by Sue Townsend
On to other subjects. Nigel sends his regards, he would like to come and see you but doesn’t trust himself not to burst into tears at the prison gate. Also he thinks his appearance might startle your fellow prisoners and leave you open to a certain amount of bullying in the dormitory. He is now a bald-headed Buddhist and wears orange robes and orange flip-flops (in all weathers). But, apart from these superficial changes he is still the same old Nigel, although, sadly, he got the sack from the bank: religious persecution is still alive and well in this country, I fear.
Nothing much has happened here; provincial life drags its weary way through the hours and days and months and years; I think it’s time I left the library, Baz. The attitude of the general public towards the books they borrow is contemptuous. Yesterday I found a rasher of bacon inside A Dictionary of Philosophy. It had obviously been used as a bookmark. Further on, in the same book, I found a note addressed to a milkman:
Dear Milkman
I’d be most terribly grateful if, from now on, you would be as kind as to leave one further pint of skimmed milk. That is to say dating from today (Tuesday) I would like you to deliver two pints of skimmed milk per day. I hope you will join me in my happiness at the news that my wife has returned to me. I know how much you and she enjoyed your little early morning doorstep chats. Alas, I fear I do not have my wife’s common touch. However, I am fully appreciative of your achievement in delivering our milk in all weather conditions, and if, in the past, I have given the impression of being surly and uncommunicative, I’m sorry. I’m not at my best in the early morning. I am plagued with a recurring nightmare: I am lecturing to a Hall full of students when half-way through I realize I am naked. Perhaps you have similar disturbed nights? From what I’ve seen of you from my bedroom window, you seem to be a sensitive person. You have an intelligent mien.
Don’t be offended, milkman, but I would guess that you have had little education, so, why not let us help you to educate yourself by browsing along our well-stocked bookshelves? You are welcome to borrow any book – apart from the first editions which need very careful handling – normally I would suggest that the ill-educated use the library but our local branch is staffed by cretins.
Do think about this proposition and communicate either ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ at the bottom of this page.
With warmest regards,
Richard Blythe-Samson (No. 19)
Nay. You owe me 6 weeks money. Milkman.
Well Baz, I’ll sign off now. Hope you don’t take it too hard about Cindy, but somebody had to tell you and who better than your old mate,
Adrian ‘Brains’ Mole
PS. It’s my birthday today. I am nineteen and God am I weary of this life.
Unit 2
April 9th 1987
Dear ‘Brains’
Cindy as wrote to me and said it is lies about her and Gary Fullbright and she said she is not in the club she as just put on some wait because of working in the hot spud shop she swears on her dogs head that she stills love me and she is weighting for me. The reeason she as not bin to see me is becars she has had migraine you have got a nerv to critisize her you should look in the mirrer sometime at yourself I av herd bad things about Pandorra that she is having it off with allsorts including china men and yugoslavians their is a screw in hear who as got a son at oxford university he nows pandorra an he says she is a slagg wye did you tell me that stuff about the milkman it was drivval I am goinng mad in hear I want to now what is goinng on with the lads outside did spig get sentensed yet as marvin got parrole things like that do not bothur writin if you write drivvel and if you come to see me argain dress up smart I was ashammd last time and I got greif from the lads after visitting. I told them you was not all their but I still got greif my cell mate is a fat slob is name is clifton there is not room to move when he is standing up I am asking for a transferr he is the fart champion of the prison gary fullbright is lookinggg for you
stay cool
Baz
April 18th 1987
Dear Baz
How dare you infer that Pandora is a slag? She mixes with Chinese, Russians and Yugoslavians because she is taking Russian, Serbo-Croat and Chinese at Oxford. She no doubt entertains them in her rooms until quite late at night, but believe me Baz she is not engaging in sexual intercourse with them. I know for a fact that Pandora is a virgin. Unlike you and Cindy, Pandora and I have a completely honest relationship. If she were no longer a virgin I would be the first to know. I will make no further comment on the Cindy/Gary situation apart from saying that I saw them together in Mothercare buying a baby’s bath and two maternity bras, but from now on my lips are sealed. I’m sorry you are of the opinion that parts of my last letter were drivel. I thought the note to the milkman would amuse you and take your mind off your present surroundings. I don’t blame you for being bitter, though. Two years’ imprisonment for criminal damage to a privet hedge does seem harsh. I’m scared to cough in the street these days in case I get done under the new Public Order Act.
I haven’t had a poem from you for ages Baz. I hope you haven’t given up scribbling. You have a rare, muscular sort of talent which you mustn’t waste. You once had a lucrative career as ‘Baz, the Skinhead Poet’ on the poetry club circuit. Why not take this opportunity to write a new collection?
Yours
Adrian ‘Brains’ Mole
May 12th 1986
Dear Brains
Banged Up
Ok. I done it
I damaged a hedge
I broke a few twigs
A few leaves fell off
Hedges grow again.
They said it was privet
in court, in evidence.
Me, I didn’t know
I was falling, drunk.
I grabbed this green thing
I fell in, got scratched
couldn’t get out again.
The hedges owner called 999.
An old bloke he was
If he’d pulled me out I
woulda gone.
Instead the filth come.
‘Hello Baz, you’ve broken
an hedge.
That’s criminal damage, vandalism, wanton,
mindless’
Honest, it was a few twigs, a few green
leaves.
It needed cutting,
‘I shan’t press charges’ said the old man.
But it was too late,
the law had started its machinery up.
It couldn’t stop.
Not until the prison gate
opened and took me in.
‘Criminal damage to an hedge’
I’m a joke in here.
Psychopaths get more respect
the old man, he was in court.
He wasn’t happy. He looked at me
in the dock. His face said,
‘I’m not happy.’
I gave him a salute one man to
another.
Then I went down.
BAZ KENT
(The Skinhead Poet)
June 30th 1987
Dear Baz
It’s some months since I wrote to you I know but I’ve been very busy with my opus, ‘Tadpole’, which I am hoping to get published either in The Literary Review or The Leicester Mercury, whichever pays the most. ‘Tadpole’ is the story-in-rhyme of a tadpole’s difficult journey to froghood. It is 10,000 words in length so far and the tadpole in question is still in the canal squirming about. So, Baz, as a fellow poet, you can see my problem. All my waking hours – apart from those in the stinking library where I am forced to earn my living – are spent writing. I care nothing for food or rest or taking hot baths. I haven’t changed my clothes in months (apart from socks and underpants); what care I for the outward trappings of petit bourgeois society?
There have been complaints at work about my appearance: Mr Nuggett, Deputy Librarian, said yesterday, ‘Mole, I am giving you the afternoon off. Go home, bathe, wash your hair and change into clean clo
thes!’
I replied (with dignity), ‘Mr Nuggett, would you have spoken to Byron, Ted Hughes, or Larkin as you’ve just spoken to me?’ He was dumbfounded. All he could think to say eventually was: ‘You used the wrong tense as far as Ted Hughes is concerned, because, unless there has been a tragic accident or a sudden illness, I believe Mr Hughes to be most vigorously alive.’
What a pedant!
Your poem ‘Banged Up’ was quite nice. Must stop now, ‘The Tadpole’ calls.
Hey ho.
A. Mole
PS. Cindy has called the baby Carlsberg.
Adrian Mole Leaves Home
June 1988
Monday June 13th
I had a good, proper look at myself in the mirror tonight. I’ve always wanted to look clever, but at the age of twenty years and three months I have to admit that I look like a person who has never even heard of Jung or Updike. I went to a party last week and a girl of sixteen felt obliged to tell me who Gertrude Stein was. I tried to cut her off – inform her that I was conversant with Ms Stein, but I started to choke on a cheese and tomato pizza so the opportunity was lost.
So, the mirror showed me myself, as I am. I’m dark but not dark enough to be interesting: no Celtic broodiness. My eyes are grey. My eyelashes are medium length, nothing exciting here. My nose is high-bridged, but it’s a Roman centurion’s nose, rather than a senator’s. My mouth is thin. Not cruel and thin, and it gets a bit sloppy towards the edges. I have got a chin, though. No mean achievement considering my pure English genes.
Since I was a callow youth I’ve spent a fortune on my skin. I’ve rubbed and applied hundreds of chemicals and lotions onto and into the offending pustulated layer of epidermis, but alas! to no avail. Sharon Botts, my present girl friend, once described my complexion as being like ‘one of them bubble sheets what incontinent people use to protect their mattress’.
As can be seen from the above reproduction of Sharon’s speech her knowledge of correct English grammar is minimal, therefore I have taken it upon myself to educate her. I am Henry Higgins to her Eliza Dolittle.
She is worth it. Her measurements are 42–30–38. She’s a big girl. Unfortunately she measures thirty inches round the tops of her thighs, and fifteen inches round her ankles. But isn’t that just like life? The most beautiful and exotic places on earth also attract mosquitoes don’t they? Nothing and nobody is perfect, are they? Apart from Madonna, of course.
Anyway, I suggested to Sharon that she would look wonderful in floor-length skirts but she said, ‘Who the bleedin’ hell d’you think I am, sodding Queen Victoria?’
Summer will soon be here and I have a recurring nightmare that Sharon decides to buy and wear a miniskirt. In my dream she takes my arm and we stroll down the crowded high street. The public stop and stare, guffawing breaks out. A three-year-old child points at Sharon and says, ‘Look at the lady’s fat legs.’ At this point I wake up sweating and with a pounding heart.
You may be wondering why I, Adrian Mole, a provincial intellectual working in a library and Sharon Botts, a provincial dullard, working in a laundry are having a relationship. The answer is, sex. I have grown to be rather keen on it and find it difficult to stop doing it now I’ve started.
Sharon and I were both virgins when we met which is a piece of good fortune too rare to overlook. What with AIDS and herpes rampaging round the world. But sex is where our relationship begins and ends. Sharon is as bored by my conversation as I am by hers, so we go elsewhere for that. She goes to see her mother and five sisters, and I go to see Pandora Braithwaite, who is the true love of my life.
I’ve loved Pandora since 1980. Two years ago we went our separate ways, Pandora to Oxford to study Russian, Chinese and Serbo-Croat, and me to stamp books in the library in the town where I was born. I chose library work because I wanted to immerse myself in literature. Ha! The library I work in could easily double as the headquarters of the local Philistines Society. I have never had a literary conversation at work, never. Neither with the staff nor the borrowers of the books.
My days are spent taking books off shelves and putting books back on the shelves. Occasionally I am interrupted by members of the public asking mad questions: ‘Is Jackie Collins here?’ To this I reply, after first glancing round the library in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Highly unlikely, madam. I believe she lives in Hollywood.’
Sometimes my mother visits me at work, although I have given her strict instructions not to do so. My mother cannot modulate her voice. Her laugh could pickle cabbage. Her appearance is striking and now, in her forty-third year, merging on the eccentric. She has no colour sense. She wears espadrilles. Summer and winter. She disobeys the No Smoking signs and enters doors labelled, Private Staff Only.
My father never visits the library. He claims that the sight of so many books makes him ill.
Unfortunately, I am still living at home with my parents (and my five-year-old sister Rosie). This ménage à quatre co-exists in a sullen atmosphere. Half the time I feel like somebody in a Chekhov play. We’ve even got a cherry tree in the front garden.
I’ve tramped the streets looking for my own cheap apartment. I put an advertisement in the local paper.
Writer requires a room, preferably garret.
Non-smoker, respectable.
Clean habits. References supplied.
Rent no more than £10 a week.
I received three replies: the first from an old lady who offered me rent-free accommodation in return for helping her to feed her thirty-seven cats and nine dogs. The second from an anonymous person who wished to ‘thoroughly irrigate my colon’. The third from a Mr QZ Diablo.
I went to inspect the room offered by Mr Diablo. As soon as he opened the front door I knew I would not enjoy living in close proximity to him. Beards irritate me at the best of times and Mr Diablo’s cascaded down from his chin and came to a straggling end somewhere near to his navel. However, I allowed him to lead the way up the swaying staircase. The room was at the top of the house. It was part-furnished, with a bed and a structure resembling an altar. Purple cloaks hung from hooks in the walls. Mr QZ Diablo said, ‘Of course I shall need this room on Thursday evenings for our meetings. We finish just after midnight, would that be too inconvenient?’
‘I’m afraid it would,’ I said. ‘I’d prefer to sort of have the place to myself.’
‘You could join us,’ he suggested, helpfully. ‘We’re a jolly crowd, though cursed with a diabolical public image.’
I stared down at a red stain. It was on a multi-coloured carpet that only a mad man or mad woman could have designed, possibly in a workshop within the high walls of an institution.
‘Only animal blood,’ said QZ, reassuringly poking the stain with his bare big toe. ‘We don’t go in for human sacrifice,’ he said comfortingly.
I said the words of the timid and cowardly: ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Yes you must,’ said my host. He then led me down the stairs, and out to freedom. I didn’t want to tramp the streets on Thursday evenings and neither did I want to wear a purple cloak and mutter incantations over an animal sacrifice with a jolly crowd once a week. So I didn’t go and live under Mr QZ Diablo’s roof. This was last week.
Tonight my mother said, ‘Look, when are you leaving home? We want to let your room.’
My mother is not an advocate of the tactful approach. It transpired that she had answered an advertisement from the University and arranged to act as a landlady to two male students. This would give her an income of seventy pounds a week. Fifty pounds more than she receives from me. No contest. The two students (of engineering) are moving into my room on Friday afternoon. A new single bed has been purchased and is leaning accusingly against the wall of my bedroom.
Tuesday June 14th
I found it hard to concentrate on my work today. The Head Librarian, Mrs Froggatt (fat, fifty and with the colouring and features of a jaundiced badger), said at lunchtime, ‘Mole, you’ve moved all our Jane Austens from
the great English Classics section to the Light Romance Section, pray explain.’ I snapped, ‘In my opinion they have been given their proper classification. Jane Austen’s novels are merely trashy romances read only by snobbish, brainless cretins.’ How was I to know that ‘Jane Austen, Her Genius, Her Relevance to England in the 1950s’ was the subject of Mrs Froggatt’s dissertation for her degree in English Literature many years before I was born? As I’ve said earlier in my diary, we didn’t discuss books or writers in the library.
That afternoon I was called into Mrs Froggatt’s room. She informed me that the library was cutting down on staff due to Government financial restraints. I asked how many staff would be asked to leave. ‘Just the one,’ said the Jane Austen admirer, ‘and, since you were the last to come, Adrian, you must also be the first to go.’ Homeless and jobless!