by Sue Townsend
Three hundred and sixty-nine pounds! When my parents get out of bed and discover the lack of dialling tone, I will be done for!
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 2ND
My father tried to phone up after a job today! He has gone berserk.
My mother cleaned my bedroom, she turned up my mattress and found the Big and Bouncys and the blue phone bill.
I sat on the kitchen stool while they interrogated me and shouted abuse. My father wanted to give me a ‘to-within-an-inch-of-his-life thrashing’, but my mother stopped him. She said, ‘It would be more of a punishment to make the tight-fisted sod cough up some of his building society savings.’ So that is what I’m being forced to do.
Now I will never be an owner-occupier.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 3RD
Drew out two hundred pounds from my building-society account. I don’t mind admitting that there were tears in my eyes. It will take another fourteen years before I can replace it.
FRIDAY DECEMBER 4TH
Moon’s First Quarter
I am suffering from severe depression. It is all Pandora’s father’s fault. He should have had a holiday in England.
SATURDAY DECEMBER 5TH
Had a letter from Grandma to ask why I hadn’t sent her a Christmas card yet.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 6TH
Second in Advent
I am still being treated like a criminal. My mother and father are not speaking to me, and I’m not allowed out. I might just as well turn to delinquency.
MONDAY DECEMBER 7TH
Stole a Kevin Keegan key ring from Mr Cherry’s shop. It will do for Nigel’s Christmas present.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 8TH
I am dead worried about the key ring; we did Morals and Ethics at school today.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 9TH
Can’t sleep for worrying about the key ring. The papers are full of stories about old ladies getting done for shoplifting. I tried to overpay Mr Cherry for my Mars bar, but he called me back and gave me my change.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 10TH
Had a dream about a jailer locking me in a prison cell. The big iron key was attached to the Kevin Keegan key ring.
The lousy, stinking, sodding phone is reconnected!
FRIDAY DECEMBER 11TH
Full Moon
Phoned the Samaritans and confessed my crime. The man said, ‘Put it back then, lad.’ I will do it tomorrow.
SATURDAY DECEMBER 12TH
Mr Cherry caught me in the act of replacing the key ring. He has written a letter to my parents. I might as well do myself in.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 13TH
Third in Advent
Thank God there is no post on Sundays.
My mother and father had a festive time decorating the Christmas tree. I watched them hanging the baubles with a heavy heart.
I am reading Crime and Punishment. It is the most true book I have ever read.
MONDAY DECEMBER 14TH
Got up at 5 a.m. to intercept the postman. Took the dog for a walk in the drizzle. (It wanted to stay asleep, but I wouldn’t let it.) The dog moaned and complained all the way round the block so in the end I let it climb back into its cardboard box. I wish I was a dog; they haven’t got any ethics or morals.
The postman delivered the letters at seven-thirty when I was sitting on the toilet. This is just my luck!
My father collected the letters and put them behind the clock. I had a quick look through them while he was coughing on his first cigarette of the day. Sure enough there was one addressed to my parents in Mr Cherry’s uneducated handwriting!
My mother and father slopped over each other for a few minutes and then opened the letters whilst their Rice Krispies were going soggy. There were seven lousy Christmas cards, which they put up on a string over the fireplace. My eyes were focused on Mr Cherry’s letter. My mother opened it, read it and said, ‘George, that old git Cherry’s sent his bloody paper bill in’. Then they ate their Rice Krispies and that was that. I wasted a lot of adrenalin worrying. I won’t have enough left if I’m not careful.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 15TH
My mother has told me why she left creep Lucas and returned to my father. She said, ‘Bimbo treated me like a sex object, Adrian, and he expected his evening meal cooked for him, and he cut his toe-nails in the living room, and besides I’m very fond of your father.’ She didn’t mention me.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 16TH
I am in an experimental Nativity play at school. It is called Manger to Star. I am playing Joseph. Pandora is playing Mary. Jesus is played by the smallest first-year. He is called Peter Brown. He is on drugs to make him taller.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 17TH
Another letter from the BBC!
Dear Adrian Mole,
Thank you for submitting your latest poem. I understood it perfectly well once it had been typed. However, Adrian, understanding is not all. Our Poetry Department is inundated with autumnal poems. The smell of bonfires and the crackling of leaves pervade the very corridors. Good try, but try again, eh?
Yours with best wishes,
John Tydeman
‘Try again’! He is almost giving me a commission. I have written back to him:
Dear Mr Tydeman,
How much will I get if you broadcast one of my poems on the radio? When do you want me to send it? What do you want it to be about? Can I read it out myself? Will you pay my train fare in advance? What time will it go out on the airways? I have to be in bed by ten.
Yours faithfully,
A. Mole
P.S. I hope you have a dead good Christmas.
FRIDAY DECEMBER 18TH
Moon’s Last Quarter
Today’s rehearsal of Manger to Star was a fiasco. Peter Brown has grown too big for the crib, so Mr Animba, the Woodwork teacher, has got to make another one.
Mr Scruton sat at the back of the gym and watched rehearsals. He had a face like the north face of the Eiger by the time we’d got to the bit where the three wise men were reviled as capitalist pigs.
He took Miss Elf into the showers and had a ‘Quiet Word’. We all heard every word he shouted. He said he wanted to see a traditional Nativity play, with a Tiny Tears doll playing Jesus and three wise men dressed in dressing gowns and tea towels. He threatened to cancel the play if Mary, alias Pandora, continued to go into simulated labour in the manger. This is typical of Scruton, he is nothing but a small-minded, provincial, sexually inhibited fascist pig. How he rose to become a headmaster I do not know. He has been wearing the same hairy green suit for three years. How can we change it all now? The play is being performed on Tuesday afternoon.
My mother has had a Christmas card from creep Lucas! Inside he had written, ‘Paulie, Have you got the dry-cleaning ticket for my best white suit? Sketchley’s are being very difficult.’ My mother was very upset. My father rang Sheffield and ordered Lucas to cease communications, or risk getting a bit of Sheffield steel in between his porky shoulder blades. My father looked dead good on the telephone. He had a cigarette stuck between his lips. My mother was leaning on the corner of the fridge. She had a cigarette in her hand. They looked a bit like the Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall postcard on my wall. I wish I was a real gangster’s son, at least you would see a bit of life.
SATURDAY DECEMBER 19TH
I’ve got no money for Christmas presents. But I have made my Christmas list in case I find ten pounds in the street.
Pandora – Big bottle of Chanel No. 5 (£1.50)
Mother – Egg-timer (75p)
Father – Bookmark (38p)
Grandma – Packet of J cloths (45p)
Dog – Dog chocolates (45p)
Bert – 20 Woodbines (95p)
Auntie Susan – Tin of Nivea (60p)
Sabre – Box of Bob Martins, small (39p)
Nigel – Family box of Maltesers (34p)
Miss Elf – Oven-glove (home-made)
SUNDAY DECEMBER 20TH
Fourth in Advent
Pandora and I had a private Mary
and Joseph rehearsal in my bedroom. We improvised a great scene where Mary gets back from the Family Planning Clinic and tells Joseph she’s pregnant. I played Joseph like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Pandora played Mary a bit like Blanche Dubois; it was dead good until my father complained about the shouting. The dog was supposed to be the lowly cattle, but it wouldn’t keep still long enough to make a tableau.
After tea my mother casually mentioned that she was going to wear her fox-fur coat to the school concert tomorrow. Shock! Horror! I immediately went round to Pandora’s house to get the mangy coat, only to find that Pandora’s mother has borrowed it to go to the Marriage Guidance Christmas dinner and dance! Pandora said that she hadn’t realized that the coat was only on loan; she thought it was a lover’s gift! How can a 14¾-year-old schoolboy afford to give a fox-fur coat as a gift? Who does Pandora think I am, a millionaire like Freddie Laker?
Pandora’s mother won’t be back until the early hours so I will have to go round before school and sneak the coat into its plastic cover. It’s going to be difficult, but then nothing in my life is simple or straightforward any more. I feel like a character in a Russian novel half the time.
MONDAY DECEMBER 21ST
Woke up with a panic attack to see that it was eight-fifty by my bedside digital! My black walls looked unusually light and sparkly; one glance outside confirmed my suspicions that indeed the snow lay outside like a white carpet.
I stumbled through the snow to Pandora’s house in my father’s fishing boots but found that the house was devoid of humans. I looked through the letterbox and saw my mother’s fur coat being mauled about by Pandora’s ginger cat. I shouted swear-words at it but the lousy stinking cat just looked sarcastic and carried on dragging the coat around the hall. I had no choice but to shoulder-charge the laundry-room door and rush into the hall and rescue my mother’s coat. I left quickly (as quickly as anyone can wearing thigh-length fishing boots, four sizes too big). I put the fur coat on to keep me warm on my hazardous journey home. I nearly lost my bearings at the corner of Ploughman’s Avenue and Shepherd’s Crook Drive, but I fought my way through the blizzard until I saw the familiar sight of the prefabricated garages on the corner of our cul-de-sac.
I fell into our kitchen in a state of hypothermia and severe exhaustion; my mother was smoking a cigarette and making mince pies. She screamed, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing wearing my fox-fur coat?’ She was not kind or concerned or anything that mothers are supposed to be. She fussed about, wiping snow off the coat and drying the fur with a hair dryer. She didn’t even offer to make me a hot drink or anything. She said, ‘It’s been on the radio that the school is closed because of the snow, so you can make yourself useful and check the camp beds for rust. The Sugdens are staying over Christmas.’ The Sugdens! My mother’s relations from Norfolk! Yuk, Yuk. They are all inbred and can’t speak properly!
Phoned Pandora to explain about the fox-fur and the damage, etc., but she had gone skiing on the slope behind the Co-op bakery. Pandora’s father asked me to get off the line, he had to make an urgent phone call to the police station. He said he had just come home and discovered a break-in! He said the place was a shambles (the cat must have done it, I was very careful), but fortunately the only thing that was missing was an old fox-fur coat that Pandora had lined the cat’s basket with.
Sorry, Pandora, but this is the final straw that broke the donkey’s back! You can find yourself another Joseph, I refuse to share the stage with a girl who puts her cat’s comfort before her boyfriend’s dilemma.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 22ND
School was closed this morning because the teachers couldn’t manage to get in on time because of the snow. That will teach them to live in old mill houses and windmills out in the country! Miss Elf lives with a West Indian in a terraced house in the town, so she bravely turned out to prepare for the school concert in the afternoon. I decided to forgive Pandora for the fox-fur in the cat’s basket incident after she had pointed out that the cat was an expectant mother.
The school concert was not a success. The bell ringing from class One-G went on too long, my father said ‘The Bells! The Bells!’ and my mother laughed too loudly and made Mr Scruton look at her.
The school orchestra was a disaster! My mother said, ‘When are they going to stop tuning up and start playing?’ I told her that they had just played a Mozart horn concerto. That made my mother and father and Pandora’s mother and father start laughing in a very unmannerly fashion. When ten-stone Alice Bernard from Three-C came on stage in a tutu and did the dying swan I thought my mother would explode. Alice Bernard’s mother led the applause, but not many people followed.
The Dumbo class got up and sang a few boring old carols. Barry Kent sang all the vulgar versions (I know because I was watching his lips) then they sat down cross-legged, and brainbox Henderson from Five-K played a trumpet, Jew’s harp, piano and guitar. The smarmy git looked dead, superior when he was bowing during his applause. Then it was the interval and time for me to change into my white T-shirt-and-Wranglers Joseph costume. The tension backstage was electric. I stood in the wings (a theatrical term – it means the side of the stage) and watched the audience filing back into their places. Then the music from Close Encounters boomed out over the stereo speakers, and the curtains opened on an abstract manger and I just had time to whisper to Pandora ‘Break a leg, darling’, before Miss Elf pushed us out into the lights. My performance was brilliant! I really got under the skin of Joseph but Pandora was less good, she forgot to look tenderly at Jesus/Peter Brown.
The three punks/wise men made too much noise with their chains and spoiled my speech about the Middle East situation, and the angels representing Mrs Thatcher got hissed by the audience so loudly that their spoken chorus about unemployment was wasted.
Still, all in all, it was well received by the audience. Mr Scruton got up and made a hypocritical speech about ‘a brave experiment’ and ‘Miss Elf’s tireless work behind the scenes’, and then we all sang ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’!
Driving home in the car my father said, That was the funniest Nativity play I have ever seen. Whose idea was it to turn it into a comedy?’ I didn’t reply. It wasn’t a comedy.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 23RD
9 a.m. Only two shopping days left for Christmas and I am still penniless. I have made a Blue Peter oven-glove for Miss Elf, but in order to give it to her in time for Christmas I will have to go into the ghetto and risk getting mugged.
I will have to go out carol singing, there is nothing else I can do to raise finance.
10 p.m. Just got back from carol singing. The suburban houses were a dead loss. People shouted, ‘Come back at Christmas,’ without even opening the door. My most appreciative audience were the drunks staggering in and out of the Black Bull. Some of them wept openly at the beauty of my solo rendition of ‘Silent Night’. I must say that I presented a touching picture as I stood in the snow with my young face lifted to the heavens ignoring the scenes of drunken revelry around me.
I made £3.1½ plus an Irish tenpence and Guinness bottle-top. I’m going out again tomorrow. I will wear my school uniform, it should be worth a few extra quid.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 24TH
Took Bert’s Woodbines round to the home. Bert is hurt because I haven’t been to see him. He said he didn’t want to spend Christmas with a lot of malicious old women. Him and Queenie are causing a scandal. They are unofficially engaged. They have got their names on the same ashtray. I have invited Bert and Queenie for Christmas Day. My mother doesn’t know yet but I’m sure she won’t mind, we have got a big turkey. I sang a few carols for the old ladies. I made two pounds eleven pence out of them so I went to Woolworth’s to buy Pandora’s Chanel No. 5. They hadn’t got any so I bought her an underarm deodorant instead.
The house looks dead clean and sparkling, there is a magic smell of cooking and satsumas in the air. I have searched around for my presents but they are not in the usual places. I wa
nt a racing bike, nothing else will please me. It’s time I was independently mobile.
11 p.m. Just got back from the Black Bull. Pandora came with me, we wore our school uniforms and reminded all the drunks of their own children. They coughed up conscience money to the tune of twelve pounds fifty-seven! So we are going to see a pantomime on Boxing Day and we will have a family bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk each!
FRIDAY DECEMBER 25TH
Christmas Day
Got up at 5 a.m. to have a ride on my racing bike. My father paid for it with American Express. I couldn’t ride it far because of the snow, but it didn’t matter. I just like looking at it. My father had written on the gift tag attached to the handlebars, ‘Don’t leave it out in the rain this time’ – as if I would!
My parents had severe hangovers, so I took them breakfast in bed and gave them my presents at the same time. My mother was overjoyed with her egg-timer and my father was equally delighted with his bookmark, in fact everything was going OK until I casually mentioned that Bert and Queenie were my guests for the day, and would my father mind getting out of bed and picking them up in his car.