The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole

by Sue Townsend

  Rosie woke up and started crying. I got the blame for that, and what with all the rowing and screaming I missed the very beginning. This is just my luck!

  I enjoyed the Horoscopes, the News, the Celebrities and Frank Bough. He looks a steady sort of bloke. I wouldn’t mind having a father like him. But best of all was Selina Scott, with her ravishing looks and quicksilver brain.

  Courtney Elliot joined me in front of the screen at 7.45 a.m. He pronounced it ‘lacking in intellectual fibre’ and said he would stick to listening to Radio Four on his headset. I was late for school because Frank wasn’t allowed to open the champagne until nearly nine o’clock!

  I have written to the Director General to complain.

  Dear Sir,

  I wish to convey to you my congratulations on your new programme Breakfast Time. I saw the first episode and I thought it was a remarkable achievement considering. However, me and my fellow pupils were late for school, due to the late opening of the champagne.

  Either this shows a flagrant disregard for your teenage audience, or a woeful ignorance on your part, of the time I and my cohorts have to arrive at school in the morning.

  I suggest, Sir, that you do your research rather more thoroughly. Finally can I make a plea that in future episodes, any special items ie Ernest Hemingway chatting about his latest book, or Princess Diana having her horoscope read, will take place before 8.30 a.m. (except on Fridays when we don’t have assembly).

  Thanking you in anticipation of a reply,

  Your most obedient servant,

  A. Mole (aged 15 and 9 months)

  TUESDAY JANUARY 18TH

  Lord Franks has published his report on the Falklands War, but I will make no further comment until I have studied today’s Guardian editorial on the matter.

  10.30p.m. Can’t find Guardian: it’s not in its usual place in the dog’s basket.

  WEDNESDAY JANUARY 19TH

  Found Guardian in dustbin wrapped round yesterday’s supply of disposable nappies. I made strong objections to my mother. Her feeble excuse was that she’d run out of plastic pedal bin liners.

  THURSDAY JANUARY 20TH

  Selina Scott is haunting my dreams: last night she was walking down our street selling cucumbers door to door. I bought half a dozen with a £50 note I had in my wallet. She smiled shyly and said, ‘Prithee, how old are you, sire?’ I answered, ‘I be fifteen years, pretty maid.’ Then the dog jumped on my face and woke me up.

  I tried to tell my mother about my dream, but she refused to listen. She said, ‘There is only one thing more deadly boring than listening to other people’s dreams, and that is listening to other people’s problems.’

  FRIDAY JANUARY 21ST

  Last night Selina Scott and I were rowing the Atlantic single-handed. Selina fell overboard and was swallowed by a dolphin. I swam into the dolphin’s belly, and joined Selina: it was quite cosy. We had a glass of champagne then swam out and got back into the boat where we found Frank Bough teaching Pandora how to read out football results.

  I told my father every detail of my dream (what Selina was wearing, etc.) but I could tell he wasn’t really interested. Now I know why people pay to go to psychiatrists. (They are the only people who will listen.)

  SATURDAY JANUARY 22ND

  No Selina this morning, so I had to make do with going into town with Pandora, who wanted to buy a pair of neon pink legwarmers. After trekking round fifty shops while Pandora sneered at inferior pinks and rejected them all, I suggested we went for a cup of coffee. While I scraped the froth off, I confessed to Pandora how I felt about Selina. Pandora took it very calmly. She said, ‘Yes, Selina Scott is to be congratulated, not many women could have borne the pain of so much plastic surgery!’

  According to Pandora, Selina has had her nose, mouth, breasts, ears and eyes remodelled by the surgeon’s knife. Poor Selina has to spend three hours in the make-up chair in order to disguise the operation scars. Pandora went on to say, ‘Of course she booked into the clinic under her real name, which is Edna Grubbe!’

  I asked Pandora how she got her insight into the lives of the famous. Pandora stubbed her cigarette out and said, ‘My family used to be on intimate terms with a high-up in the BBC’

  I asked who, a window-cleaner? But I said it quietly because Pandora had got into one of her moods. We resumed our search but none of the legwarmer shops had neon pink so Pandora is getting an ‘Awayday’ and going to London to buy some. She said, ‘God how I hate the wretched provinces.’

  SUNDAY JANUARY 23RD

  Rat fink Lucas rang up today. I told him that my mother was at the pub with my father. He asked me which pub, so I told him but instead of ringing off he asked me loads of questions about Rosie, and even asked me to bring her to the phone so that he could hear her gurgling. I told him that she was a late developer and was still at the screaming stage. Then Lucas said a weird thing: he said, ’That’s my girl!’

  My mother came home in a bad mood and my father came home in an even worse mood. It seems that my mother had left the pub’s darts match at a crucial point in order to answer a telephone call.

  MONDAY JANUARY 24TH

  The water workers have gone on strike, so my father made us all have a bath tonight. The dog included. Then he went around collecting containers and filling them up. While he was doing it he was whistling and looking cheerful. My father loves a crisis.

  TUESDAY JANUARY 25TH

  Fabulous! Amazing! Brilliant! Magic!

  Showers have been banned at school!

  The twice-weekly torture of displaying my inferior muscle development is over. I hope the water workers prolong the strike until I’ve left full-time education. They should stick out for £500 a week, in fact.

  WEDNESDAY JANUARY 26TH

  Courtney Elliot has offered to give me private tuition for my O levels. It seems he is a Doctor of Philosophy who left academic life after a quarrel in a university common room about the allocation of new chairs. Apparently he was promised a chair and didn’t get it.

  It seems a trivial thing to leave a good job for. After all, one chair is very much like another. But then I am an existentialist to whom nothing really matters.

  I don’t care which chair I sit in.

  I am reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

  THURSDAY JANUARY 27TH

  Ken Livingstone was on the telly tonight, talking about his triumph in getting the High Court to cut bus fares in London. This led to me asking my parents for the bus fare to get to school. I am tired out by the time I have walked a whole mile in the morning. My father said that he used to walk four miles to school and four miles back, through wind, rain, snow, hail, and broiling sun and fog.

  I said sarcastically (though wittily), ‘What strange climatic conditions prevailed in the Midlands in the riineteenfifties!’

  My father said, ‘Weather was weather in those days. You wouldn’t know proper weather if it came up and smashed you in the face.’

  FRIDAY JANUARY 28TH

  I reminded my father that the law about seat belts comes into force on Monday. He said, ‘Nobody makes George Mole wear a baby harness.’

  My mother said, ‘A policeman will, so belt up!’

  SATURDAY JANUARY 29TH

  Bert Baxter rang to ask why I hadn’t been round. I said I’d been too busy.

  Bert said, ‘Yes, too busy to visit an old lonely widower.’

  I promised to go round tomorrow after dinner. Bert said, ‘Dinner? What’s that?’

  I said, ‘You remember, Bert, it’s meat and three veg and gravy and stuff.’

  Bert said that it was so long since he’d eaten properly that his vocabulary was suffering.

  I asked him round for dinner tomorrow and told him that my father would give him a lift. But when I told my parents they went mad, and said that they’d arranged to visit some properties tomorrow and were planning to get a Chinese take-away.

  Properties! Why didn’t they consult me? After all, it is my O level year and it i
s most important that I suffer no violent change, trauma or neurosis.

  SUNDAY JANUARY 30TH

  Spent Sunday afternoon reading the News of the World out loud to Bert. I was amazed at how many vicars are leaving their flocks and running away with attractive divorcees.

  I also read him a few bits from the Sunday Times colour supplement, but Bert stopped me, saying, ‘Do you think I’m interested in bleedin’ Italian furniture, or “A day in the life„ of a soddin’ piano player?’

  I said, ‘I think you ought to keep up with modern cultural patterns!’

  Bert said that whenever he heard the word ‘culture’ he reached for his bottle opener.

  At 7 p.m. Bert’s Age Concern volunteer turned up to take Bert to the pub. He is a thin, nervous-looking man called Wesley. Sabre growled and bared his horrible fangs when he came into the room. Bert said, ‘Don’t make any sudden moves, Wesley, Sabre’s bite is worse than his bark.’

  I couldn’t resist showing off by throwing Sabre about and tickling his belly. I even did my party trick of putting my head in Sabre’s mouth. I didn’t leave it in long though; Sabre’s breath stank of cheap dog meat.

  After Wesley and Bert left I tidied up a bit. I found Bert and Queenie’s wedding photo under Bert’s pillow. Funny to think that old, smelly, unattractive people can be sentimental.

  MONDAY JANUARY 31ST

  On the way to school me and Nigel had a dead good time signalling to car drivers who had forgotten to put their seat belts on. Hardly any of them thanked us.

  TUESDAY FEBRUARY 1ST

  The first cracks in the new marital alliance appeared today: an argument about money.

  We are kept by the state in the style that the state wants to keep us, ie in poverty. My parents just can’t cope with being poor. It’s all right for me because I’m used to it. I’ve never had more than three quid a week to call my own.

  WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 2ND

  Lucas turned up on our doorstep halfway through Coronation Street demanding to see Rosie. My father said that Rosie was busy and couldn’t be disturbed, but Lucas started shouting in his loud sing-song voice, so my father let him in to stop the neighbours talking.

  My mother went dead pale under her Max Factor. Lucas said, ‘Pauline, I want access to my child!’

  My father’s knees buckled a bit and he sat down on the arm of the settee to recover. He said weakly, ‘Pauline, tell me that Rosie is mine!’

  My mother said, ‘Of course she’s yours, George!’

  Lucas took out a black 1982 diary and said, ‘Pauline and I resumed our affair of the heart on February 16th 1982 However, we did not consummate our new relationship until Sunday March 14th 1982, when Pauline came to a protest rally in Sheffield.’

  My mother shouted, ‘But I was wearing my new cap, I couldn’t have got pregnant.’

  My father said, ‘Adulteress!’

  ‘I’m not an adulteress,’ my mother sobbed.

  My father yelled, ‘If the cap fits, wear it!’

  ‘But I did wear it,’ said my mother in anguish.

  Lucas tried to put his arms around her but she karate-chopped him on the back of the neck.

  Everybody had forgotten I was there until I ran from the room, saying, ‘I can’t stand this eternal insecurity!’

  As I ran to my room I passed Rosie in her cot. She was playing with her toes, unaware that her paternity was being settled downstairs.

  THURSDAY FEBRUARY 3RD

  During the month of March 1982 it would seem that both my parents were carrying on clandestine relationships, which resulted in the birth of two children. Yet my diary for that period records my childish fourteen-year-old thoughts and preoccupations.

  I wonder, did Jack the Ripper’s wife innocently write:

  10.30 p.m. Jack late home. Perhaps he is kept late at the

  office.

  1210 a.m. Jack home covered in blood; an offal cart

  knocked him down.

  Pandora is standing by me at this time of crisis. She is a true pillar of salt.

  FRIDAY FEBRUARY 4TH

  I had to spend the day in matron’s office due to feeling weak in the first lesson (PE).

  She asked me if there was anything wrong at home. I started to cry and said that everything was.

  She said, ‘Adults have complicated lives, Adrian. It’s not all staying up late and having your own door key!’

  I said that parents ought to be moral and consistent and have principles.

  She said, ‘It’s a lot to ask.’

  I made her promise not to tell anyone that she’d seen me crying. She promised and kindly let me stay until my eyes had got back to normal.

  SATURDAY FEBRUARY 5TH

  Lucas continues to persecute us.

  A solicitor’s letter arrived today. He is taking us to court unless he is allowed access to Rosie.

  Courtney Elliot suggested we find a good solicitor and get him to write a letter back saying that, unless Lucas stops his campaign, we will get an injunction out.

  I don’t know what it means, but it sounds dead threatening.

  SUNDAY FEBRUARY 6TH

  I broke the silence of months and went to make my peace with Grandma. She was a bit frosty at first, but then she offered to make me some treacle toffee, so I knew I was forgiven.

  She has bought a budgie called Russell. (Named after Russell Harty, her favourite person in the world after me.) She said, This little bird has given me more pleasure than my whole family put together, and what’s more he listens and doesn’t answer back.’

  I didn’t tell her about the Lucas affair. A further shock could kill her. She said that after the Stick Insect/Trevor Roper scandal, her hair fell out and has not grown back.

  This explains why she was wearing her hat in the house.

  MONDAY FEBRUARY 7TH

  Michael Heseltine has chickened out of a public debate on cruise missiles with CND. I expect he is scared of being shown up.

  A similar thing is happening in our house; my father is refusing to talk to Pandora’s mother, who is a marriage guidance counsellor.

  Rosie is teething. She is getting through six bibs a day. Dribble hangs permanently from her mouth. She looks like a rabid dog.

  TUESDAY FEBRUARY 8TH

  Don’t ask me how I am getting through the long school day. Just don’t ask. I am walking around like a smiling robot. But my soul is weeping, weeping, weeping. If only the teachers knew that an unkind word from them brings tears to my eyes.

  I am getting away with it by saying I’ve got conjunctivitis but it’s a near thing sometimes.

  The trial period is up today.

  1 a.m. The two parties have agreed on an extension.

  WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 9TH

  The racehorse Shergar has been kidnapped by the IRA. Pandora seems more concerned about the horse’s troubles than mine. I said, ‘Haven’t you got things out of perspective, Pandora?’

  She said, ‘No, Shergar is highly bred and extremely sensitive. He must be suffering terribly.’

  I don’t know who to turn to for help. I might run away to London.

  THURSDAY FEBRUARY 10TH

  I’ve changed my mind about going to London.

  According to the Guardian lead pollution is sending the cockneys who live there mad.

  FRIDAY FEBRUARY 11TH

  We have got a solicitor called Cyril Hill. He has written a stern letter to rat fink Lucas, warning him to lay off our family.

  The letter cost us £20.

  SATURDAY FEBRUARY 12TH

  The atmosphere at home is as thick as treacle, so I went to see Bert. I could hardly get in the door for Voluntary Social Workers, queuing up to be given their orders. None of them wanted to attend to Sabre’s needs, however, so I mucked his kennel out and brushed his coat and then took him for his daily prowl round the recreation ground.

  Barry Kent and his gang were there - tying the swings in knots - but with Sabre by my side I felt confident enough to have a go on the slide.


  On the way back I passed several Alsatians and their male owners; perhaps it was a coincidence but every owner was practically a midget. Their Alsatians came up to their waists. I don’t know what it means. But it must mean something.

  SUNDAY FEBRUARY 13TH

  It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow. I think I’ll have the day off school. I can’t stand being the only kid in my class who doesn’t come into the classroom with a fistful of garish cards, and a self-congratulatory smile. I know I’ll get one from Pandora, but she doesn’t count; I’ve been going out with her for over a year.

  MONDAY FEBRUARY 14TH

  St Valentine’s Day

  Got four cards: one from Pandora, one from Grandma, one from my mother and one from Rosie.

  Big, big deal!

  I got Pandora a Cupid card and a mini pack of ‘After Eights’. Lucas sent one to Rosie. My parents didn’t bother this year, they are saving their money to pay for the solicitor’s letter.

  TUESDAY FEBRUARY 15TH

  Shrove Tuesday

  Pandora is not speaking to me because I absent-mindedly wrote ‘Best Wishes’ in her Valentine’s card.

  She said, ‘It’s symptomatic of our decaying relationship, Adrian.’

  I think she could be right. I’m going off her. She is too clever by half. My mother was too busy with Rosie to make pancakes, so I had a go. I don’t know why my father went so mad, the kitchen ceiling needed decorating anyway.

  WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 16TH

  Ash Wednesday

  Today is my parents’ special day.

  They are getting through thirty fags a day each. If Social Security hear about it they will get done and quite rightly!

  THURSDAY FEBRUARY 17TH