by Sue Townsend
Wednesday September 30th
I am glad September is nearly over, it has been nothing but trouble. Blossom gone. Pandora sad. Bert on his last legs. My father still out of work. My mother still besotted with creep Lucas.
Fall 1981
Thursday October 1st
7.30 AM. Just woke up to find chin covered in spots! How can I face Pandora?
10 PM. Avoided Pandora all day but she caught up with me in school dinners. I tried to eat with my hand over my chin but it proved very difficult. I confessed to her during the yoghurt. She accepted my disability very calmly. She said it made no difference to our love but I couldn’t help thinking that her kisses lacked their usual passion as we were saying goodnight after youth club.
Friday October 2nd
6 PM. I am very unhappy and have once again turned to great literature for solace. It’s no surprise to me that intellectuals commit suicide, go mad or die from drink. We feel things more than other people. We know the world is rotten and that chins are ruined by spots. I am reading Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, by Andrei D. Sakharov.
It is ‘an inestimably important document’ according to the cover.
11.30 PM. Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom is inestimably boring, according to me, Adrian Mole.
I disagree with Sakharov’s analysis of the causes of the revivalism of Stalinism. We are doing Russia at school so I speak from knowledge.
Saturday October 3rd
Pandora is cooling off. She didn’t turn up at Bert’s today. I had to do his cleaning on my own.
Went to Sainsbury’s as usual in the afternoon; they are selling Christmas cakes. I feel that my life is slipping away.
I am reading Wuthering Heights. It is brilliant. If I could get Pandora up somewhere high, I’m sure we could regain our old passion.
Sunday October 4th
Sixteenth after Trinity
Persuaded Pandora to put her name down for the youth club’s mountain survival course in Derbyshire. Rick Lemon is sending an equipment list and permission form to our parents. Or in my case to my parent. I have only got two weeks to reach peak condition. I try to do fifty press-ups a night. I try to do them but fail. Seventeen is my best so far.
Monday October 5th
Bert has been kidnapped by Social Services! They are keeping him at the Alderman Cooper Sunshine Home. I have been to see him. He shares a room with an old man called Thomas Bell. They have both got their names on their ashtrays. Sabre has got a place in the RSPCA hostel.
Our dog has gone missing. It is a portent of doom.
Tuesday October 6th
Moon’s First Quarter
Pandora and I went to visit Bert, but it was a waste of time really.
His room had a strange effect on us, it made us not want to talk about anything. Bert says he is going to sue Social Services, for depriving him of his rights. He says he has to go to bed at nine-thirty! It is not fair because he is used to staying up until after The Epilogue. We passed the lounge on our way out. The old people sat around the walls in high chairs. The television was on but nobody was watching it, the old people looked as though they were thinking.
Social Services have painted the walls orange to try to cheer the old people up. It doesn’t seem to have worked.
Wednesday October 7th
Thomas Bell died in the night. Bert says that nobody leaves the home alive. Bert is the oldest inmate. He is dead worried about dying. He is now the only man in the entire home. Pandora says that women outlive men. She says it is a sort of bonus because women have to suffer more earlier on.
Our dog is still missing. I have put an advert in Mr Cherry’s shop.
Thursday October 8th
Bert is still alive so I took Sabre to visit him today. We propped Bert up at the window of his room and he waved to Sabre who was on the lawn outside. Dogs are not allowed inside the home. It is another of their poxy rules.
Our dog is still missing, now presumed dead.
Friday October 9th
The matron of the home says that if Bert is dead good he can come out for the day on Sunday. He is coming to our house for Sunday dinner and tea. The phone bill has come. I have hidden it under my mattress. It is for £289.19p.
Saturday October 10th
I am really worried about our dog. It has vanished off the face of our suburb. Nigel, Pandora and I have walked the cul-de-sacs looking for it.
Another worry is my father. He lies in bed until noon, then fries a mess in a pan, eats it, opens a can or bottle, then sits and watches After Noon Plus. He is making no attempt to find another job. He needs a bath, a haircut and a shave. It is Parents’ Night at school next Tuesday. I have taken his best suit to the cleaner’s.
I bought a book from W.H. Smith’s, it was only five pence. It was written by an unsuccessful writer called Drake Fairclough; it is called Cordon Bleu for the Elderly. Bert is coming tomorrow. Pandora’s father has ordered their phone to be taken out. He has found out about the reverse-charge calls.
Sunday October 11th
Seventeenth after Trinity
BERT’S VISIT
I got up early this morning and cleared the furniture out of the hall so that Bert’s wheelchair had room for manoeuvre. I made my father a cup of coffee and took it up to him in bed, then I started cooking geriatric coq au vin. I left it on to boil whilst I went back upstairs to reawaken my father. When I got downstairs I knew that I’d made a mess of the coq au vin. All the vinegar had boiled away and left burnt chicken. I was most disappointed because I was thinking of making my debut as a cook today. I wanted to impress Pandora with my multi talents, I think she is getting a bit bored with my conversation about great literature and the Norwegian leather industry.
Bert insisted on bringing a big trunk with him when Pandora’s father picked him up at the home. So what with that and his wheelchair and Bert sprawling all over the back seat I was forced to crouch in the hatch of the hatchback car. It took ages to get Bert out of the car and into his wheelchair. Almost as long as it took me to get my father out of bed.
Pandora’s father stayed for a quick drink, then a pre-lunch one, then a chaser, then one for the road. Then he had one to prove that he never got drunk during the day. Pandora’s lips started to go thin (women must teach young girls to do this). Then she confiscated her father’s car keys and phoned her mother to come and collect the car. I had to endure watching my father do his imitation of some bloke called Frank Sinatra singing ‘One for my baby and one more for the road’. Pandora’s father pretended to be the bartender with our Tupperware custard jug. They were both drunkenly singing when Pandora’s mother came in. Her lips were so thin they had practically disappeared. She ordered Pandora and Pandora’s father out into the car, then she said that it was about time my father pulled himself together. She said she knew my father felt humiliated, alienated and bitterbecause he was unemployed, but that he was setting a bad example to an impressionable adolescent. Then she drove off at 10 mph. Pandora blew me a kiss through the rear windscreen.
I object strongly! Nothing my father does impresses me any more. Had Vesta curry and rice for dinner, during which Mrs Singh came round and talked Hindi to Bert. She seemed to find our curry very funny, she kept pointing to it and laughing. Sometimes I think I am the only person in the world who still has manners.
Bert told my father that he is convinced the matron is trying to poison him (Bert, not my father), but my father said that all institutional food is the same. When it was time to go home, Bert started crying. He said, ‘Don’t make me go back there’, and other sad things. My father explained that we didn’t have the skill to look after him at our house, so Bert was wheeled to the car (although he kept putting the brake of the wheel-chair on). He asked us to keep his trunk at our house. He said it was to be opened on his death. The key is round his neck on a bit of string.
Dog is still AWOL.
Monday October 12th
Columbus Day, USA.
Thanksgiving Day, Canada
Went to the ‘off-the-streets’ youth club tonight. Rick Lemon gave us a lecture on survival techniques. He said that the best thing to do if you are suffering from hypothermia is to climb into a plastic bag with a naked woman. Pandora made a formal objection, and Rick Lemon’s girlfriend, Tit, got up and walked away. It is just my luck to be on the mountain with a frigid woman! RIP Dog.
Tuesday October 13th
Full Moon
Had an angry phone call from my grandma to ask when we were coming round to collect the dog! The stupid dog turned up at her house on the 6th October. I went round immediately and was shocked at the dog’s condition: it looks old and grey. In human years it is eleven years old. In dog years it should be drawing a pension. I have never seen a dog age so quickly. Those eight days with grandma must have been hell. My grandma is very strict.
Wednesday October 14th
I have nearly got used to the old ladies in the home now. I call in every afternoon on my way home from school. They seem pleased to see me. One of them is knitting me a balaclava for my survival weekend. She is called Queenie.
Did thirty-six and a half press-ups tonight.
Thursday October 15th
Went to the youth club to try yukky, lousy old walking boots for size. Rick Lemon has hired them from a mountaineering shop. To make mine fit I have to wear three pairs of socks. Six of us are going. Rick is leading us.
He is unqualified but experienced in surviving bad conditions. He was born and brought up in Kirby New Town. I went to Sainsbury’s and bought my survival food. We have got to carry our food and equipment in our rucksacks, so weight is an important factor. I bought:
1 box cornflakes
2 pints milk
box tea-bags
tin rhubarb
5 lb spuds
½ lb lard
½ lb butter
2 loaves bread
1 lb cheese
2 packets biscuits
2 lb sugar
toilet roll
washing-up liquid
2 tins tuna
1 tin stewed steak
1 tin carrots
I could hardly carry my survival food home from Salisbury’s, so how I will manage it on a march across the hills I don’t know! My father suggested leaving something out. So I have not packed the toilet roll or cornflakes.
Friday October 16th
Have decided not to take my diary to Derbyshire. I cannot guarantee that it will not be read by hostile eyes. Besides it won’t fit into my rucksack.
Must finish now, the mini-bus is outside papping its hooter.
Saturday October 17th
Sunday October 18th
Eighteenth after Trinity
8 PM. It is wonderful to be back in civilization!
I have lived like an ignoble savage for the past two days! Sleeping on rough ground with only a sleeping-bag between me and the elements! Trying to cook chips over a tiny primus stove! Trudging through streams in my torturous boots! Having to perform my natural functions out in the open! Wiping my bum on leaves! Not being able to have a bath or clean my teeth! No television or radio or anything! Rick Lemon wouldn’t even let us sit in the mini-bus when it started to rain! He said we ought to make a shelter out of nature’s bounty! Pandora found a plastic animal-food sack so we took it in turns sitting under it.
How I survived I don’t know. My eggs broke, my bread got saturated, my biscuits got crushed and nobody had a tin-opener. I nearly starved. Thank God cheese doesn’t leak, break, soak up water or come in a tin. I was glad when we were found and taken to the Mountain Rescue headquarters. Rick Lemon was told off for not having a map or compass. Rick said he knew the hills like the back of his hand. The chief mountain rescuer said that Rick must have been wearing gloves because we were seven miles from our mini-bus and heading in the wrong direction!
I shall now sleep in a bed for the first time in two days. No school tomorrow because of blisters.
Monday October 19th
I have got to rest my feet for two days. Doctor Gray was very unpleasant: he said that he resented being called out for a few foot blisters.
I was very surprised at his attitude. It is a well-known fact that mountaineers get gangrene of the toes.
Tuesday October 20th
Moon’s Last Quarter
Here I am lying in bed unable to walk because of excruciating pain and my father carries out his parental responsibilities by throwing a few bacon sandwiches at me three times a day!
If my mother doesn’t come home soon I will end up deprived and maladjusted. I am already neglected.
Wednesday October 21st
Hobbled to school. All the teachers were wearing their best clothes because it is Parents’ Evening tonight. My father got cleaned up and put his best suit on. He looked OK, thank God! Nobody could tell he was unemployed. My teachers all told him that I was a credit to the school.
Barry Kent’s father was looking as sick as a pig. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Thursday October 22nd
Limped half-way to school. Dog followed me. Limped back home. Shut dog in coal shed. Limped all the way to school. Fifteen minutes late. Mr Scruton said it was not setting a good example for the late prefect to be late. It is all right for him to talk! He can ride to schoolin a Ford Cortina and then all he has to do is be in charge of a school. I have got a lot of problems and no car.
Friday October 23rd
I have had a letter from the hospital to say that I have got to have my tonsils out on Tuesday the twenty-seventh. This has come as a complete shock to me! My father says I have been on the waiting list since I was five years old! So I have had to endure an annual bout of tonsillitis for nine years just because the National Health Service is starved of finance!
Why can’t midwives remove babies’ tonsils at birth? It would save a lot of trouble, pain and money.
Saturday October 24th
United Nations’ Day
Went shopping for new dressing gown, slippers, pyjamas, and toiletries. My father was moaning as usual. He said he didn’t see why I couldn’t just wear my old night-clothes in hospital. I told him that I would look ridiculous in my Peter Pan dressing gown and Winnie the Pooh pyjamas. Apart from the yukky design they are too small and covered in patches. He said that when he was a lad he slept in a nightshirt made out of two coal sacks stitched together. I phoned my grandma to check this suspicious statement and myfather was forced to repeat it down the phone. My grandma said that they were not coal sacks but flour sacks, so I now know that my father is a pathological liar!
My hospital rig came to fifty-four pounds nineteen; this is before fruit, chocolates and Lucozade. Pandora said I looked like Noel Coward in my new bri-nylon dressing gown. I said, ‘Thanks, Pandora’, although to be honest I don’t know who Noel Coward is or was. I hope he’s not a mass murderer or anything.
Sunday October 25th
Nineteenth after Trinity. British Summer Time ends
Phoned my mother to tell her about my coming surgical ordeal. No reply. This is typical. She would sooner be out having fun with creep Lucas than comforting her only child!
Grandma rang and said that she knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who had their tonsils out and bled to death on the operating theatre table. She ended up by saying, ‘Don’t worry Adrian, I’m sure everything will be all right for you’.
Thanks a million, grandma!
Monday October 26th
Bank Holiday in the Rep. of Ireland
11 AM. I did my packing, then went to see Bert. He is sinking fast so it could be the last time we see each other. Bert also knows somebody who bled to death after a tonsils’ extraction. I hope it’s the same person.
Said goodbye to Pandora: she wept very touchingly. She brought me one of Blossom’s old horseshoes to take into hospital. She said a friend of her father had a cyst removed and didn’t come out of the anaesthetic. I’m being admitted to Ivy Swallow Ward at 2 PM Greenwich Mean T
ime.
6 PM. My father has just left my bedside after four hours of waiting around for permission to leave. I have had every part of my body examined. Liquid substances have been taken from me, I have been weighed and bathed, measured and prodded and poked, but nobody has looked in my throat!
I have put our family medical dictionary on my bedside table so that the doctors see it and are impressed. I can’t tell what the rest of the ward is like yet because the nurses have forgotten to remove the screens. A notice has been hung over my bed; it says ‘Liquids Only’. I am dead scared.
10 PM. I am starving! A black nurse has taken all my food and drink away. I am supposed to go to sleep but it is like bedlam in here. Old men keep falling out of bed.
Midnight. There is a new notice over my bed; it says ‘Nil by Mouth’. I am dying of thirst! I would give my right arm for a can of Low Cal.
Tuesday October 27th
New Moon
4 AM. I am dehydrated!
6 AM. Just been woken up! Operation is not until 10 AM. So why couldn’t they let me sleep? I have got to have another bath. I told them that it is the inside of my body that is being operated on, but they don’t listen.
7 AM. A Chinese nurse stayed in the bathroom to make sure I didn’t drink any water. She kept staring so I had to put a hospital sponge over my thing.
7.30 AM. I am dressed like a lunatic, ready for the operation. I have had an injection, it is supposed to make you sleepy but I’m wide awake listening to a row about a patient’s lost notes.
8 AM. My mouth is completely dry, I shall go mad from thirst, I haven’t had a drink since nine forty-five last night. I feel very floaty, the cracks in the ceiling are very interesting. I have got to find somewhere to hide my diary. I don’t want prying Nosy Parkers reading it.