by Sue Townsend
I shall have to stay here in the box room. I need to use my chip pan on a daily basis.
Lenin was right: all landlords are bastards.
Somebody who looked like Tariq was on Newts At Ten; he was waving from the steps of an aeroplane which was bound for the Gulf. I waved back in case it was him.
Correction: I meant, of course, to write News At Ten.
Friday January 4th
Woke up at 5 a.m. and was unable to get back to sleep. My brain insisted on recalling all my past humiliations. One by one they passed in front of me: the bullying I endured from Barry Kent until my grandma put a stop to it; the day at Skegness when my father broke the news to me and my mother that his illegitimate son, Brett, had been born to his lover, Stick Insect; the black day when my mother ran away to Sheffield for a short-lived affair with Mr Lucas, our smarmy neighbour; the day I learned that I had failed ‘A’ level Biology for the third time; the day Pandora married a bisexual man.
Then, after the humiliations came the faux pas, a relentless march: the time I sniffed glue and got a model aeroplane stuck to my nose; the day my sister, Rosie, was born and I couldn’t remove my hand from the spaghetti jar where the five pound note for the taxi fare to the maternity hospital was kept; the time I wrote to Mr John Tydeman at the BBC and addressed him as ‘Johnny’.
The procession of faux pas was followed by a parade of bouts of moral cowardice: the time I crossed the road to avoid my father because he was wearing a red pom-pom hat; my craven behaviour when my mother was stricken with a menopausal temper tantrum in the Leicester market place – I should not have walked away and hidden behind that flower stall; the day I had a jealous fit, destroyed the complimentary tickets for Barry Kent’s first professional gig on the poetry circuit and blamed the dog; my desertion of Sharon Bott when she announced she was pregnant.
I despise myself. I deserve my unhappiness. I am truly a loathsome person.
I was relieved when my travelling alarm clock roused me from my gloomy reverie and told me that it was 6.30 a.m. and time to get up.
Nipples by A. Mole
Like raspberries
taken from the freezer
Inviting tongue and lips
but warning not to bite
Not yet
soon
But not yet
I am on flexitime and had agreed to start work at 7.30 a.m., but somehow, although I left my box room at 7 a.m., I didn’t arrive at work until 8 a.m. A journey of half a mile took me an hour. Where did I go? What did I do? Did I have a blackout on the way? Was I mugged and left unconscious? Am I, even as I write, suffering from memory loss?
Pandora is constantly telling me that I am in urgent need of psychiatric help. Perhaps she is right. I feel as though I am going mad; that my life is a film and that I am a mere spectator.
Saturday January 5th
Julian, Pandora’s upper-crust husband, has returned from his Christmas sojourn in the country with his parents. He shuddered when he walked through the front door of the flat.
‘God!’ he said. ‘The pantry of Twyselton Manor is bigger than this bloody hole.’
‘Then why come back, sweetie?’ said Pandora, his so-called wife.
‘Because, ma femme, my parents, poor, deluded creatures, are paying mucho spondulicks to keep me here at Oxford, studying Chinese.’ He laughed his neighing horse’s laugh. (And he’s certainly got the teeth for it.)
‘But you haven’t been to a lecture for over a year,’ said Dr Braithwaite (12 ‘O’s, 5 ‘A’s, BA Hons. and D. Phil.).
‘But my lecturers are all such boring little men.’
‘It’s such a waste, husband,’ said Pandora. ‘You’re the cleverest man in Oxford and the laziest. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up in Parliament.’
After Julian had thrown his battered pigskin luggage into his room, he returned to the kitchen, where Pandora was chopping leeks and I was exercising my new sink plunger. ‘So, darlings, what’s new?’ he said, lighting one of his vile Russian cigarettes.
Pandora said, ‘I’m in love with Jack Cavendish, and he’s in love with me. Isn’t it absolutely marvellous?’ She grinned ecstatically and chopped at the leeks with renewed fervour.
‘Cavendish?’ puzzled Julian. ‘Isn’t he that grey-haired old linguistics fart who can’t keep his plonker in his pants?’
Pandora’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘He’s sworn to me that from now on his lifestyle will be strictly non-polygynous,’ she said.
She stretched up to replace the knife on its magnetic rack and her cropped T-shirt rode up, revealing her delicate midriff. I thrust the plunger viciously into the greasy contents of the sink, imagining that Cavendish’s head was on the end of the wooden stick, instead of the black rubber suction pad.
Julian neighed knowingly. ‘Cavendish doesn’t know the meaning of the word “non-polygynous”. He’s a notorious womanizer.’
‘Was,’ insisted Pandora, adding, ‘and of course he knows the meaning of the word “non-polygynous”: he is a professor of Linguistics.’
I left the plunger floating in the sink and went to my box room, took my Condensed Oxford Dictionary from its shelf and, with the aid of the magnifying glass, looked up the word ‘non-polygynous’. I then uttered a loud, cynical laugh. Loud enough, I hoped, to be heard in the kitchen.
Sunday January 6th
Woke at 3 a.m. and lay awake remembering the time when Pandora and I nearly went All the Way. I love her still. I intend to be her second husband. And what’s more, she will take my name. She will be known as ‘Mrs Adrian Albert Mole’ in private.
On Seeing Pandora’s Midriff
The glorious shoreline from ribcage
To pelvis
Like an inlet
A bay
A safe haven
I want to navigate
To explore
To take readings from the stars
To carefully trace my fingers
Along the shoreline
And eventually to guide my ship, my destroyer, my pleasure craft
Into and beyond your harbour
6.00 p.m. Sink still blocked. Worked for three hours in the kitchen, adding vowels to the first half of my experimental novel Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, which was originally written with consonants only. It is eighteen months since I sent it to Sir Gordon Giles, Prince Charles’s agent, and he sent it back, suggesting I put in the vowels.
Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland explores late twentieth-century man and his dilemma, focusing on a ‘New Man’ living in a provincial city in England.
The treatment is broadly Lawrentian, with a touch of Dostoevskian darkness and a tinge of Hardyesque lyricism.
I predict that one day it will be a GCSE set book.
I was driven out of the kitchen by the arrival of that wrinkled-up ashtray on legs, Cavendish, who had been invited to Sunday lunch. He hadn’t been in the flat two minutes before he was pulling a cork out of a bottle and helping himself to glasses out of the cupboard. He then sat on my recently vacated chair at the kitchen table and began to talk absolute gibberish about the Gulf War, predicting that it would be over within months. I predict that it will be America’s second Vietnam.
Julian came into the kitchen, wearing his silk pyjamas and carrying a copy of Hello!
‘Julian,’ said Pandora, ‘meet my lover, Jack Cavendish.’ She turned to Cavendish and said, ‘Jack, this is Julian Twyselton-Fife, my husband.’ Pandora’s husband and Pandora’s lover shook hands.
I turned away in disgust. I’m as liberal and civilized as the next person. In fact, in some circles I’m regarded as quite an advanced thinker, but even I shuddered at the utter depravity that this introduction signified.
I left the flat to get some air. When I returned from my walk around the Outer Ring Road two hours later, Cavendish was still there, telling tedious anecdotes about his numerous children and his three ex-wives. I microwaved my Sunday lunch and took it into my box room. I spent the re
st of the evening listening to laughter in the next room. Woke at 2 a.m. and was unable to get back to sleep. Filled two pages of A4 devising tortures for Cavendish. Not the actions of a rational man.
Tortures for Cavendish
1) Chain him to the wall with a glass of water just beyond his grasp.
2) Chain him naked to a wall while a bevy of beautiful girls walk by, cruelly mocking his flaccid and aroused penis.
3) Force him to sit in a room with Ivan Braithwaite, while Ivan talks about the finer details of the Labour Party’s Constitution, with particular reference to Clause Four. (This is true torture, as I can bear witness.)
4) Show him a video of Pandora getting married to me. She radiant in white, me in top hat and tails, putting two gloved fingers up at Cavendish.
Let the punishment fit the crime.
Monday January 7th
Started my beard today.
Some of the Newport Pagnell newts have crossed the road. I telephoned Peterson at the Department of Transport, to inform him. There has obviously been a split in the community. I expect a female newt is at the bottom of it: cherchez la femme.
Wednesday January 9th
For the first time in my entire life I haven’t got a single spot, pustule or pimple. I pointed out to Pandora over breakfast that my complexion was flawless, but she paused in applying her mascara, looked at me coldly, and said, ‘You need a shave.’
Spent ten minutes at the sink with the plunger before going to work, but to no avail. Pandora said, ‘We’ll have to get a proper man in.’
Does Pandora realize the impact the above words, so apparently casually uttered, have had on me? She has disenfranchised me from my gender! She has cut my poor, useless balls off!
Thursday January 10th
Brown has advised me to shave. I refused. I may have to seek the advice of the Civil and Public Service Union.
Friday January 11th
Applied to join the CPSU.
Pandora found Cavendish’s A4 torture list. She has made an appointment for me to see her friend Leonora De Witt, who is a psychotherapist. I agreed reluctantly. On the one hand, I am terrified of my unconscious and what it will reveal about me. On the other, I am looking forward to talking about myself non-stop for an hour without interruption, hesitation or repetition.
Saturday January 12th
Pandora’s most recent ex-lover, Rocky (Big Boy) Livingstone, came round to the flat today, asking for the return of his mini sound-system. At six foot three and fifteen stone of finely honed muscle, Rocky is a ‘proper’ man, if ever I saw one. Pandora was out, meeting some of Cavendish’s children at the Randolph Hotel. So, in her absence, I gave the sound-system to him. Since he and Pandora split up, Rocky has opened new gyms in Kettering, Newmarket and Ashby de la Zouch. He and his new girlfriend, Carly Pick, are still happy.
Rocky said, ‘Carly’s a real star, Aidy. I respect the lady, y’know.’ I told Rocky about Professor Cavendish. He was disgusted.
He said, ‘That Pandora is a user. Just ‘cos she’s clever, she finks she’s…’ He flailed about for the right word and finished, ‘clever’.
Before he went he unblocked the sink. I was very grateful. I was getting sick of washing the pots in the bathroom hand basin. None of the saucepans would fit under the taps.
I went to the window and watched him drive away. Carly Pick had both her arms around his neck.
Sunday January 13th
The Gulf War deadline expires on the 15th, at midnight. What will I do if I am called up to fight for my country? Will I cover myself with honour, or will I wet myself with fear on hearing the sound of enemy gunfire?
Monday January 14th
Went to Sainsbury’s and stocked up with tins of beans, candles, Jaffa cakes, household matches, torch batteries, paracetamol, multivitamins, Ry-King and tins of corned beef and put them in the cupboard in my box room. Should the war spread over here, I will be well prepared. The others in the flat will just have to take their chance. I predict panic buying on a scale never seen before in this country. There will be fighting in the aisles of the supermarkets.
Appointment with Leonora De Witt on Friday 25th of this month at 6 p.m.
Tuesday January 15th
Midnight. We are at war with Iraq. I phoned my mother in Leicester and told her to keep the dog in. It is twelve years old and reacts badly to unexpected noises. She laughed and said, ‘Are you going mad?’ I said, ‘Probably,’ and put the phone down.
Wednesday January 16th
Bought sixteen bottles of Highland Spring water, in case water supply is cut off owing to bombardment by Iraqi airforce. It took me four trips from the Spar shop on the corner to the flat, but I feel more secure knowing I will not go thirsty during the coming Blitzkrieg.
Brown has not mentioned my beard for some days now. He is preoccupied with the effect that ‘Operation Desert Storm’ will have on the desert wildlife. I said, ‘I’m afraid I regard Iraqi wildlife as being on the side of the enemy. I’m more worried about my dog, at home in Leicester.’
‘Ever the parochial, Mole,’ said Brown, in a lip-curling manner. I was quite insulted. Brown reads nothing, apart from journals on wildlife, whereas I have read most of the Russian Greats and am about to embark on War and Peace. Hardly parochial, Brown!
Thursday January 17th
I have hired a portable colour television, so I can watch the Gulf War in bed.
Friday January 18th
The spokesperson for the USA military is a man who calls himself ‘Colon Powell’. Every time I see him, I think of intestines and the lower bowel. It detracts from the gravity of the War.
Saturday January 19th
Bert Baxter rang me up at the office today. (I will kill whoever gave him the number.) He wanted to know ‘when you and my favourite gal are comin’ to see me?’ His ‘favourite gal’ is Pandora. Why doesn’t Bert just die like other pensioners? His quality of life can’t be up to much. He is nothing but a burden to others (me).
He was entirely ungrateful when I dug a grave for his dog, Sabre, last year, though I challenge anyone to dig a neater hole in compacted soil with a rusty garden trowel. If I’d had a decent spade at my disposal, then, naturellement, the grave would have been neater. The truth is that I hated and feared Sabre. The day the wretched Alsatian died was a day of rejoicing for me. No more smelling its noxious breath. No more forcing Bob Martin’s conditioning tablets between its horrible vicious teeth.
Bert burbled on about the war for a while, and then asked me if I had heard my old enemy Barry Kent on Stop the Week this morning. Apparently, Kent was publicizing his first novel, Dork’s Diary. I am now utterly convinced there cannot be a God. It was me that encouraged Kent to write poetry, and now I find out that the ex-skinhead, frozen peabrain has written a novel, and got it published!!!
Pandora told me this evening that Kent made Ned Sherrin, A. S. Byatt, Jonathan Miller and Victoria Mather laugh almost continuously. Apparently the phone lines at the BBC were jammed with listeners asking when Dork’s Diary will be published (Monday). This is absolutely and totally the last straw. My sanity hangs by a fragile thread.
Sunday January 20th
I was passing Waterstone’s bookshop when I saw what appeared to be Barry Kent standing in the window. I lifted my hand in greeting and said, ‘Hello, Baz,’ then realized that the smirking skinhead was only a cardboard cut-out. Copies of Dork’s Diary filled the window. I’m not ashamed to say that curses sprang from my lips.
As I flicked through the pages of the slim volume, my eye was caught not only by the many obscenities with which the book is littered, but by the name – ‘Aiden Vole’ – given to one of the characters. This ‘Aiden Vole’ is obsessed with matters anal. He is jingoistic, deeply conservative and a failure with women. ‘Aiden Vole’ is an outrageous caricature of me, without a doubt. I have been slandered. I shall see my solicitor in the morning. I shall instruct him or her (I haven’t actually got a solicitor yet) to demand hundreds of tho
usands of pounds in damages. I couldn’t bring myself actually to buy a copy of the book. Why should I add to Kent’s royalties? But I noticed as I left the shop that Kent is giving a reading from Dork’s Diary on Tuesday evening at 7 p.m. I will be in the audience. Kent will leave Waterstone’s a broken man when I have finished with him.
Monday January 21st
The Cubicle, DOE
Just listened to Kent on Start the Week on my portable radio. He has certainly extended his vocabulary. Melvyn Bragg said that the Aiden Vole character was ‘wonderfully funny’ and asked if he was based on anybody real. Kent laughed and said, ‘You’re a writer, Melv; you know what it’s like. Vole is an amalgam of fact and fantasy. Vole stands for everything I hate most in this country, after the new five-pence piece, that is.’ The other guests – Ken Follett, Roy Hattersley, Brenda Maddox and Edward Pearce – laughed like drains.
Spent the rest of the morning looking through the Yellow Pages for a solicitor with a name I can trust. Chose and rang ‘Churchman, Churchman, Churchman and Luther’. I am seeing a Mr Luther at 11.30 a.m. on Thursday. I am supposed to be visiting the Newport Pagnell newts on Thursday morning with Brown, but he will just have to face them alone. My reputation and my future as a serious novelist are at stake.