by Sue Townsend
I gave the kid my autograph; I will have to get used to being pestered one day, I suppose.
Practised my signature all through Maths. Came home; watched the Falklands Task Force marching through London. Looked for Clive Kent, but didn’t see him.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 13TH
My mother has received a clothing voucher for school trousers from the Social Security. It is made out for £10.
To get the trousers though I have to take the voucher to one of three special shops approved by Social Security. All the shops named- Henry Blogetts and Sons, School Outfitters, Swingin’ Sixty’s and Mick ‘n’ Dave’s - are notorious for selling crap clothes at big prices.
I will not demean myself by taking the voucher in. I have put it in my wallet. When I am rich and famous I will look at it and perhaps show it to my friends to prove that I once knew the sour taste of poverty.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 14TH
Went to see how Brett is getting on today. He seemed to know I was his brother because when I looked into his cot he gave me a daft gummy smile and held on to my finger dead tight.
His skin has cleared up now so perhaps there is hope for the kid.
Grandma is looking dead haggard, but not as haggard as Stick Insect. The two women are getting on each other’s nerves. Grandma doesn’t approve of Stick Insect using plain flour for Yorkshire puddings and Stick Insect doesn’t like the way Grandma wraps Maxwell’s chest up in Vick and brown paper at night. She says the rustling prevents her from sleeping.
When I got home my mother cross-questioned me about Stick Insect and Grandma. She wanted me to recall every expression of face and nuance of voice during my visit.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 15TH
I have put my name down for the school play. We are doing The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.
I am having my audition next Monday. I hope to get to play Ernest, although my mother says the handbag is the best part. She thinks she’s such a wit.
MONDAY OCTOBER 18TH
The weekend was far, far, far too boring to write about. Mr Golightly, the Drama teacher, stopped me halfway through my Henry Vspeech. He said, ‘Look, Adrian, The Importance of Being Earnest is a brittle comedy of manners, not a macho war epic. I want to know if you can time a comic line.’ He gave me a speech about Victoria Station to read, listened, then said: ‘Yes, you’ll do.’
I have decided to be an actor when I grow up. I will write my novels during breaks in rehearsal.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 19TH
Mrs Singh accompanied my mother to the ante-natal clinic today. The gynaecologist has told my mother she must rest more or she will be forced into hospital and made to stay in bed. Her swollen ankles are caused by high blood pressure. She is dead old to be having a baby so the doctors are giving her more attention in case she dies and they get into trouble.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 20TH
When I said ‘Hello’ to Pandora in Geography my voice wobbled out of control. I kept quiet for the rest of the lesson.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 21ST
My mother asked why I was so quiet. She said, ‘You’ve hardly said a word since Blue Peter. Is anything wrong?’ I shrilled, ‘No,’ and left the room.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 22ND
My voice can’t be trusted. One minute it’s booming and loud like Ian Paisley, the next it’s shrill and shrieking like Margaret Thatcher’s used to be before she had voice lessons from an advertising agency.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 23RD
Bert Baxter rang up to tell me that my father has got the sack from Manpower Services. I kept silent. Bert said, ‘Ain’t you got nought to say?’
I wobbled ‘No’ and put the phone down. I will have to go to the doctor’s about my voice. It can’t be normal to suffer like this.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 24RD
Twentieth after Trinity
British Summer Time ends
The dog went beserk and ripped the Sunday papers up today. It had no explanation for its bizarre behaviour.
The hall was covered with pieces of newsprint saying ‘Ken Livingstone today defended’… ‘Falklands’ upkeep rockets to £700 million’… ‘Israeli soldiers watched help-less as’… ‘trouser zips enquiry’… ‘Firemen will accept 7 but mood is explosive’…
I swept the pieces up and put them in the dustbin and put the lid on the outside world.
MONDAY OCTOBER 25TH
Holiday (Republic of Ireland)
Moon’s First Quarter
After a silent day at school I took my unstable voice to Dr Gray’s surgery. Dr Gray didn’t look up from his horrible scribbling, he just said, ‘Yes?’ I wobbled and shrilled and boomed all my fears about having a defective voice box.
Dr Gray said, ‘For Christ’s sake, it’s only your voice breaking, youth! It’s come a bit late but then you’re physically immature generally. You should take up a physical sport and get more fresh air.’
I asked how long the uncertainty would last.
He said, ‘Who knows? I’m not a bloody prophet, am I?’
I could hardly believe my ears. The first thing I do after leaving school will be to take out a subscription to BUPA.
I have resigned from The Importance of Being Earnest. To act you need a reliable voice and I haven’t got one.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 26TH
Barry Kent has committed educational suicide by wearing his Hell’s Angels clothes to school. Mr Lambert pretended not to notice (Barry Kent is four inches taller than him) but Mr Scruton spotted Kent in school dinners and ordered him to take them off, saying that the studs could cause ‘somebody to lose an eye’.
Kent went into the fourth-years’ cloakroom and took his jacket off. He was wearing a studded death’s head shirt underneath so Scruton made him remove that as well, only to reveal a leather-studded vest.
I don’t know how Kent manages to carry around so much weight. Mr Scruton has sent Kent home with a note.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 27TH
Some of the more impressionable fourth-years came to school with studs on the back of their blazers.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 28TH
Mr Scruton has added another school rule to the million others. Studs are not allowed to be worn anywhere in school except on the soles of sports boots.
After school Pandora and some of her gang rushed out to buy studs to put on the hem of their underskirts.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 29TH
My mother has the baby in two weeks’ time! The hospital did a test on her today. She is getting into a panic because the spare room is still a spare room and not a nursery. We are still dead short of money. The maternity grant only bought half a second-hand pram!
SATURDAY OCTOBER 30TH
The dog went berserk again and ripped up my priceless collection of old Beanos. I have been collecting them since I was seven so I was heartbroken to see them defiled.
I felt like booting the dog around my bedroom but I let it off lightly by chucking it down the stairs.
It’s always respected literature in the past. It will have to go to the vet’s, just in case it’s got a brain malfunction.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 31ST
Twenty-First after Trinity. Hallowe’en
Daylight Saving Time ends (USA and Canada)
At five o’clock I was asked by my so-called best friend Nigel to go to his Hallowe’en party.
He said, ‘Forgot to send you an invite, zit face, but come anyway, dress as a warlock or you won’t get in.’
I decided not to go as a warlock; I wanted to break away from stereotypes, so I went as a fiend. My mother helped me to assemble a costume. We used my father’s old flippers, one of my mother’s long-legged black leotards and an orange fright wig she bought years ago when she went to my father’s fishing club dinner and dance.
I looked a bit indecent in the leotard so I put my swimming trunks over the top, but when I got the whole lot on I didn’t look a bit fiendish, I just looked dead stupid. My mother had the idea of putting a nylon stocking over my fiendishly
made-up face. It looked a bit better but my costume still lacked a certain something.
At seven o’clock I had a crisis of confidence and almost took everything off, but my mother fetched a can of green neon spray paint that we used to perk up last year’s Christmas tree. She sprayed me from head to toe with it. The dog whimpered and ran under the draining board. So I knew I must have achieved the right effect.
The short walk to Nigel’s house was an ordeal. A gang of little kids in pointed hats ran up to me screaming: ‘Trick or Treat.’ I kept telling them to bugger off but they followed me to Nigel’s, trying to tread on my flippers. Nigel wouldn’t let me in at first because I wasn’t in warlock costume. (He’s so literal! He’ll end up working with computers if he’s not careful.) But I explained that I was a fiend and he relented. Nigel’s mother and father were upstairs watching telly, so we raided their drinks cupboard and drank Tia Maria and Egg Flip Cocktails.
There were no girls at the party, which was a bit strange. Nigel said that girls make him sick. The warlocks and me danced in the pumpkin light to Duran Duran records. It was OK, I suppose, but without girls it lacked a certain je ne sals quoi (French for something or other). At ten o’clock Nigel’s mother ran in with a running buffet. The food was all gone in ten minutes. Most of it was eaten, but a lot got thrown about. Without the civilizing influence of girls, boys return to the wild.
The school are making me read Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I am sharing a book with three dumbos who take half an hour to read one page, so it is turning out to be a frustrating experience.
MONDAY NOVEMBER 1ST
Full Moon
After school I went to the hairdresser’s with my massive mother. She didn’t want me to go but she can’t be allowed out of doors on her own, can she? Women are always having babies in phone boxes, buses, lifts etc. It is a well-known fact.
Franco’s is run by an Italian bloke. He shouted at my mother as soon as she got through the bamboo door. He said, ‘Hey, Pauline, why you no come to see Franco once a week like before, hen?’
My mother explained that she couldn’t afford to have her hair done regularly now.
Franco said, ‘What foolish thing you say! Hair first, food second. You want your bambino to open his eyes and see an ugly mama?’
I was astonished to hear the way he bossed my mother about, but for once she didn’t seem to mind. He wrapped a sheet around her neck and said, ‘Sit down, shut up, and keep still,’ then he tipped her backwards and shampooed her hair. He told her off for having a few grey hairs and moaned about split ends and the condition. Then he dried her hair in a towel and made her sit in front of a mirror.
My mother said, ‘I’ll just have a trim please, Franco.’
But Franco said, ‘No way, Pauline. I cut it all off and we start again.’ And my mother sat there and let him do it!.
She also let him spray her bristle-cut hair purple and she paid him for doing it. And gave him a tip!
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 2ND
There is a new channel on television. It is called Channel Four and it is for minorities, like intellectuals and people that belong to jigsaw clubs.
At last I have found my spiritual viewing home.
I predict that Channel Four will transform British society. All the morons in the country will start watching it, and get a taste for education and culture! Yes, Britain is in for a new renaissance!
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 3RD
My mother has packed her little weekend case and put it in the hall.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 4TH
My father rang today and asked me how my mother was. I said she was as well as could be expected, for an eight-and-a-half-months pregnant woman.
He asked if the baby’s head was engaged yet. I answered coldly that I wasn’t conversant with the technicalities of childbirth.
I asked him how his own baby was, he said, ‘That’s right, Adrian, turn the knife.’ Then he put the phone down.
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 5TH
Bonfire Night!
Locked the dog in the coal shed, as advised by the media. Then went to the Marriage Guidance Council bonfire party.
It was crowded with couples bickering over the fireworks, so Pandora and I slipped away and shared a packet of sparklers behind the wall of the Co-op bakery. I wrote ‘pandora’ in the air with my sparkler. Pandora wrote ‘adrain’. I was very upset: we’ve been going out for over a year. She ought to know how to spell my name by now.
Went back to the community bonfire and found our dog watching the firework display and chewing a hot-dog.
I lost count of the times nosy adults said, ‘That dog should be locked up out of harm’s way.’
I tried to explain that our dog is an individualist and can’t be treated like other dogs, but what with the exploding of fireworks and the crowds going, ‘Oooh!’ and, ‘Aaaahl’ every time a pathetic rocket was launched, it was a bit difficult.
In the end I took the stupid dog home, thus missing the ‘Best Dressed Guy’ competition.
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 6TH
Wrote a political poem. I am going to send it to the New Statesman. Mr Braithwaite told me that they print a seditious poem every week.
Mrs Thatcher by A. Mole
Do you weep, Mrs Thatcher, do you weep?
Do you wake, Mrs Thatcher, in your sleep?
Do you weep like a sad willow?
On your Marks and Spencer’s pillow?
Are your tears molten steel?
Do you weep?
Do you wake with ‘Three million’ on your brain? Are you sorry that they’ll never work again? When you’re dressing in your blue, do you see the
waiting queue? Do you weep, Mrs Thatcher, do you weep?
I think my poem is extremely brilliant. It is the sort of poem that could bring the government to its knees.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 7TH
Went to see Bert and Queenie with my mother.
Everyone we met on the way asked my mother when the baby was due, or made comments like, ‘I expect you’ll be glad when the baby’s here, won’t you?’
My mother was very ungracious in her replies.
Bert opened the door, he said, ‘Ain’t you dropped that sprog yet?’
My mother said, ‘Shut your mouth, you clapped-out geriatric.’
Honestly, sometimes I long for the bygone days, when people spoke politely to each other. You would never guess that my mother and Bert are fond of each other.
Everyone was too old, or too ill, or too pregnant to do any cooking (I developed a sudden ache in both wrists). So we ate bread and cheese for our Sunday dinner. Then, in the afternoon we took it in turns to teach Queenie to speak again.
I got her to say, ‘Ajar of beetroot please’, dead clearly. I might be a speech therapist when I grow up. I have got a definite flair for it. We got a taxi back home because my mother’s ankles got a bit swollen. The taxi driver moaned because the distance was only half a mile.
MONDAY NOVEMBER 8TH
I was woken up at 3 a.m. by the sound of my mother crying.
She wouldn’t say what was wrong, so after patting her on the shoulder I went back to bed.
I wish she’d let my dad come back. After all he has said he’s sorry.
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 9TH
Couldn’t concentrate at school for worrying about my mother. Mr Lambert told me off for staring out of the window when I should have been writing about the future of the British Steel Industry.
He said, ‘Adrian, you’ve only got three minutes to finish your essay.’ So I wrote: ‘In my opinion there is no future for the British Steel Industry, while the present government is in power.’ I know I’ll get into trouble, but I gave it in anyway.
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 10TH
My mother has gone mad cleaning the house from top to bottom. She has taken all the curtains and nets down. Now anybody passing by in the street can look in and see our most intimate moments.
I was examining my spots in the living-room mirror t
onight, when Mr O’Leary shouted from the street: There’s a fine pimple on the back of your neck, don’t miss that one out, boy.’
It’s taken me fifteen years to appreciate the part that curtains have played in civilized English life.
Mr Brezhnev, the Russian Prime Minister, died today. World leaders have been sending lying telegrams to the Kremlin saying how sorry they are.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 11TH
Armistice Day
When I got home from school my mother’s little suitcase was missing from the hall. She was nowhere in the house, but I found a note on the biscuit tin. It said:
Waters broke at 3.35.1 am in the labour ward of the Royal Infirmary. Call a taxi. £5 note at bottom of spaghetti jar. Don’t worry.
Love, Mum
P.S. Dog at Mrs Singh’s.
Her writing looked dead untidy.
The taxi ride was a nightmare. I was struggling to get my hand free of the spaghetti jar all the way. The taxi driver kept saying, ‘You should have tipped the jar upside down, you stupid bleeder.’
He parked outside the entrance to the hospital, and watched the jar versus my hand struggle in a bored sort of way. He said, ‘I’ll have to charge you waiting time.’ A hundred years passed: then he said, ‘And I can’t change a five-pound note either.’
I was almost in tears by the time I managed to pull my hand free. I had a mental image of my mother calling for me. So I gave the taxi driver the fiver, and ran into the hospital. Found the lift and pressed the button which said ‘Labour Ward’.
I emerged into another world. It looked like the space control centre at Houston.
A technician asked, ‘Who are you?’
I said, ‘I’m Adrian Mole.’
‘And you’ve got permission to visit the labour ward?’
‘Yes,’ I said. (Why did I say yes? Why?)
‘Room 13. She’s being a bit stubborn.’
‘Yes, she’s a stubborn kind of person,’ I said, and walked down the corridor. Doors opened and shut and I caught glimpses of women hooked up to gruesome-looking equipment. Moans and groans bounced around the shiny floors. I pushed the door of Room 13 open and saw my mother lying on a high bed reading Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon.