The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole

by Sue Townsend

  Later on I retrieved the bits and stuck them together.

  .:. ole.

  … structed… client… ucas, civil action unless… Ros… ole… is his daughter. He wishes the aforesaid child to… Rosie Lucas.

  My client… blood test… under oath that… intercourse took… Pauline Mole… to hear from you…

  Yours Faithfully,

  Coveney, Tinker, Shulman, Solicitors.

  SUNDAY MARCH 27TH

  The crumblies spent three hours forcing Rosie to sit up on her own. But she kept sliding down the cushions and laughing. If she could talk I know what she would say: ‘Stop interfering in my development, I’ll do it when I’m ready!’

  I pointed out that her back muscles are not strong enough yet, but the crumblies wouldn’t listen. They said things like, ‘Rosie is exceptionally forward,’ and ‘You were nowhere near as advanced as she is at five months!’

  They will be sorry for these cutting words on Tuesday.

  MONDAY MARCH 28TH

  An old American bloke called Ian MacGregor has been put in charge of the National Coal Board. It is a dis-grace!

  England has got loads of ruthless, out-of-work executives who would be delighted to be given the chance to close their own country’s coalmines down. Mr Scargill is quite right to protest, he has my full support on this issue.

  Packed my pyjamas and dressing gown.

  It is RA day tomorrow. I have made out a list of vital equipment, clothing etc.

  Roller skates Penguin Medical

  Shaving kit Dictionary

  3 jumpers Junior aspirins

  2 shirts First aid box

  3 pairs trousers Sleeping bag

  5 pairs socks Camping stove

  Wellingtons Matches

  Doc Marten’s 6 tins beans

  Plimsolls Spoon

  Orange waterproof Knife

  trousers Fork

  4 pairs underpants Cruet

  4 vests Serviettes

  Diary Transistor radio

  Survival handbook The dog

  Robinson Crusoe

  Down and Out in Paris and

  London

  TUESDAY MARCH 29TH

  6a.m. Packed everything on list apart from the dog.

  6.05 Took everything out.

  6.10 Repacked.

  6.15 Took everything out.

  6.30 Repacked, but no good. Still can’t get suitcase

  lid to shut. Decide not to take roller skates.

  6.33 Ditto Wellingtons.

  6.35Ditto camping stove.

  6.37 Suitcase lid shuts.

  6.39 Try to pick up suitcase. Can’t.

  6.40 Take out tins of beans.

  6.45 Repack.

  6.45 Get in a rage.

  6.48 Take cruet and serviettes out.

  6.55 Take Doc Marten’s out of suitcase. Decide

  to wear them instead. Spend fifteen

  precious minutes in doing the sodding

  laces up.

  7.10 Examine spots in bathroom.

  7.13 Check farewell letters have got stamps on.

  7.14 Pick suitcase up. Not bad. Not good.

  7.15 Repack suitcase with half previous clothes.

  7.19 Pick suitcase up. Better.

  7.20 Remember sleeping bag. Try to pack it in

  suitcase.

  7.27 Get in another rage.

  7.22 Kick suitcase across bedroom floor.

  7.2230 sees Crumblies shout from their bedroom.

  Demanding to know what all the noise is

  about.

  7.24 Make tea. Crumblies ask why I have got a

  tin opener in the breast pocket of my

  blazer. I lie and say that I’ve got Domestic

  Science for my first lesson.

  7.31 Feed dog, make baby’s breakfast slops.

  7.36 Check Building Society account book.

  7.37 Groom dog. Pack its personal possessions in

  suitcase: dog bowl, brush, vaccination

  certificate, worm tablets, lead, choke

  chain, 5 tins Chum, bag of Winalot.

  7.42 Try to pick up suitcase, can’t.

  7.47 Decide to leave dog behind. Break the news

  to it.

  7.49 Dog cries. Crumblies shout at it to be quiet.

  7.50 Decide to take the dog after all.

  8.00 Pack minimum amount of stuff in Adidas bag.

  8.10 Hide Grandad’s suitcase in ward-

  robe.

  8.15 Say goodbye to Rosie.

  8.20 Put dog on lead.

  8.21 Wait until crumblies are distracted.

  8.25 Leave house with dog.

  8.30 Post farewell letters.

  WEDNESDAY MARCH 30TH

  3 p.m. Watford Cap Service Station. M1 Motorway. My first mistake was waiting for a lift on the southern bound side of the motorway approach road.

  My second mistake was bringing the dog.

  7.31 Sheffield.

  Got a lift in a pig delivery lorry. This is just my luck!

  I had a very long conversation with the driver, which is a miracle really, because I couldn’t hear a word he was saying over the noise of the engine. I am having to keep a low profile. Sheffield is rat fink Lucas’s stamping ground.

  Why doesn’t my beard hurry up and grow?

  9.30 p.m. Leeds.

  Tuned into the Radio Four nine o’clock news. But no mention was made of my mysterious disappearance. I am writing this at the side of the canal. A man has just come up and asked me if I want to sell the dog. I was tempted but said no.

  11.00p.m. Rang home but the phone wasn’t snatched up immediately like it is in the films about runaway children.

  Another sign of their indifference.

  THURSDAY MARCH 31ST

  1 a.m. The man who asked about the dog has just approached me and asked me if I want to sell myself. I said, ‘No,’ and told him my father was the Chief Constable of Wales.

  He said, ‘Why are you sleeping rough in Leeds?’

  I told another lie, I said, ‘My father has sent me on an initiative test. If I survive this he’ll put me down for Hendon Police College.’

  Why did I tell him such an elaborate lie? Why? I had to listen while he told me his many grievances against the police. I promised to pass them on to my father and copied his name and address into my diary:

  Stanley Gibbons,

  c/o Room 2,

  The Laurels Community Care Hostel,

  Paradise Cuttings,

  Leeds

  He invited me to spend the night on his put-u-up, but I demurred, saying that my father was checking up on me via a long-distance telescope. He went then.

  spring

  FRIDAY APRIL 1ST

  Good Friday. All Fools’s Day

  10 a.m. Leeds. (A launderette.)

  Thank God for launderettes, if they hadn’t been invented I’d be dead of hydrophobia by now. Nowhere else is open.

  It cost a pound to dry my sleeping bag. But I was so wet and cold that I didn’t care at the time.

  I am waiting for the dog to wake up. It was on guard duty last night protecting our respective bodies from Stanley Gibbons. I am sixteen tomorrow. But still no sign of a beard. Good Friday!

  SATURDAY APRIL 2ND

  Manchester Railway Station.

  Got here by fish lorry. Pretended to be asleep in order to avoid driver’s conversation.

  10.31 a.m. I wonder what my mum and dad have bought me for my birthday. I hope they are not too worried. Perhaps I ought to ring them and convince them that I am well and happy.

  12.15 p.m. We have been ordered out of the railway station café by a bad-tempered waitress. It’s the stupid dog’s fault. It kept going behind the counter and begging for bits of bacon.

  Yet I bought it a bacon roll all to itself this morning.

  3 p.m. Nobody has said ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.

  3.05p.m. I’m not well (I’ve got a cold) and I’m not happy. In fact I’m extremely unhappy.

/>   5.30p.m. Bought myself a birthday card. Inside I wrote:

  To our darling first-born child on his sixteenth birthday.

  With all the love it is possible to give,

  From your admiring and loving parents.

  P.S. Come home son. Without you the house is devoid of life and laughter.

  6.15p.m. There was nothing about me on the six o’clock news.

  7.30p.m. Can’t face another night in the open.

  9 p.m. Park bench. I have asked three policemen the time, but none of them have spotted me as a runaway. It’s obvious that my description hasn’t been circulated.

  9.30 p.m. Just rang the police station, using a disguised voice. I said, ‘Adrian Mole, a sixteen-year-old runaway, is in the vicinity of the Blood Transfusion Headquarters. His description is as follows: small for his age, slight build, mousey hair, disfigured skin. He is wearing a green school blazer. Orange waterproof trousers. A blue shirt. Balaclava helmet. Brown Doc Martens. With him is a mongrel dog, of the following description: medium height, hairy face, squint in left eye. Wearing a tartan collar and matching lead.’

  The desk sergeant said, ‘April Fool’s Day was yesterday, sonny.’

  10.00 p.m. Waited outside the Blood Transfusion place but there wasn’t a policeman in sight. There is never one around when you need one.

  11.39 p.m. I have walked past the police station twenty-four times, but none of the cretins in blue have given me a second glance.

  11.45 p.m. I have just been turned away from an Indian Restaurant on the grounds that I wasn’t wearing a tie, and was accompanied by a scruffy dog.

  SUNDAY APRIL 3RD

  Easter Sunday

  Still in Manchester. (St Ignatius’s church porch.)

  1 a.m. It is traditional for the homeless to sleep in church porches so why don’t vicars make sure that their porches are more comfortable? It wouldn’t kill them to provide a mattress, would it?

  7.30 a.m. Got up at six. Had a wash in a bird bath. Read the inscriptions on the gravestones. Then went in search of a shop. Found one; bought two Cadbury’s creme eggs. Ate one myself, gave the other to the dog. The poor thing was so hungry it ate the silver paper as well. I hope it won’t be ill; I can’t afford to pay for veterinary attention. I’ve only got £15.00 left.

  MONDAY APRIL 4TH

  St Ignatius’s church porch, Manchester.

  6 a.m. For two days I have had the legal right to buy cigarettes, have sex, ride a moped and live away from home. Yet, strangely, I don’t want to do any of them now I’m able to.

  Must stop. A woman with a kind face is coming through the gravestones.

  9 a.m. I am in the vicar’s wife’s bed. She is a true Christian. She doesn’t mind that I am an existentialist nihilist. She says I’ll grow out of it. The dog is downstairs lying on top of the Aga.

  10 a.m. Mrs Merryfield, the vicar’s wife, has phoned my parents and asked them to come and fetch me. I asked Mrs Merryfield for my parents’ reactions. She crumpled her kind face up in thought then said, ‘Angry relief is the nearest I can get to it, dear!’

  I haven’t seen the vicar yet. He is having a lie-in because of being so busy yesterday. I hope he doesn’t mind that a stranger is occupying his wife’s bed.

  1230 p.m. The vicar has just gone. Thank God! What a bore! No wonder poor Mrs Merryfield sleeps apart from him. I expect that she is scared he’ll talk about comparative religions in his sleep. I have just spent a week living rough. The last thing I want is a lecture on ‘Monophysitism’.

  230p.m. The Reverend Merryfield brought my dinner in at 1.30, then gabbled on about ‘Lamaism’, the Tibetan religion, while my dinner got cold, and eventually congealed.

  6p.m. I notice my parents are not breaking their necks to get here. I wish they would hurry up. I’ve had ‘Mithraism’, ‘Orphism’ and ‘Pentecostalism’ up to here.

  I’m all for a man having outside interests, but this is ridiculous.

  TUESDAY APRIL 5TH

  Bedroom. Home.

  Well, there were no banners in the street, or crowds of people jostling to get a view as I got out of my father’s car. Just my mother’s haggard face at the lounge window, and Grandma’s even haggarder one behind her.

  My father doesn’t talk when he’s driving on motor-ways, so we had hardly said a word to each other, since leaving St Ignatius’s vicarage. (And Reverend Merryfield saw to it that we didn’t talk at the vicarage, what with his rabbiting on about Calvinism and Shakers. Mrs Merryfield tried to stop him: she said, ‘Please be quiet, darling,’ but it just set him off on Quietism.)

  But my mother and Grandma said a great many things. Eventually I pleaded for mercy and went to bed and pulled the crispy white sheets over my head.

  WEDNESDAY APRIL 6TH

  Dr Gray has just left my bedside. He has diagnosed that I am suffering from a depressive illness brought on by worry. The treatment is bedrest, and no quarrelling in the family.

  My parents are bowed down by guilt.

  I can’t rest for worrying about the letter I wrote to ‘Pop-Eye’ Scruton.

  THURSDAY APRIL 7TH

  The dog is at the vet’s, having the blisters on its paws treated. I got up for five minutes and looked out of my bedroom window today. But there was nothing in the urban landscape to interest me, so I got back into bed.

  I haven’t opened my birthday presents yet.

  FRIDAY APRIL 8TH

  Ate a Mars bar.

  I can feel my physical strength returning, but my mental strength is still at rock bottom.

  SATURDAY APRIL 9TH

  10 a.m. I suffered a relapse so Dr Gray called round.

  I lay back listlessly on the pillows and let him feel my pulse etc.

  He muttered, ‘Bloody Camille,’ as he left the room.

  Perhaps Camilie is a drug that he’s thinking of using on me.

  12 noon. I asked my mother to draw the curtains against the sun.

  SUNDAY April 10TH

  Lay all day with my head turned to the wall. Rosie was brought in to cheer me up, but her childish gibbering merely served to irritate so she was taken away.

  MONDAY APRIL 11TH

  Bert Baxter was carried up to my bedside, but his coarse exhortation, ‘Get out of your pit, you idle bugger!’ failed to stir me from my nihilistic thoughts.

  TUESDAY APRIL 12TH

  Nigel has just left, after trying to arouse me by playing my favourite ‘Toyah’ tapes at a discreet volume.

  I signalled that I would prefer both his and Toyah’s absence.

  WEDNESDAY April 13TH

  A sign that my parents are now frantic with worry about me; Barry Kent was allowed into the house.

  His inarticulate ramblings about the gang’s activities failed to interest or stimulate me, so he was led out of the darkened room.

  THURSDAY APRIL 14TH

  A consultant psychologist has been ordered.

  Dr Gray has admitted his failure.

  FRIDAY APRIL 15TH

  Dr Donaldson has just left my bedside after listening to my worries with grave attention.

  When I’d sunk back on to my pillows he said, ‘We’ll take them one by one.’

  Nuclear war is a worry, but do something positive about your fear - join CND.

  If you fail your O levels you can retake them next year, or never take them - like the Queen.

  Of course your parents love you. They didn’t sleep during the time you were away.

  You are not hideously ugly. You are a pleasant, average-looking boy.

  Your sister’s paternity problems are nothing to do with you, and there is nothing you can do to help.

  I’ve never heard of a sixteen-year-old having their own poetry programme on Radio Four. You must set yourself realistic targets.

  I will write to Mr Scruton (‘Pop-Eye’) and inform him that you were under great stress at the time you wrote the letter.

  Pandora comes under the heading of insoluble problems.

  SATURDAY APRIL 16THr />
  Grandma came to my room at 8 a.m. this morning and ordered me out of bed!

  She said, ‘You’ve been pampered enough. Now pull yourself together, and go and shave that bum-fluff off your face!’

  I weakly protested that I needed more time to find myself.

  Grandma said, ‘I need to wash those sheets so get out of bed!’

  I said, ‘But I’m angst-ridden.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t be after lying in a bed like a dying swan for a week!’ was her callous reply.

  My grandma is a good honest woman, but her grasp of the intellectual niceties is minimal.

  Spent the day on the settee sipping Lucozade.

  SUNDAY APRIL 17TH

  Settee.

  My parents are speaking to me in tones of forced gaiety. They are making pathetic attempts to bring me back into normal life by drawing my attention to items of interest on the television. ‘Watch the news!’ they brightly exclaimed. I did.

  It was full of stories about murder, bombing, un-covered spies and disasters of rail, road and air. The only remotely cheerful item was about a man with no legs who’d walked from John O’Croats to Land’s End. This proof of the cruelty of fate versus the magnificence of the human spirit reduced me to silent sobs into the Dralon cushions.

  MONDAY APRIL 18TH

  The school holidays started today.

  It is just my luck to be too ill to appreciate the break.

  TUESDAY APRIL I9TH

  Daffodils by A. Mole

  While on my settee I lie

  From out of the corner of my eye

  I spot a clump of Yellow Daffodils,

  Bowing and shaking as a lorry goes by.

  Brave green stalks supporting yellow bonnets.

  Like the wife of a man who writes Love Sonnets.

  WEDNESDAY APRIL 20TH

  Ate four Shredded Wheat today.

  I can feel my strength slowly returning.

  THURSDAY APRIL 21ST

  Pandora came to see me for ten minutes this afternoon.

  Brain Box Henderson stood at our gate, fiddling with his calculator. Perhaps he was trying to work out how much he loves Pandora.