by Sue Townsend
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 22ND
I skived off school and went to the Social Security offices with my mother. She couldn’t face going on her own. I’m certainly glad I went because it was no place for a pregnant woman.
My mother joined the queue of complaining people at the reception desk. And I sat down on the screwed-down chairs.
The reception clerk was hiding behind a glass screen, so everyone was forced to shout out their most intimate financial secrets to her. I heard my mother shouting with the rest, then she came back holding a ticket numbered 89, and said that we would have to wait until our number was displayed on an electronic screen.
We waited for yonks amongst what my mother called ‘The casualties of Society’. (My father would have described them as ‘dregs’.) A group of tramps staggered about singing and arguing with each other. Toddlers ran amok. Teenage mothers shouted and smacked. A Teddy boy on crutches lurched up the stairs helped by an old skinhead in ragged Doc Martens. Everyone ignored the ‘No Smoking’ notices and stubbed their cigarettes out on the lino. The respectable people stared down at their shoes. About every ten minutes a number flashed up on the screen and somebody got up and went through a door marked ‘Private Interviews’.
I didn’t see any of the people who’d gone through the door come out again. I thought this was a bit sinister. My mother said, ‘They’ve probably got gas chambers out there.’
Our private interview was against the Trades Description Act, because it wasn’t private at all. The interviewer was also behind a glass screen, so my mother had to bellow out that she hadn’t received her giro and was financially destitute.
The interviewer said, ‘Your giro was posted on Friday, Mrs Moulds.’
‘mrs moulds?’ said my mother. ‘My name’s Mole - MOLE - as in furry mammal.’
‘Sorry,’ said the interviewer, ‘I’ve got the wrong records.’
We waited another fifteen minutes, then he came back and said, ‘Your giro will be put in the post tonight.’
‘But I need the money now,’ my mother pleaded. ‘There’s no food in the house and my son needs school trousers.’
‘There’s nothing I can do,’ the bloke said wearily. ‘Can’t you borrow some money?’
My mother looked the man straight in the eyes and said, ‘OK, will you lend me five pounds, please?’
The man said, ‘It’s against the rules.’
Now I know why the furniture is screwed down. I felt like flinging a chair about myself.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 23RD
Autumnal Eguinox
No giro. Courtney Elliot lent my mother £5.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 24TH
8.30 a.m. No giro. But a cheque from my father arrived so we are saved! My mother gave me 15p for a Mars bar, my first in days.
4.30 p.m. My mother took the cheque to the bank this morning, but they wouldn’t cash it because it needed four days to clear. Mr Niggard the manager was out officiating at a liquidation, so my mother waited for him to come back then grovelled for a temporary overdraft. Mr Niggard let her have £25.
All this trouble has made my mother’s ankles swell up. Somebody is going to pay for this!
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 25TH
Moon’s First Quarter
No giro!
Looked Swollen Ankles up in the Good Housekeeping Family Health Encyclopaedia. It calls itself the ‘Complete Modern Medical Reference Book for the Home’, but the index didn’t have ‘Swollen Ankles’. I used my initiative and looked up ‘Pregnancy’. I was interested to see that ‘Pregnancy’ was adjacent to ‘Sex and Reproduction’.
I started reading a section called ‘Testes and Sperm’ and was astonished to discover that my personal testes make several hundred million sperm a day. a day! Where do they all go? I know some leak out in the night and some I help to leak occasionally, but what happens to the countless billions that are left swarming around, and what about chaste people like priests? During a lifetime they must collect a trillion trillion. It makes the mind boggle, not to mention the testes.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 26TH
Sixteenth after Trinity
Read the whole of ‘Sex and Reproduction’ in bed last night. Woke up to find a few hundred million sperm had leaked out. Still, it will give the remaining sperm room to wag their tails about a bit.
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 27TH
No giro!
By a massive stroke of luck we did the storage of semen in human biology today. I was able to give a full and frank account of the life cycle of a sperm.
Mr Southgate the biology teacher was dead impressed. After the lesson he said, ‘Mole, I don’t know if you’ve got a natural aptitude for biology or a rather obsessive interest in things sexual. If the former I suggest you change from CSE to O level, if the latter perhaps a chat with the school psychology service may be of use.’
I assured Mr Southgate that my interest was purely scientific.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 28TH
No giro!
Pandora and I went for a walk in the woods after school only to find that a building firm had started to build executive houses in the clearings. Pandora said that the woodlands of England were being sacrificed for saunas, double garages and patio doors.
Some lucky executive is going to have the best conker tree in the Midlands in his back garden. He’ll also be as sick as a dog because he’ll have Barry Kent’s gang chucking sticks at it every autumn. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Went back to Pandora’s and watched the Labour Party Conference vote for unilateral disarmament. Mr Braithwaite explained that this means if elected the Labour Party would chuck all their nuclear weapons away. Mrs Braithwaite said, ‘Yes and leave us at the mercy of the Soviet threat.’ Mr Braithwaite and Mrs Braithwaite started arguing about multilateral versus unilateral disarmament. The argument got a bit nasty and Mr Braithwaite went on to accuse his wife of posting a letter of resignation to the Elm Ward Labour Party. Mrs Braithwaite shouted, ‘For the last time, Ivan, I did not post that sodding letter.’
Pandora walked me home and explained that since her mother had joined the SDP her parents had worked in separate studies. She said, ‘They are intellectually incompatible.’
I asked Pandora about the letter of resignation. She said that her father had written a letter but decided not to post it. He was therefore hurt when his resignation had been accepted. Pandora said, ‘Poor Daddy is in the political wilderness.’
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 29TH
No giro!
My mother had a letter from the bank to tell her that my father’s cheque had bounced. I was sent round to Grandma’s on my way to school to break the news.
Stick Insect was feeding Brett so I didn’t know where to put my eyes. Is it good or bad manners to ignore a suckling baby? I kept my eyes on her neck to be on the safe side.
My grandma was getting Maxwell ready for play school. The poor kid was wrapped in so many layers of clothes that he looked a bit like Scott at the South Pole. Grandma said, ’There’s a nip in the air and Maxwell has got a chest.’
My father had gone to the canal bank early, so I left a message with Grandma. She pulled her lips in a straight line and said, ‘Another bouncing cheque? Your father ought to take up trampolining.’
I asked Grandma if she ever got fed up with Brett, Maxwell and Stick Insect. Grandma said she thrived on hard work, and it’s true, she looks better than when all she had to do was listen to Radio Four all day. She doesn’t even listen to ‘The World at One’ now. Brett doesn’t like Robin Day’s voice for some reason. It makes him scream and bring his milk up.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 30TH
No giro!
Wrote a poem today.
Waiting for the Giro
The pantry door creaks showing empty Fablon shelves.
The freezer echoes with mournful electrical whirrings.
The boy goes ragged trousered to school.
The woman waits at the letterbox.
The bills line up behind the clock.
T
he dog whimpers empty-bellied in sleep.
The building society writes letters penned in vitriol.
The house waits, waits, waits,
Waits for the giro.
I am reading Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings.
autumn
FRIDAY OCTOBER 1ST
My mother rang up the Citizens’ Advice Bureau to find out who her MP is. Then she rang the MP at home, but he wasn’t there. His wife said that he had gone on a fact-finding mission to the Canary Isles. She sounded very bitter.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 2ND
Courtney brought a letter from the Fens.
King Edward Cottage,
Yosserdyke,
Norfolk
Dear Pauline,
Your dad and me was sorry to hear about your trouble and we hopes as it is now cleared up. We never did take to George; he had a hasty temper and we think as how you’re better off without him. As regards the money, Pauline, well we only got a few good days at the potato picking so we are a bit short ourselves at the moment, but we enclose a postal order for Adrian, as we know he has got a sweet tooth.
If you would put your trust in the Lord, Pauline, you wouldn’t keep having such trouble in your life. God only punishes the heathens and the unbelievers. We was shocked last Christmas as to how much smoking and drinking went on under your roof. You wasn’t brought up to it, Pauline. Your dad has never touched a drop in his life, nor has he been a slave to nicotine. We are decent Cod-fearing folk what knows our place and we only wish that you would take after us more before it’s too late.
Uncle Dennis, Auntie Marcia and Cousin Maurice have moved out of the caravan and into a council house. They have got all modern facilities, Auntie Marcia jokes that it is just like Buckingham Palace. Perhaps when you have had the unwelcome baby you will come and see it for yourself.
Anyway Pauline
We are praying for you,
Yours affectionately,
Mam and Dad
P.S. Auntie Marcia asks if you ever found Maurice’s grey sock that disappeared last Christmas. She’s not been able to rest through wondering about it.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 3RD
Seventeenth after Trinity. Full Moon
My mother wrote the following reply today:
Dear Mam and Dad,
Sorry about the short delay in replying to your wonderfully comforting letter, but I have only just emerged from a drunken stupor. Adrian was ecstatic to be sent the postal order for 50 pence and rushed straight out to buy me a can of lager. He’s such a thoughtful kid.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to come down and inspect Auntie Marcia’s council house, but I fear that I will be quite unable to drag myself away from the endless round of parties that my life now revolves around. You know what us hedonists are like - living for kicks and not going to church.
I fear that a meticulous search has failed to turn up the missing grey sock. I can appreciate Auntie Marcia’s anxiety on this point, so I enclose my last pound note to enable Auntie Marcia to buy a pair and therefore rest in peace.
What you say about George is quite true, but I married him because at that time he laughed a lot. There weren’t a lot of laughs in our cottage in the middle of the potato field, were there?
Cordial greetings,
Your Daughter Pauline
And Grandson Adrian
I begged her not to send it. She said she would think about it and put it behind the bread bin.
MONDAY OCTOBER 4TH
NO GIRO!
TUESDAY OCTOBER 5TH
No giro!
My mother cracked today. She phoned up the local radio station and told them that she was going to abandon her child at the Social Security office unless she was given her giro.
My digital clock radio woke me up to the sound of my own mother’s voice telling the airwaves about our financial difficulties. She was downstairs on the hall phone talking to Mitchell Malone, the halfwit DJ. My mother said she was going to abandon me at the Social Security offices unless the SS Manager contacted her by noon.
Mitchell Malone got dead excited and said, ‘Listeners, we’re in a High Noon situation here. Will Pauline Mole, pregnant single parent, abandon her only child in the Social Security office? Or will Mr Gudgeon, the Social Security office manager who was on this programme last week, present Pauline with her long overdue cheque? Keep tuned for regular updates on Central, your local Radio Station.’
We sat and waited for the phone to ring. At 1230 my mother said, ‘Put your coat on, Adrian, I’m taking you to be abandoned.’
At 1235 as we were going out of the door the phone rang. It was my father pleading for his name not to be mentioned on the air.
The presence of radio reporters and journalists caused a mini-riot in the Social Security office. All the claimants wanted to tell their stories. The tramps got over-excited and started brawling amongst themselves. The staff staged a walk-out and the police were called.
Mitchell Malone was doing an outside broadcast, he played a record called ‘The Lunatics are taking over the Asylum’.
I was only abandoned for forty-five minutes before Mr Gudgeon gave my mother an ‘Emergency Needs Payment’ of £25. He said it would see us through the weekend. He asked my mother to come in and see him on Monday morning, but a police sergeant said, ‘No, Mr Gudgeon, you will go and see Mrs Mole at home.’
Mr Gudgeon sucked his ragged moustache and said, ‘But I’ve got a meeting on Monday morning.’
The sergeant swung his truncheon about and said, ‘Yes, your meeting is with Mrs Mole.’ Then he strolled off and started knocking the tramps about.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 6TH
A picture of my mother and me was on the front of the paper tonight. (My spots hardly showed up at all.) The headline said: ‘a mother’s anguish’. The article underneath said:
Attractive mother-to-be Pauline Vole (58) took the desperate action of abandoning her only child Adrian (5) in the Carey Street Social Security office yesterday.
Mrs Vole claims to have waited three weeks for a giro cheque. She said, ‘I was desperate. Adrian means more to me than life itself, but I was driven to take the drastic step of abandoning him to draw attention to our plight.’
Mr Gudgeon (42) the manager of the Carey Street office, said today: ‘Mrs Vole has been the unfortunate victim of a staff shortage. The member of staff who deals with the computer broke his toe drinking squash.’
THURSDAY OCTOBER 7TH
The following corrections appeared in the local paper tonight:
Mrs Pauline Vole would like to correct an inaccurate statement attributed to her in yesterday’s edition of the paper.
She did not say, ‘Adrian means more to me than life itself.’
In the same article ‘drinking squash’ should have read ‘playing squash’.
We apologize to Mrs Vole and Mr Reginald Gudgeon and thank them for pointing but these unintentional errors.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 8TH
My mother phoned the local paper to demand that they print the following statement:
Mrs Pauline Mole is 38 and not 58, as was reported in Wednesday’s edition.
My mother is fed up with the neighbours talking. Last night Mr O’Leary called out, ‘Sure you’re a fine-looking woman for your age, Mrs Mole.’
SATURDAY OCTOBER 9TH
Moon’s Last Quarter
The Guinness Book of Records rang up today. A posh bloke spoke to my mother and asked if she would mind her name being included in the ‘Oldest Women to Give Birth’ section.
He asked my mother to send her birth certificate. My mother said she hadn’t given birth yet and she was only thirty-eight.
The bloke said, ‘Sorry for troubling you, Mrs Vole,’ and rang off.
Read the paper from cover to cover, but nothing about my mother’s age appeared tonight.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 10TH
Eighteenth after Trinity
My mother spent the day reading the Observer with
her ankles raised above her head.
I took the dog out. We went to the woods to see the half-built executive houses.
We explored a house called the ‘Winchester’. The dog cocked its leg in the master bedroom and started to squat down on the Bar-B-Q patio so I dragged it away.
MONDAY OCTOBER 11TH
Columbus Day (USA).Thanksgiving Day (Canada)
Courtney brought a dead exciting postcard. It said:
Dear Adrian Mole,
Your work interests me enormously. If you would like to see it published please write to me and I will furnish you with details.
Sincerely yours,
L. S. Caton
It was sent from an address in Bolton. I wonder how L. S. Caton heard about me? Perhaps Mr Tydeman mentioned me over the dinner table at a BBC banquet.
I sent Mr Caton a short but dignified reply asking for further details.
Gudgeon turned up and gave my mother the rest of her money. On his way out he asked who the men’s size ten shoes under the sofa belonged to. My mother told him that they belonged to her son Adrian. She said, ‘I’m not likely to start co-habiting in my condition, am I?’ Mr Gudgeon blushed and tripped over the dog in his haste to get out.
We had a brillo dinner tonight; chicken curry and my mother put a strand of saffron in the rice. We ate it off our knees (to be strictly accurate my mother ate it off her lump) in front of the television while we watched an old Tudor wreck called the Mary Rose get dragged up from the sea bottom.
My mother said, ‘From what I can see of it the sea bottom is the best place for it.’ I was disappointed not to see any skeletons but the commentator told us that it was an historic occasion, so I tried to feel a bit overawed.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 12TH
A first-year called Anne Louise Wirgfield asked me for my autograph today. She said, ‘I saw your picture in the paper and told my mummy that you go to our school, but mummy said you didn’t because the paper said you’re only five. So I want your autograph to prove that I know you.’