ironed PE kit, cleaned shoes. Did homework. Took dog for a walk, had bath. Cleaned bath. Made three cups of tea. Washed cups up. Went to bed. Just my luck to have an assertive mother!
TUESDAY MARCH 10TH
Prince Edward born, 1964
Why couldn’t I have been born Prince Edward and Prince Edward been born Adrian Mole? I am treated like a serf.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 11TH
Dragged myself to school after doing paper round and housework. My mother wouldn’t give me a note excusing me from Games so I left my PE kit at home. I just couldn’t face running about in the cold wind.
That sadist Mr Jones made me run all the way home to fetch my PE kit. The dog must have followed me out of the house because when I got to the school gate it was there before me. I tried to shut the dog out but it squeezed through the railings and followed me into the playground. I ran into the changing rooms and left the dog outside but I could hear its loud bark echoing around the school. I tried to sneak into the playing fields but the dog saw me and followed behind, then it saw the football and joined in the lesson! The dog is dead good at football, even Mr Jones was laughing until the dog punctured the ball.
Mr Scruton, the pop-eyed headmaster, saw everything from his window. He ordered me to take the dog home. I told him I would miss my sitting for school dinners but he said it would teach me not to bring pets to school.
Mrs Leech, the kitchen supervisor, did a very kind thing. She put my curry and rice, spotted dick and custard into the oven to keep warm. Mrs Leech doesn’t like Mr Scruton so she gave me a large marrow-bone to take home for the dog.
THURSDAY MARCH 12TH
Woke up this morning to find my face covered in huge red spots. My mother said they were caused by nerves but I am still convinced that my
diet is inadequate. We have been eating a lot of boil-in-the-bag stuff lately. Perhaps I am allergic to plastic. My mother rang Dr Gray’s receptionist to make an appointment, but the earliest he can see me is next Monday! For all he knows I could have lassa fever and be spreading it all around the district! I told my mother to say that I was an emergency case but she said I was ‘over-reacting as usual’. She said a few spots didn’t mean I was dying. I couldn’t believe it when she said she was going to work as usual. Surely her child should come before her job?
I rang my grandma and she came round in a taxi and took me to her house and put me to bed. I am there now. It is very clean and peaceful. I am wearing my dead grandad’s pyjamas. I have just had a bowl of barley and beef soup. It is my first proper nourishment for weeks.
I expect there will be a row when my mother comes home and finds that I have gone. But frankly, my dear diary, I don’t give a damn.
FRIDAY MARCH 13TH