The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (14 page)

Fourteenth after Trinity. Moon’s Last Quarter

Keep having anxiety attacks every time I think about London, culture or the Mi. Pandora’s parents arelodging an official complaint to everyone they can think of.

Mr Scruton complimented Pandora and I on our leadership qualities. Ms Fossington-Gore is on sick leave. All future school trips have been cancelled.

The police have dropped charges against coach driver because there is ‘evidence of severe provocation’. The sex shop are not pressing charges either because officially Barry Kent is a child. A child! Barry Kent has never been a child.

Mr Scruton has now read my report on the trip to London. He gave me two merit marks for it!

It was on the news today that the British Museum is thinking of banning school parties.

Pandora and I are enjoying the last of the autumn together by walking through leaves and sniffing bonfires. This is the first year I have been able to pass a horse-chestnut tree without throwing a stick at it. Pandora says I am maturing very quickly.

Went out conkering with Nigel tonight. I found five big beauties and smashed Nigel’s into pulp. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Took Blossom to see Bert. He can’t walk far these days. Blossom is being sold to a rich family, a girl called Camilla is going to learn to ride on her. Pandora says Camilla is so posh as to be unintelligible. Bert was dead sad, he said, ‘You and me will both end up in the knacker’s yard, gel’.

Fifteenth after Trinity

Blossom went off at 10.30 AM. I gave her a sixteen-pence apple to take her mind off the heartbreak. Pandora ran after the little horse-box shouting, ‘I’ve changed my mind’, but it carried on.

Pandora has also changed her mind about Ian Smith. She never wants to see another pony or horse again. She is guilt-ridden about selling Blossom.

Ian Smith turned up at 2.30 PM and was turned away. There was an evil look on his black face as he stood in his horse-box and was driven away. Pandora’s father is going to his bank early tomorrow to cancel the cheque he wrote out last Thursday. There was an evil look on his face as well.

New Moon

Bert has got something wrong with his legs. The doctor says he needs daily nursing. I went in today but he is too heavy for me to lug about. The district nurse thinks that Bert will be better off in the Alderman Cooper Sunshine Home. But I don’t think he will. I pass by it on my way to school. It looks like a museum. The old people look like the exhibits.

Bert, you are dead old.

Fond of Sabre, beetroot and Woodbines.

We have nothing in common,

I am fourteen and a half,

You are eighty-nine.

You smell, I don’t.

Why we are friends

Is a mystery to me.

Bert doesn’t get on with his district nurse. He says he doesn’t like having his privates mauled about by a woman. Personally, I wouldn’t mind it.

I am glad September is nearly over, it has been nothing but trouble. Blossom gone. Pandora sad. Bert on his last legs. My father still out of work. My mother still besotted with creep Lucas.

7.30 AM
. Just woke up to find chin covered in spots! How can I face Pandora?

10 PM
. Avoided Pandora all day but she caught up with me in school dinners. I tried to eat with my hand over my chin but it proved very difficult. I confessed to her during the yoghurt. She accepted my disability very calmly. She said it made no difference to our love but I couldn’t help thinking that her kisses lacked their usual passion as we were saying goodnight after youth club.

6 PM
. I am very unhappy and have once again turned to great literature for solace. It’s no surprise to me that intellectuals commit suicide, go mad or die from drink. We feel things more than other people. We know the world is rotten and that chins are ruined by spots. I am reading
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom
, by Andrei D. Sakharov.

It is ‘an inestimably important document’ according to the cover.

11.30 PM. Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom
is inestimably
boring
, according to me, Adrian Mole.

I disagree with Sakharov’s analysis of the causes of the revivalism of Stalinism. We are doing Russia at school so I speak from knowledge.

Pandora is cooling off. She didn’t turn up at Bert’s today. I had to do his cleaning on my own.

Went to Sainsbury’s as usual in the afternoon; they are selling Christmas cakes. I feel that my life is slipping away.

I am reading
Wuthering Heights
. It is brilliant. If I could get Pandora up somewhere high, I’m sure we could regain our old passion.

Sixteenth after Trinity

Persuaded Pandora to put her name down for the youth club’s mountain survival course in Derbyshire. Rick Lemon is sending an equipment list and permission form to our parents. Or in my case to my parent. I have only got two weeks to reach peak condition. I try to do fifty press-ups a night. I try to do them but fail. Seventeen is my best so far.

Bert has been kidnapped by Social Services! They are keeping him at the Alderman Cooper Sunshine Home. I have been to see him. He shares a room with an old man called Thomas Bell. They have both got their names on their ashtrays. Sabre has got a place in the
RSPCA
hostel.

Our dog has gone missing. It is a portent of doom.

Moon’s First Quarter

Pandora and I went to visit Bert, but it was a waste of time really.

His room had a strange effect on us, it made us not want to talk about anything. Bert says he is going to sue Social Services, for depriving him of his rights. He says he has to go to bed at nine-thirty! It is not fair because he is used to staying up until after
The Epilogue
. We passed the lounge on our way out. The old people sat around the walls in high chairs. The television was on but nobody was watching it, the old people looked as though they were thinking.

Social Services have painted the walls orange to try to cheer the old people up. It doesn’t seem to have worked.

Thomas Bell died in the night. Bert says that nobody leaves the home alive. Bert is the oldest inmate. He is dead worried about dying. He is now the only man in the entire home. Pandora says that women outlive men. She says it is a sort of bonus because women have to suffer more earlier on.

Our dog is still missing. I have put an advert in Mr Cherry’s shop.

Bert is still alive so I took Sabre to visit him today. We propped Bert up at the window of his room and he waved to Sabre who was on the lawn outside. Dogs are not allowed inside the home. It is another of their poxy rules.

Our dog is still missing, now presumed dead.

The matron of the home says that if Bert is dead good he can come out for the day on Sunday. He is coming to our house for Sunday dinner and tea. The phone bill has come. I have hidden it under my mattress. It is for £289.19p.

I am really worried about our dog. It has vanished off the face of our suburb. Nigel, Pandora and I have walked the cul-de-sacs looking for it.

Another worry is my father. He lies in bed until noon, then fries a mess in a pan, eats it, opens a can or bottle, then sits and watches
After Noon Plus
. He is making no attempt to find another job. He needs a bath, a haircut and a shave. It is Parents’ Night at school next Tuesday. I have taken his best suit to the cleaner’s.

I bought a book from W.H. Smith’s, it was only five pence. It was written by an unsuccessful writer called Drake Fairclough; it is called
Cordon Bleu for the Elderly
. Bert is coming tomorrow. Pandora’s father has ordered their phone to be taken out. He has found out about the reverse-charge calls.

Seventeenth after Trinity

BERT’S
VISIT

I got up early this morning and cleared the furniture out of the hall so that Bert’s wheelchair had room for manoeuvre. I made my father a cup of coffee and took it up to him in bed, then I started cooking geriatric
coq au vin
. I left it on to boil whilst I went back upstairs to reawaken my father. When I got downstairs I knew that I’d made a mess of the
coq au vin
. All the vinegar had boiled away and left burnt chicken. I was most disappointed because I was thinking of making my debut as a cook today. I wanted to impress Pandora with my multi talents, I think she is getting a bit bored with my conversation about great literature and the Norwegian leather industry.

Bert insisted on bringing a big trunk with him when Pandora’s father picked him up at the home. So what with that and his wheelchair and Bert sprawling all over the back seat I was forced to crouch in the hatch of the hatchback car. It took ages to get Bert out of the car and into his wheelchair. Almost as long as it took me to get my father out of bed.

Pandora’s father stayed for a quick drink, then a pre-lunch one, then a chaser, then one for the road. Then he had one to prove that he never got drunk during the day. Pandora’s lips started to go thin (women must teach young girls to do this). Then she confiscated her father’s car keys and phoned her mother to come and collect the car. I had to endure watching my father do his imitation of some bloke called Frank Sinatra singing ‘One for my baby and one more for the road’. Pandora’s father pretended to be the bartender with our Tupperware custard jug. They were both drunkenly singing when Pandora’s mother came in. Her lips were so thin they had practically disappeared. She ordered Pandora and Pandora’s father out into the car, then she said that it was about time my father pulled himself together. She said she knew my father felt humiliated, alienated and bitterbecause he was unemployed, but that he was setting a bad example to an impressionable adolescent. Then she drove off at 10 mph. Pandora blew me a kiss through the rear windscreen.

I object strongly! Nothing my father does impresses me any more. Had Vesta curry and rice for dinner, during which Mrs Singh came round and talked Hindi to Bert. She seemed to find our curry very funny, she kept pointing to it and laughing. Sometimes I think I am the only person in the world who still has manners.

Bert told my father that he is convinced the matron is trying to poison him (Bert, not my father), but my father said that all institutional food is the same. When it was time to go home, Bert started crying. He said, ‘Don’t make me go back there’, and other sad things. My father explained that we didn’t have the skill to look after him at our house, so Bert was wheeled to the car (although he kept putting the brake of the wheel-chair on). He asked us to keep his trunk at our house. He said it was to be opened on his death. The key is round his neck on a bit of string.

Dog is still
AWOL
.

Columbus Day,
USA
. Thanksgiving Day, Canada

Went to the ‘off-the-streets’ youth club tonight. Rick Lemon gave us a lecture on survival techniques. He said that the best thing to do if you are suffering from hypothermia is to climb into a plastic bag with a naked woman. Pandora made a formal objection, and Rick Lemon’s girlfriend, Tit, got up and walked away. It is just my luck to be on the mountain with a frigid woman!
RIP
Dog.

Full Moon

Had an angry phone call from my grandma to ask when we were coming round to collect the dog! The stupid dog turned up at her house on the 6th October. I went round immediately and was shocked at the dog’s condition: it looks old and grey. In human years it is eleven years old. In dog years it should be drawing a pension. I have never seen a dog age so quickly. Those eight days with grandma must have been hell. My grandma is very strict.