by Sue Townsend
I am living on my savings, but I cannot continue to do so. The State will have to keep me – after all, I didn’t ask to be born, did I? And one day the State will be glad it supported me. When I am a high-rate taxpayer.
However, before I throw myself on its mercy, I am going to tramp the streets of Oxford tomorrow and look for a job, any job that doesn’t involve driving or working with animals.
Next year, I will have lived for a quarter of a century and as yet I have made no mark on the world – apart from winning a Leicester Mercury literary prize when I was seventeen.
If I died tomorrow, what would be written on my tombstone?
Adrian Albert Mole
Unpublished novelist
and pedestrian
Mourned by few
Scorned by many
Winner of the Leicester Mercury
‘Clean Up Leicester’ Essay Prize
Tuesday July 30th
Why do beggars always want money for a cup of tea? Don’t any of them drink coffee?
Wednesday July 31st
Why didn’t palace flunkies arrange for Princess Diana to be kept dry at the open-air Pavarotti concert last night? If she develops pneumonia and dies, the country will be plunged into crisis and Charles will be devastated with grief. He obviously adores her. Somebody’s head should roll.
Thursday August 1st
Dear Adrian,
I was sorry to read about your poor cwallity seed the person I was seeing on the side was barry kent I feel better now it is off my chest.
Yours sinserely,
Sharon
Barry Kent! I should have known! He is an amoral, talentless turd! He is lower than a cesspit. He has the prose style of a Daily Sport leader writer. He wouldn’t know what a semi-colon was if it fell into his beer. The little I have read of Dork’s Diary forced me to the conclusion that Kent should be arrested and charged with criminal assault on the English language. He deserves to burn in everlasting hell with a Catherine wheel tied to his cheating penis.
Friday August 2nd
Dear Sharon,
Many thanks for your commiserations regarding my ‘seed’, as you put it. May I suggest that you get in touch with Barry Kent (who, as you know, is now both rich and famous) and ask him to contribute to Glenn’s upbringing? The least Kent can do is to send Glenn to a private school, thus giving his child an excellent start in life.
I remain,
Yours,
Adrian
PS. I am absolutely sure that Barry will be thrilled to hear that he has a child.
PPS. Eton is quite a good private public school.
Sunday August 4th
Cassandra announced at breakfast that she has taken the locks off the bathroom and lavatory doors. ‘Inhibitions about nakedness and bodily functions are the reason why the English are no good at sex,’ she said. She looked pointedly at her husband, who blushed and rubbed the side of his nose.
The Queen Mother is 91 today. I suppose she doesn’t think it is worth getting her teeth seen to now. I can see her point.
Monday August 5th
Contacted Foreign Parts, the travel agents, about my Russian cruise and explained that I have been made redundant and would like to cancel and have my money back. The travel agent told me that it was impossible and told me to refer to the small print on my documents. I peered in vain and eventually went to Boots and bought a pair of ‘off the peg’ reading spectacles for £7.99. The travel agent was right; I will have to go.
Tuesday August 6th
Christian told me (shamefaced) that Cassandra requires my attic room. She is opening a reincarnation centre where people can get in touch with their former selves. She wants me out of the attic by mid-September. I couldn’t help myself. I burst out, ‘Your wife is a cow!’ Christian said, ‘I know, but she used to be a kitten.’
So, no job and, when I get back from the Russian cruise, nowhere to live.
Thursday August 8th
Dear John Tydeman,
The last time I wrote to you, it was to apologize for clogging up the BBC’s fax machines with my 700-page novel, Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland. You sent it back to me (eventually) and said, and I quote: ‘Your manuscript is awash with consonants, but vowels are very thin on the ground, thin to the point of non-existence.’
You will, I am sure, be delighted to hear that I have now reinstated the vowels and have spent this year rewriting the first sixteen chapters, and I would value your comments on them. They are enclosed with this letter. I know you are busy, but it wouldn’t take you long. You can read them in the BBC’s coffee lounge during your coffee breaks, etc.
I remain, Sir,
Yours,
Adrian Mole
10.30 p.m. I have seen Leonora for the last time. She has dismissed me from my post as her client. I overplayed my hand and declared my love for her. In fact, it wasn’t so much a declaration, it was more of a proclamation. It was probably heard all over Oxford. Her husband heard it because he came into the room with a tea towel and a little blue jug in his hand and asked Leonora if she was all right.
‘Thank you, Fergus, darling,’ she said. ‘Mr Mole will be leaving soon.’
‘I’ll be outside if you need me,’ he said, and left, leaving the door slightly open.
Leonora said, ‘Mr Mole, I am calling a halt to our professional relationship, but before you leave I would like to reassure you that your problems are capable of being solved.
‘You expect too much of yourself,’ she said, leaning forward sympathetically. ‘Let yourself off the hook. Be kind to yourself. You’ve expressed your worries about world famine, the ozone layer, homelessness, the Aids epidemic, many times. These are not only your problems. They are shared by sensitive people all over the world. You can have no control over these sad situations – apart from donating money. However, over your personal worries, lack of success with your novel, problems with women, you do have a certain amount of control.’ Here she stopped and she looked as though she wanted to take my hand, but she didn’t.
‘You are an attractive, healthy young man,’ she said. ‘I have not read your manuscript, so I can’t comment on your literary talent or otherwise, but what I do know is that there is somebody out there who is going to make you happy.’
I turned on my dining chair and looked out of the window. ‘Not literally out there, of course,’ she snapped, following my glance. She stood up, shook my hand and said, ‘There will be no charge for this session.’
I said, ‘It isn’t transference: it’s true love.’
‘I’ve heard that at least twenty times,’ she said, softly. She rose to her feet. Her rings sparkled under the light and she shook my hand. As I left, I passed her husband, who was still drying the little blue jug twenty minutes later. A suitable case for treatment if ever I saw one.
‘I intend to marry your wife one day,’ I said, before closing the front door.
‘Yes, that’s what they all say. Cheerio.’ He smiled and went towards Leonora and I closed the door on a painful – and expensive – period of my life.
Friday August 9th
Adrian,
What the fuck are you playing at, getting Sharon Bott to write to me and ask for money to send her sprog to fucking Eton? I’m down here at Jeanette Winterson’s place, trying to finish my second novel and I can do without all this fucking rubbish.
Baz
Saturday August 10th
I looked in the Job Centre window today. There were three vacancies in the window. One for a ‘mobile cleansing operative’ (road sweeper?), one for a ‘peripatetic catering assistant’ (pizza delivery?) and one for a ‘part-time clowns enabler’ (!). I didn’t exactly reach excitedly for the Basildon Bond on my return to Stalag Cassandra.
Sunday August 11th
Went to the newsagent’s. Bianca is back from Greece. She has got a fantastic tan. She was wearing a low-cut white tee shirt, which displayed her breasts. They looked like small, ripe, russet apples. I asked her
facetiously if she had had a holiday romance. She laughed and admitted that she had – with a fisherman who had never heard of Chekhov. I asked if she was going to continue the romance. She gave me a strange look and said: ‘How would you feel about it if I did, Adrian?’
I was about to reply when a member of the underclass thrust a Sunday Sport into her hands, so the moment was lost.
10.00 p.m. How do I feel about Bianca’s holiday romance? I’m always pleased to see her, but I can’t stop comparing her to the lovely Leonora: Bianca is a Malteser: Leonora is an Elizabeth Shaw gold-wrapped after dinner mint.
Tuesday August 13th
I leave for Russia on Thursday. I bought myself a new toiletry bag – it’s time I treated myself. I hope there are some decent women of childbearing age aboard.
I spent the evening packing. I decided not to take any books. I expect there will be a library on the ship, well stocked with the classics of Russian literature in good translations. I hope my fellow passengers are cultured people. It would be intolerable to have to share the dining room and decks with English lager louts. I decided to include a huge bunch of semi-ripe bananas amongst my luggage. I am used to eating a banana a day and I have heard they are in short supply in Russia.
Saturday August 17th
River camp – Russia
It is 7.30 p.m. There is no cruise ship. There are no passengers. Each member of our party is paddling their own canoe. I am crouched inside a two-man tent. Outside are swarms of huge, black mosquitoes. They are waiting for me to emerge. I can hear the river throwing itself over the rapids. With a bit of luck, I will die in my sleep.
The man I have been sharing my tent with, Leonard Clifton, is out chopping trees down with a machete, borrowed from Boris, one of our river guides. I sincerely hope that one of Clifton’s trees falls on his horrible bald head. I cannot stand another night listening to his interminable anecdotes about the Church Army.
I told Boris earlier today that I would give him all my roubles if he would arrange for me to be airlifted to Moscow. He paused from repairing the hole in my canoe and said, ‘But you must paddle now to the river’s end, Mister Mole; there is no inhabitations, peoples or telephonings here.’
On my return to civilization, I will sue Foreign Parts for every penny they’ve got. At no time did they mention that I would be paddling a canoe, sleeping in a tent, or drinking water from the river. The worst privation of all is that I have got nothing to read. Clifton lent me his Bible, but it fell overboard at the last rapids. As I watched it sink, I shouted ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ To the bewilderment of the rest of the group and of myself, I must admit.
Monica and Stella Brightways, the twins from Barnstaple, are outside leading the singing of ‘Ten Green Bottles’. Leonard and the rest of the gang are joining in lustily.
10.00 p.m. Tent. I have just returned from the forest, where I was forced to urinate into the darkness. I stood with the others round the fire for a moment, drinking black tea.
Monica Brightways had a serious argument with the scoutmaster from Hull. She claimed she saw him take two slices of black bread from the sack at lunchtime. He denied it vehemently and accused her of hogging the camp fire. Everyone took sides, apart from me, who loathes them both equally.
Capsized eleven times earlier today. The rest of the hearties were furious with me for holding them up. It is all right for them. They are all members of the British Canoe Union. I am a complete novice and crossing a lake in a force-nine gale is something out of my worst nightmare. The Waves! The Wind! The Water! The lowering black Russian sky! The Danger! The Fear!
I pray to God we may soon come to our journey’s end. I long for Moscow. Though I will have to stay in my hotel room; the mosquitoes have attacked my face unmercifully. I look like the Elephant Man on acid.
Midnight The drinking of vodka is now taking place. From my tent I can hear every word. The Russians are maudlin. Every time they talk about ‘our souls’, the English snigger. I crave sleep. I also crave hot water and a flushing lavatory.
Moscow! Moscow! Moscow!
Wednesday August 21st
Moscow train
The lavatory on the train defies description. However, I’ll try. After all, I am a novelist.
Imagine that twenty buffalo with loose bowels have been trapped inside the lavatory for two weeks. Then try to imagine that an open sewer runs across the floor. Add an IRA prisoner on dirty protest. Then concoct a smell by digging up a few decomposed corpses, add a couple of healthy young skunks and you come quite near to what the lavatory looks and smells like.
Leonard Clifton is writing to President Gorbachev to complain.
I said, ‘I think Gorbachev has other things on his mind at the moment, such as preventing civil war and feeding his fellow citizens.’
A harmless remark, you might think, but Clifton went mad. He screamed, ‘You have ruined my holiday, Mole, with your pathetic whingeing and nasty, cynical comments.’
I was totally gobsmacked. Nobody in the group came to my defence – apart from the Brightways twins, who had already informed the group at frequent intervals that they ‘loved all living things’. So anything they had to say was irrelevant. They no doubt equate my life with that of a lugworm.
Thursday August 22nd
Hotel room – Moscow
I am staying in the ‘Ukraina’, near the Moskva River. It looks like a hypodermic syringe from outside. Inside, it is full of bewildered guests of all nationalities. Their bewilderment stems from the hotel staff’s reluctance to pass on any information.
For instance, hardly anybody knows where meals are being served, or even if meals are being served.
For breakfast this morning I had a piece of black bread, four slices of beetroot, a sprig of fresh coriander and a cup of cold, black tea.
An American woman in the queue behind me wailed to her husband, ‘Norm, I gotta have juice.’
Norm left the queue and went up to a group of loitering waiters.
I watched him mime an orange, first on the tree and then off the tree. The waiters watched him impassively, then turned their backs on him and huddled around a portable radio. Norm returned to the queue. His wife shot him a contemptuous look.
She said, ‘I just gotta have some fruit in the morning. You know that, Norm. You know how my system seizes up.’
Norm pulled a face indicating that he remembered exactly what happened to his wife’s system when it seized up. I thought fondly about the bunch of bananas upstairs in my room.
They were worth their weight in gold.
At nine-thirty, most of our group gathered in the foyer of the hotel ready to start our visit to Red Square. I lurked behind a pillar, dabbing TCP onto the fourteen mosquito bites which disfigured my face.
The Barnstaple twins, Monica and Stella Brightways, kept us waiting for ten minutes, claiming that they had to wait for the lift to ascend to where their room was on the nineteenth floor. Eventually we set off in a bus which seemed to have an interior exhaust pipe next to my seat at the back. I coughed and choked on the diesel fumes and made a futile attempt to open the window. The coach driver was wearing a Gorbachev badge and seemed to be in a bad mood. Our coach parked on the edge of Red Square and we got out and gathered around our Intourist guide, Natasha. She held up a red and white umbrella, and we followed behind like moronic sheep. When we got to the Square, it became obvious that something was happening, a protest march or a demonstration of some kind was taking place. I lost sight of the red and white umbrella and became lost in the crowd. I heard an ominous rumbling behind me, but was unable to move.
An old lady in a headscarf shook her fist towards the noise. She screamed something in Russian. Spittle flew out of her mouth and landed on my clean sweater. Then the crowd parted and the rumbling grew nearer and the tracks of a Russian army tank clanked past an inch away from my right shoe. The tank stopped and a young man clambered aboard and began to wave a flag. It was the hammer and sickle flag I’d
been used to seeing everywhere. The crowd roared its approval. What was happening? Had Moscow Dynamo won at football? No, something more important was taking place.
A young woman who wore too much blue eye-shadow said to me, ‘Englishman, today you have witnessed the end of Communism.’
‘I nearly got run over by a tank,’ I said.
‘A proud death,’ she said. I reached into my pocket for a banana to boost my blood-sugar level. I started to peel it. The young woman’s eyes filled with tears. I offered her a bite, but she misinterpreted my gesture and shouted something in Russian. The crowd roared and cheered. She then turned and told me she was shouting ‘Bananas for all under Yeltsin!’ The crowd began to chant. Then the young woman ate my banana.
‘A symbolic gesture, of course,’ she said.
When I returned to my room, I found a hefty young Russian woman sitting on a chair outside the door. She was wearing a low-cut brown lamé minidress.
She said, ‘Ah, Mr Mole, I am Lara. I come to your room, to sleep, of course.’
I said, ‘Is this part of the Intourist programme?’
Lara said, ‘No. I am, of course, in love with you.’
She followed me into my room and went to the bunch of bananas on the bedside table. She looked down at them with lust in her eyes and I understood. It wasn’t me she wanted: it was the bananas. I gave her two. She went away. Intercourse with her might have done me some harm. She had thighs like Californian redwoods.