by Sue Townsend
Saturday February 28th
Heard on Radio Leicester that several cars were set alight in the staff car park at Neil Armstong Comprehensive at lunchtime yesterday. ‘Mindless vandalism’ is thought to be the cause.
I hope Eleanor’s Fiat wasn’t damaged. The headmaster’s Volvo was a write-off.
Sharon Bott has given birth to a girl. She has called the poor child Caister, after the place where conception took place. Took Glenn to see his half-sister. On the way home he said, ‘I’m worried about me mam, Dad. How’s she goin’ to manage?’
I diverted the conversation to Gazza. ‘Will Hoddle play him?’ I asked.
‘No, Dad, he’s too fat,’ he predicted.
Sunday March 1st
Glenn and I both got pinched and punched ‘first day of the month’ by William. I noticed that Glenn has already started instinctively to cover his genitals when William is within hurtling distance. Women don’t know how lucky they are to have their sexual paraphernalia tucked inside their bodies.
A review in the Sunday Times Book Section. Under ‘Briefly’ it said:
Love by Lamplight – Hermione Harper
Gritty tale of Crimean War romance.
Filth – Spike McArtney
Thinly veiled autobiography of life in Glasgow’s sewers.
Offally Good! – The Book! – Adrian Mole
100 ways with offal – a hoot.
Went to the BP garage and bought six copies of the ST. The boys were so proud to see my name in what Glenn called ‘one of them long newspapers’. My mother phoned at 10 p.m. to ask if I’d seen ‘her’ review.
Tuesday March 3rd
Met Les Banks buying cigarettes in the BP shop tonight. I asked after his wife. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘She’s not good, her father dropped down dead last night.’ I laughed a bitter, cynical laugh and walked away.
Banks shouted after me, ‘You callous bastard.’
Thursday March 5th
Was shocked to see a photograph of Les Banks and his family in tonight’s Leicester Mercury. A headline said, ‘“What Next?” Asks Tragic Banks Family’.
I couldn’t bring myself to read the article. I wished I hadn’t noticed that Mrs Banks was described in the caption under the photograph as ‘Lydia Banks, 41, Brave Amputee’.
Glenn asked where Kosovo was tonight. I handed him the Times Atlas of the World and told him to look it up in the index. He looked at me blankly. He doesn’t know what an index is.
I rang Les Banks and apologized. He said he’d come round tomorrow, ‘weather permitting’. I asked him what would preclude him from starting. He said, ‘Anything that’s gonna blow me off the roof.’
Friday March 6th
Gale force winds all day. Attended the small-claims court with my mother this morning for her hearing: Mole versus Shoe Mania!.
That legal buffoon Charlie Dovecote had led her to believe that she stood a good chance of winning sizeable damages for injury, stress and trauma suffered when the heel of a stiletto broke off as she reached the summit of Snowdon, believing Sir Anthony Hopkins to be making a public appearance there on that day. When asked in court why she was wearing such unsuitable shoes she said, ‘I only wore them for the final stages, I didn’t want Sir Anthony to see me in my hired climbing boots.’ Charlie Dovecote cross-examined Justin Swayward, representative of Shoe Mania!. ‘Did the said stilettos bear a health warning, Mr Swayward?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Of course not? Why not?’
‘Because any reasonable person could see at a glance that these shoes are unsuitable for –’
‘Ah, yes! A reasonable person might. But, Mr Swayward, my client, Mrs Mole, was not a reasonable person at the time. She was a middle-aged woman in the grip of a menopausal fixation about Sir Anthony Hopkins, the film actor, who had recently donated one million pounds towards the purchase of the said mountain.’
She won damages of £2,000 plus costs. The judge/magistrate said that Shoe Mania! ‘intended, by the use of the word “mania” followed by an exclamation mark, to excite and encourage vulnerable women into making unwise and unsuitable purchases’.
I am, quite frankly, disgusted at this flagrant misuse of our overcrowded civil courts.
Eleanor has started another job at the Keith Joseph Community College. She is head of remedial studies. She said, ‘But nothing will come between me and my weekly visits to Rampart Terrace. I live for Fridays.’
Sunday March 8th
Les Banks rang to say that an articulated lorry reversed over his dog yesterday. I was careful to sympathize. He said he would send a subcontractor round: Bill Broadway. He said, ‘He’s sound, Mr Mole.’
I said I hoped his dog made a full recovery.
Monday March 9th
Dev Singh was on with Richard and Judy this morning, promoting Offally Good! – the Book!.
I got on the phone to Brick Eagleburger immediately and left a message on his voicemail protesting in the strongest possible way about Dev’s usurping of my role.
Bill Broadway is on the roof playing Radio Two at full volume. I’d guess from his accent that his parents come from Jamaica. His hair is almost entirely grey, yet he’s only thirty-seven. He blames the stress of being in the building trade. He doesn’t like heights.
Friday March 13th
While the boys were in bed I did some work on my Royal Archers Radio series. Experimented with adding the Blairs.
THE ROYAL ARCHERS
Agricultural bagpipe music which fades to
Sound: Helicopter landing in barleyfield.
QUEEN: More bacon, Philip?
PHIL: (Grumbling) Who’s that landing a helicopter in my barleyfield, just as I’m eating my breakfast?
QUEEN: I’ll just cross from the Aga to the window, while still carrying the frying-pan, and look out and tell you. Oh, it’s Charles and there’s somebody with him… a woman in jodhpurs.
PHIL: Who is it, Liz? Who? Who is with our eldest son?
Cut to:
CHERIE AND TONY’S DAIRY
Sound: Of yoghurt pots being washed.
CHERIE: (Deep sigh) I can’t get the yoghurt scab virus out of the yoghurt pots, Tony (sigh).
TONY: Does it matter, Cherie?
CHERIE: (Screaming) If I don’t, the whole of Ambridge could go down with yoghurt scab!
TONY: Oh, let them, Cherie. Let them.
(Agricultural bagpipe music.)
The End
A strong start, I think.
When the hour was up I went downstairs and paid Eleanor. I offered her a glass of Bull’s Blood. She accepted. We sat by the fire and discussed Glenn’s progress. He is doing well, and can now read nearly everything in the sport pages of the Sun. Eleanor gazed into the flames and gave a loud sigh. I asked her what was wrong. She said, ‘I’ve been wrestling with my personal demons.’ But she didn’t go into details. I told her of my netting phobia. Something I have never spoken of to another human being. Baby and Child Care was my parents’ bible. They followed Spock’s advice to the letter. When at the age of eighteen months I started to climb out of my cot several times a night, they looked up the appropriate remedy in the index. Spock advised my gormless parents to imprison me at night by throwing a badminton net over the side of the cot, securing it to the legs. (The cot’s legs, not my legs.) My parents followed this advice slavishly, though it is on record* that my grandma Mole objected violently. She maintained that ‘A good hard slap across the back of his legs would have helped him to settle down at night.’
I well remember trying to fight myself out of that badminton net. Spock may have been sound on Vietnam, but he was oh-so-wrong on badminton nets. I have never been able to enjoy Wimbledon because of him. Even the sound of Virginia Wade’s voice makes me break into a light sweat. Because of this childhood trauma I let William sleep where he drops, then carry him to bed.
Tuesday March 17th
Glenn has now been here at Rampart Terrace for over four weeks. I a
sked him last night where he wants to live and who he wants to live with. He said, ‘Here, with you, Dad.’
It wasn’t especially what I wanted to hear. I’m fond of the boy but…
I phoned Sharon this morning and asked her if I could come round and talk to her about Glenn’s future. It was a difficult conversation: Caister was crying in a distant room and Bradford and Kent were quarrelling somewhere very near to the telephone. Not surprisingly, Sharon sounded distracted. When I first mentioned Glenn’s name, she said, ‘Who?’ We agreed I’d go round on Thursday night.
Wednesday March 18th
A police patrol car pulled up outside the house at three o’clock this afternoon. A policeman came to the door and said, ‘Did you know, sir, that there’s a black man on your roof?’
I said, ‘Yes, I do know, I’m paying him £20 an hour to be there.’
Glenn v. unhappy. Man U out of European Cup after drawing 1-1 with Monaco. I said to him, ‘Glenn, football is like life, you must have a goal. But sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.’
He said, ‘But why couldn’t Man U get another goal and win, Dad?’
He doesn’t know about metaphors.
Thursday March 19th
My father rang me today, which is an unusual occurrence. His voice was lowered, so I knew that Tania was in the vicinity. He said, ‘Have you seen the papers, Adrian?’
I said that, no, I hadn’t, I had been too busy scraping burned stuff from the hotplate of the steam iron to go out for a paper.
He said, ‘They’ve gone too bleeding far now. They’ve gone and put a woman in charge of a warship. HMS Express. Think of the carnage that woman could cause.’
I heard Tania call from the garden, ‘Darling, come and hear the blackbird.’
My father muttered, ‘Got to go.’
My mother once steered a canal boat into the wall of a deep lock, causing my father to nearly fall overboard. This incident was watched by drinkers in the garden of the Lock-keeper and Camel public house. I will never forget their jeers.
1 a.m. Sharon was so tired she fell asleep twice while I was talking to her about Glenn’s future. Caister is the type of baby who prefers to be fed every three-quarters of an hour. Unfortunately Sharon is breastfeeding. This may be beneficial to the baby but it did me no good whatsoever. I once enjoyed gazing at her eighteen-year-old breasts, but now she is aged thirty they are vast, intimidating, blue-veined edifices. Sharon Bott is a walking dairy. Her nipples look like Liquorice Allsorts.* She looks more like fifty than thirty.
I asked her how she would feel if Glenn came to live with me permanently. She said, ‘I know he’d have a better life with you. I can’t give him nothing.’
I said that, on the contrary, she had given him a lot. I told her that she had done a good job of bringing him up and that I was very fond of the boy.
She looked relieved, and said, ‘He could come to me for the weekends sometimes, couldn’t he?’
I said that I would be glad to have the occasional weekend free.
I looked around her living room. There were no books, or magazines, or even newspapers. I looked forward to the day when I could introduce my eldest son to the world of literature. When I got home we celebrated by sending out for a Chinese takeaway. They forgot William’s prawn crackers, but he didn’t have his usual tantrum. He was happy because Glenn is going to be living with us for ever.
When I went upstairs to carry William to bed, I saw that there was a notice pinned on Glenn’s bedroom door. It said, ‘Glenn Bott privet’.
Friday March 20th
Left Bill Broadway pointing up the chimney-stack and drove into Leicester. I miss big-city life. Bought William some Power Ranger underpants from the Everything’s a Pound shop. Was disturbed to see that somebody has opened an Everything for 50p! shop. Things are going downhill fast. This is a sure sign that city-centre shopping is in its death throes.
I was examining some Baywatch eggcups, with a view to purchase, when a man in a green-knitted bobble hat approached me and said he had seen me on the telly. He asked me for my autograph, saying it was for Phyllis, his mentally ill sister, who was my ‘biggest fan’. On the back of his gas bill I wrote: ‘To Phyllis, It was Offally nice to meet your brother. Best wishes to you, From Adrian Mole.’
The man looked at the back of the bill and said, ‘She won’t like this.’
I asked why. Apparently the cause of Phyllis’s mental problems centred around her being the first-born and having her ‘nose put out of joint’ when he, her brother, was born. ‘She never recovered,’ he said. ‘You writing, “It was nice to meet your brother,” could tip her over the edge.’
He gave me his bus ticket and on the back I wrote: ‘To Phyllis, Best wishes from A. Mole.’
He looked at it for a minute, then said, ‘She might think that A Mole meant one of them little burrowing animals. She’s got a thing about small mammals.’ He handed me a dry-cleaning ticket and I wrote on the back, ‘Hello Phyllis, This is Adrian Mole, the TV chef. Get well soon!’
He shook his head. ‘No, you can’t write, “Get well soon”,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know she’s ill.’
I snatched at the Bhs receipt he held out and scribbled, ‘Best wishes, Adrian Mole’, on the back. He said a grudging thank-you, adjusted his bobble hat and sloped out of the shop. I was too flummoxed to be able to concentrate on the Baywatch eggcups, and I left the shop without buying anything.
To calm down I had a cappuccino at a pavement café in the high street. This place, the Brasserie, has only been open a week, and has been viewed with suspicion by some sections of Leicester society. An OAP passed my table, saying to her companion, ‘It’s obstructing the pavement, in’t it? What about blind folk and them in wheelchairs?’
In the afternoon I went to see my father and Tania, to inform them that Glenn was living with me permanently. They had just been to the sexual dysfunction unit at the hospital. Unfortunately they felt the need to tell me, in minute detail, about their joint consultation. Tania held my father’s hand and said to me, ‘I’ve tried to reassure him that penetrative sex is not the be all and end all.’
When she got up and went to the kitchen to make some herbal tea, my father’s gaze followed her ample hips out of the room as he said, ‘Penetrative sex is the be all and end all with me. I can’t be doing with all that bleddy tongue-wagging stuff – I even failed the oral when I took my driving test.’
I changed the subject by informing him that learner drivers now had to take a written test, but he returned like a homing pigeon to the topic of his private parts by telling me that Tania was treating his piles with aromatherapy. He shifted uncomfortably on his chair. I suggested that a rubber ring or an operation might give more effective relief than a whiff of lavender oil. He glanced at her fearfully as she re-entered the room and said loudly, ‘I’ve got great faith in aromatherapy. You shouldn’t mock it, Adrian.’ Tania smiled down at him as though he were a well-behaved toddler.
Eleanor mobiled me to say she can’t come tonight, she had ‘an emergency appointment’ to see her therapist.
On the way home I did some shopping at the BP garage and bought Glenn a World Cup fixtures chart for his bedroom.
Saturday March 21st
Glenn said today, ‘Shall we do the lottery, Dad?’ I almost gave him my standard anti-lottery lecture. Then I heard myself saying, ‘Why not, son?’ Our numbers are 3, William’s age, 13, Glenn’s age, 31, soon to be my age, 16, Rosie’s age, 30, Sharon’s age, and 5, the New Dog’s age.
Sunday March 22nd
A weekend of non-stop toil. The washing, ironing, folding, putting away of clothes! The washing, drying and putting away of crockery! The sucking up of dirt from the floors! The endless wiping of surfaces! The constant preparation of food! I should have a woman to do all this for me. A woman I don’t have to pay. A wife.
After the housework there was the mind-numbing boredom of reading aloud to Glenn from his World Cup wall chart. He is determined
to have memorized the fixtures by June.
Tuesday March 24th
Over dinner we discussed what we would do if we won the lottery. Glenn said, ‘What does a million pounds look like, Dad?’ I wrote out a cheque for a million pounds and made it payable to ‘Glenn Bott Esquire’. He was dead chuffed and put it in the breast pocket of his school shirt.
Wednesday March 25th
Roger Patience rang me at 11.30 this morning. He asked me to go into school immediately, there was a serious problem. I was so alarmed I drove well over the speed limit (39 m.p.h.). I was escorted to his office by the duty pupil of the day, a charming girl called Nell Barlow-Moore.
Patience was sitting behind his mock mahogany desk staring at a computer screen.
‘Ah, Mr Mole,’ he said, rising from his back-sufferer’s chair. ‘Sorry to call you in, but there’s been an incident.’
Incident. The word hung in the air, pregnant with menace.
‘Glenn brought a cheque for a million pounds to school today,’ he said. ‘There is a strict rule that anything over a monetary value of £10 has to be given to the school secretary for safe-keeping. However, when Miss Trellis, his maths teacher, tried to take the cheque from Glenn he became abusive and called her a drongo. I won’t have my female staff abused and intimidated, Mr Mole. I have suspended Glenn for a week.’