by Sue Townsend
Moon’s First Quarter
The emergency doctor came to my grandma’s last night at 11.30 p.m. He diagnosed that I am suffering from acne vulgaris. He said it was so common that it is regarded as a normal state of adolescence. He thought it was highly unlikely that I have got lassa fever because I have not been to Africa this year. He told Grandma to take the disinfected sheets off the doors and windows. Grandma said she would like a second opinion. That was when the doctor lost his temper. He shouted in a very loud voice, ‘The lad has only got a few teenage spots, for Christ’s sake!’
Grandma said she would complain to the Medical Council but the doctor just laughed and went downstairs and slammed the door. My father came round before he went to work and brought my Social Studies homework and the dog. He said that if I was not out of bed when he got home at lunchtime he would thrash me to within an inch of my life.
He took my grandma into the kitchen and had a loud talk with her. I heard him saying, ‘Things are very bad between me and Pauline, and all we are arguing over now is who doesn’t get custody of Adrian.’ Surely my father made a mistake. He must have meant who did get custody of me.
So the worst has happened, my skin has gone to pot and my parents are splitting up.
SATURDAY MARCH 14TH
It is official. They are getting a divorce! Neither of them wants to leave the house so the spare room is being turned into a bedsitter for my father. This could have a very bad effect on me. It could prevent me from being a vet.
My mother gave me five pounds this morning and told me not to tell my father. I bought some bio-spot cream for my skin and the new Abba LP.
I rang Mr Cherry and said I had personal problems and would be unable to work for a few weeks. Mr Cherry said that he knew that my parents were divorcing because my father had cancelled my mother’s Cosmopolitan.
My father gave me five pounds and told me not to tell my mother. I spent some of it on buying some purple paper and envelopes so that the BBC will be impressed and read my poems. The rest of it will have to go on Barry Kent and his menaces money. I don’tthink anybody in the world can be as unhappy as me. If I didn’t have my poetry I would be a raving loonie by now.
Went out for a sad walk and took Pandora’s horse two pounds of cooking apples. Thought of a poem about Blossom. Wrote it down when I got back to the house where I live.
Blossom by Adrian Mole, aged nearly fourteen
Little Brown Horse
Eating apples in a field,
Perhaps one day
My heart will be healed.
I stroke the places Pandora has sat
Wearing her jodphurs and riding hat.
Goodbye, brown horse.
I turn and retreat,
The rain and mud are wetting my feet.
I have sent it to the BBC. I marked the envelope ‘Urgent’.
SUNDAY MARCH 15TH
Second in Lent
The house is very quiet. My father sits in the spare room smoking and my mother sits in the bedroom smoking. They are not eating much.
Mr Lucas has phoned my mother three times. All she says to him is ‘not yet, it’s too early’. Perhaps he has asked her to go to the pub for a drink and take her mind off her troubles.
My father has put the stereo in his bedroom. He is playing his Jim Reeves records and staring out of the window. I took him a cup of tea and he said, ‘Thanks, son,’ in a choked-up voice.
My mother was looking at old letters in my father’s handwriting when I took her tea in; she said, ‘Adrian, what must you think of us?’ I said that Rick Lemon, the youth leader, thinks divorce is society’s fault. My mother said, ‘Bugger society.’
I washed and ironed my school uniform ready for school tomorrow. I am getting quite good at housework.
My spots are so horrific that I can’t bear to write about them. I will be the laughing stock at school.
I am reading The Man in the Iron Mask. I know exactly how he feels.
MONDAY MARCH 16TH
Went to school. Found it closed. In my anguish I had forgotten that I am on holiday. Didn’t want to go home, so went to see Bert Baxter instead. He said the social worker had been to see him and had promised to get Sabre a new kennel but he can’t have a home help. (Bert, not Sabre.)
There must have been a full week’s washing-up in the sink again. Bert says he saves it for me because I make a good job of it. While I washed up I told Bert about my parents getting a divorce. He said he didn’t hold with divorce. He said he was married for thirty-five miserable years so why should anybody else get away with it? He told me that he has got four children and that none of them come to see him. Two of them are in Australia so they can’t be blamed, but I think the other two should be ashamed of themselves. Bert showed me a photograph of his dead wife, it was taken in the days before they had plastic surgery. Bert told me that he was a hostler when he got married (a hostler is somebody doing things with horses) and didn’t really notice that his wife looked like a horse until he left to work on the railways. I asked him if he would like to see a horse again. He said he would, so I took him to see Blossom.
It took us ages to get there. Bert walks dead slow and he kept having to sit down on garden walls, but we got there eventually. Bert said that Blossom was not a horse, she was a girl pony. He kept patting her and saying ‘who’s a beauty then, eh?’ Then Blossom went for a run about so we sat down on the scrap car, and Bert had a Woodbine and I had a Mars bar. Then we walked back to Bert’s house. I went to the shops and bought a packet of Vesta chow mein and a butterscotch Instant Whip for our dinner, so Bert ate a decent meal for once. We watched Pebble Mill at One, then Bert showed me his old horse brushes and photographs of the big house where he worked when he was a boy. He said he was made into a communist when he was there, but he fell asleep before he could tell me why.
Came home, nobody was in so I played my Abba records at the highest volume until the deaf woman next door banged on the wall.
TUESDAY MARCH 17TH
St Patrick’s Day. Bank Holiday in N. Ireland and Rep. of Ireland
Looked at Big and Bouncy. Measured my ‘thing’. It was eleven centimetres.
Mr O’Leary who lives across the road from us was drunk at ten o’clock in the morning! He got thrown out of the butcher’s for singing.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 18TH
My mother and father are both speaking to solicitors. I expect they are fighting over who gets custody of me. I will be a tug-of-love child, and my picture will be in the newspapers. I hope my spots clear up before then.
THURSDAY MARCH 19TH
Mr Lucas has put his house up for sale. My mother says the asking price is thirty thousand pounds!!
What will he do with all that money?
My mother says he will buy another bigger house. How stupid can you get?
If I had thirty thousand pounds I would wander the world having experiences.
I wouldn’t take any real money with me because I have read that most foreigners are thieves. Instead I would have three thousand pounds’ worth of traveller’s cheques sewn into my trousers. Before I set off, I would:
Send Pandora three dozen red roses.
Pay a mercenary fifty pounds to duff Barry Kent up.
Buy the best racing bike in the world and ride it past Nigel’s house.
Order a massive crate of expensive dog food so that the dog is properly fed while I’m away.
Buy a housekeeper for Bert Baxter.
Offer my mother and father a thousand pounds (each) to stay together.
When I came back from the world I would be tall, brown and full of ironical experiences and Pandora would cry into her pillow at night because of the chance she missed to be Mrs Pandora Mole. I would qualify to be a vet in record time then I would buy a farmhouse. I would convert one room into a study so that I could have somewhere quiet to be intellectual in.
I wouldn’t waste thirty thousand pounds on buying a semi-detached house!
FRI
DAY MARCH 20TH
First day of spring. Full Moon
It is the first day of spring. The council have chopped all the elms down in Elm Tree Avenue.
SATURDAY MARCH 21ST
My parents are eating different things at different times, so I usually have six meals a day because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
The television is in my room now because they couldn’t decide who it belongs to. I can lie in bed and watch the late-night horror.
I am starting to get a bit suspicious about my mother’s feelings towards Mr Lucas. I found a note she had from him; it says: ‘Pauline, how much longer? For God’s sake come away with me. Yours forever, Bimbo.’
Although it was signed ‘Bimbo’ I know it was from Mr Lucas because it was written on the back of his red electricity bill.
My father should be informed. I have put the note under my mattress next to the Big and Bouncy magazines.
SUNDAY MARCH 22ND
Third in Lent. British Summer Time begins
It is my grandma’s birthday today; she is seventy-six and looks it. I took her a card and a pot plant; it is called Leopard Lily, its foreign name is Dieffenbachia. It had a plastic label stuck in the soil which said, ‘The sap in this plant is poisonous so take care.’ My grandma asked me who chose the plant. I told her my mother did.
My grandma is quite pleased that my parents are getting a divorce! She said that she always thought that my mother had a wanton streak in her and that now she had been proved right.
I didn’t like to hear my mother being spoken of in such a way so I came home. I pretended to Grandma that I had promised to meet a friend. But I haven’t really got a friend any more, it must be because I’m an intellectual. I expect people are in awe of me. Looked in my dictionary to find out what ‘wanton’ means. It is not very nice!
MONDAY MARCH 23RD
Back to school, worse luck! We had Domestic Science today. We did baked potatoes in the oven with cheese filling. My potatoes were bigger than anyone else’s so they weren’t properly cooked by the time the lesson ended, so I finished them off at Bert Baxter’s. He wanted to see Blossom again which was a bit of a drag because he takes so long to walk anywhere. But we went, anything is better than doing Maths at school.
Bert took his horse brushes with him and gave Blossom a good clean, she was shining like a conker by the time he’d finished. Bert got out of breath so he sat on the scrap car and had a Woodbine, then we walked back to Bert’s house.
Sabre is in a better temper since he got his new kennel and Bert’s house is in a better condition as a result of Sabre being outside. Bert told me that the social worker thought he ought to go into an old people’s home where he can be properly looked after. Bert doesn’t want to. He told a lie to the social worker, he said his grandson came in every day and looked after him. The social worker is going to check up so I could be in trouble for impersonation!!! I don’t know how much more worry I can take.
TUESDAY MARCH 24TH
Late last night I saw my mother and Mr Lucas going out in Mr Lucas’s car. They went somewhere special because my mother was wearing a boiler suit with sequins. She did look a bit wanton. Mr Lucas was wearing his best suit and he had a lot of gold jewellery on. For an old person he certainly knows how to dress.
If my father took more care of his appearance, none of this would have happened. It stands to reason that any woman would prefer a man to wear a suit and a lot of gold jewellery to one like my father who hardly ever shaves and wears old clothes and no jewellery.
I am going to stay awake and find out what time my mother comes home.
Midnight. Mother still not home.
2 a.m. No sign of my mother.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 25TH
Annunciation of B.V. Mary
Fell asleep, so don’t know what time my mother got home. My father said she had gone to the insurance firm’s Christmas dinner and dance. In March! Come off it, Dad! I was not born yesterday! We had swimming in Games today. The water was freezing cold and so were the changing cubicles. I will try to get athlete’s foot so that I don’t have to go next week.
THURSDAY MARCH 26TH
Barry Kent has been done by the police for riding a bike without a rear light. I hope he gets sent to a Detention Centre. A short sharp shock will do him good.
FRIDAY MARCH 27TH
Pandora and Nigel have split up! It is all round the school. This is the best news I have had for ages.
I am reading Madame Bovary, by another frog writer.
SATURDAY MARCH 28TH
Last Quarter
Nigel has just left, he is heartbroken. I tried to comfort him. I said that there are plenty more pebbles on the beach and fish in the sea. But he was much too upset to listen.
I told him about my suspicions about my mother and Mr Lucas and he said that it had been going on for a long while. Everybody knew except me and my father!!
We had a long talk about racing bikes, then Nigel went home to think about Pandora.
It is Mother’s Day tomorrow. I am in two minds about whether to buy her something or not. I have only got sixty-eight pence.
SUNDAY MARCH 29TH
Fourth in Lent. Mothering Sunday
My father gave me three pounds last night. He said, ‘Get your mother something decent, son, it could be the last time.’ I certainly wasn’t going all the way into town for her, so I went to Mr Cherry’s and bought a box of Black Magic, and a card saying ‘To a wonderful mother’.
Card manufacturers must think that all mothers are wonderful because every single card has ‘wonderful’ written on it somewhere. I felt like crossing ‘wonderful’ out and putting ‘wanton’ in its place, but I didn’t. I signed it ‘from your son, Adrian’. I gave it to her this morning. She said, ‘Adrian, you shouldn’t have.’ She was right, I shouldn’t have.
Must stop now. My mother has arranged what she called ‘a civilized meeting’. Mr Lucas is going to be there. Naturally I am not invited! I am going to listen at the door.
MONDAY MARCH 30TH
A terrible thing happened last night. My father and Mr Lucas had a fight in the front garden, the whole street came outside to watch! My mother tried to separate them but they both told her to ‘keep out of it’. Mr O’Leary tried to help my father, he kept shouting, ‘Give the smarmy bugger one for me, George.’ Mrs O’Leary was shouting horrible things at my mother. By the sounds of things she had been watching my mother’s movements since Christmas. The civilized meeting broke up at about five o’clock when my father found out how long my mother and Mr Lucas had been in love.
They had another civilized meeting at about seven o’clock, but when my mother disclosed that she was leaving for Sheffield with Mr Lucas my father became uncivilized and started fighting. Mr Lucas ran into the garden but my father rugby-tackled him by the laurel bush and the fight broke out again. It was quite exciting really. I had a good view from my bedroom window. Mrs O’Leary said, “Tis the child I feel sorry for,’ and all the people looked up and saw me, so I looked especially sad. I expect the experience will give me a trauma at some stage in the future. I’m all right at the moment, but you never know.
TUESDAY MARCH 31ST
My mother has gone to Sheffield with Mr Lucas. She had to drive because Mr Lucas couldn’t see out of his black eyes. I have informed the school secretary of my mother’s desertion. She was very kind and gave me a form to give to my father; it is for free school dinners. We are now a single-parent family.
Nigel has asked Barry Kent to stop menacing me for a few weeks. Barry Kent said he would think about it.
Spring
WEDNESDAY APRIL 1ST
All Fools’ Day
Nigel rang up this morning and pretended he was an undertaker and asked when he was to pick up the body. My father answered the phone. Honestly! He has got no sense of humour.
I had a good laugh telling girls that their petticoats were showing when they weren’t. Barry Kent brought a packet of itc
hing powder into the Art lesson, he put some down Ms Fossington-Gore’s flying boots. She is another one without any sense of humour. Barry Kent put some down my back. It wasn’t funny. I had to go to the matron and have it removed.
The house is looking extremely squalid because my father is not doing any housework. The dog is pining for my mother.
I was born exactly thirteen years and three hundred and sixty-four days ago.
THURSDAY APRIL 2ND
I am fourteen today! Got a track suit and a football from my father. (He is completely insensitive to my needs.) A Boy’s Book of Carpentry from my grandma Mole. (No comment.) One pound inside a card from my grandad Sugden. (Last of the big spenders.) Best of all was ten pounds from my mother and five pounds from Mr Lucas. (Conscience money.)
Nigel sent a joke card; it said on the front, ‘Who’s sexy, charming, intelligent and handsome?’ Inside it said, ‘Well it certainly ain’t you buddy!!!’ Nigel wrote, ‘No offence mate.’ He put ten pence inside the envelope.
Bert Baxter sent a card to the school because he doesn’t know where I live. His handwriting is dead good, I think it is called ‘brass plate’. His card had a picture of an alsatian on the front. Inside Bert had written, ‘Best wishes from Bert and Sabre. P.S. Drain blocked up.’ Inside the card there was a book token for ten shillings. It expired in December 1958, but it was a kind thought.
So at last I am fourteen! Had a good look at myself in the mirror tonight and I think I can detect a certain maturity. (Apart from the rotten spots.)