The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (19 page)

Got fifteen out of twenty for History. Pandora got twenty-one out of twenty. She got an extra mark for knowing Hitler’s father’s name.

Came home from school early with a severe migraine (missed the Comparative Religion test). Found my father watching
Play School
and pretending to be an acorn growing into an oak. Went to bed too shocked to speak.

Migraine. Too ill to write.

Fourth after Epiphany

Pandora came round. I copied her homework. Feel better.

Moon’s First Quarter

My mother has given my father an ultimatum: either he finds a job, or starts doing housework, or leaves. He is looking for a job.

Candlemas (Scottish Quarter-Day
)

Grandma Mole came to tell me that the end of the world was announced at her Spiritualist church last week. She said it should have all ended yesterday.

She would have come round sooner only she was washing her curtains.

My father has had his credit cards taken off him! Barclays, Nat West and American Express have got fed up with his reckless spending. Time is running out for us. He has only got a few quid’s redundancy money left in his sock drawer.

My mother is looking for a job.

I have got a sense of
deja vu
.

Went round to see Bert and Queenie. Their bungalow is so full of knick-knacks that there is hardly room for a person to move. Sabre knocks at least ten things over every time he wags his tail. They both seem happy enough, though their sex life can’t be up to much.

I’ve got to write an essay on the causes of the Second World War. What a waste of time! Everyone knows the causes. You can’t go anywhere without seeing Hitler’s photo.

Finished essay; copied it out of
Pear’s Encyclopedia
.

My mother has gone to a women’s workshop on self-defence. So if my father moans at her for burning the toast she will be able to karate-chop him in the windpipe.

Septuagesima

Bored stiff all day. My parents never do anything on Sundays but read the Sunday papers. Other families go out to safari parks, etc. But we never do.

When I am a parent I will fill my children with stimulation at weekends.

Full Moon

My mother has found a job. She collects money from Space Invader machines. She started today in response to an urgent phone call from the job agency that she is registered with.

She said that the fullest machines are those in unre-spectable cafes and university common rooms.

I think my mother is betraying her principles. She is pandering to an obsession of weak minds.

My mother has given up her job. She said she is sexually harassed during her work and she is also allergic to ten-pence pieces.

My father is going to start his own business making spice-racks. He has spent the last of his redundancy money on buying pine and glue. Our spare bedroom has been turned into a workshop. Sawdust is all over the house.

I am very proud of my father. He is now a company director, and I am a company director’s son!

Delivered Mrs Singh’s massive spice-rack after school. It took two of us to carry it round and install it on her kitchen wall. We had a cup of sickly Indian tea and Mrs Singh paid my father and then started to fill up her shelves with exotic Indian spices. They looked a lot more interesting than my mother’s boring parsley and thyme.

My father bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate his first sale! He has got no respect for capital investment.

Pandora has gone to London with her father to hear Tony Benn speak. Pandora’s mother has gone to a
SDP
rally in Loughborough. It is a sad day when families are split by politics.

I’m not sure how I will vote. Sometimes I think Mrs Thatcher is a nice kind sort of woman. Then the next day I see her on television and she frightens me rigid. She has got eyes like a psychotic killer, but a voice like a gentle person. It is a bit confusing.

Pandora has got a crush on Tony Benn, just like the one she had on Adam Ant. She says that older men are exciting.

I am trying to grow my moustache. Valentine’s Day tomorrow. A big card came today, it had a Sheffield postmark.

Sexagesima. St Valentine’s Day

At last I have had a valentine from somebody who is not a blood relation! Pandora’s card was charming, she had written a simple message of love:

Adrian, it is you alone.

I gave Pandora a false Victorian card, inside I wrote:

My young love,

Treacle hair and knee-socks

Give my system deep shocks.

You’ve got a magic figure:

I’m Roy Rogers, you are Trigger.

It doesn’t scan very well, but I was in a hurry. Pandora didn’t get the literary reference to Roy Rogers, so I have lent her my father’s old Roy Rogers annuals.

My father threw the Sheffield card in the waste-bin. My mother took it out when my father had gone to the pub. Inside it said:

Pauline, I am in anguish.

My mother smiled and ripped it up.

Washington’s Birthday,
USA
. Moon’s Last Quarter

Came home from school to hear my mother talking to creep Lucas on the phone. She was using a yukky voice and saying things like: ‘Don’t ask me to do it, Bimbo’, and ‘It’s all over between us now, darling. We must try to forget’.

I can’t stand much more emotional stress. I am up to my ears in it already what with studying hard and vying with Tony Benn for Pandora’s attention.

Pandora’s mother came round last night to complain about her spice-rack. It fell off the wall and spilt rosemary and tumeric all over her cork tiles. My mother apologized on behalf of my father who was hiding in the coal shed.

I am seriously thinking of giving everything up and running away to be a tramp. I would quite enjoy the life, providing I could have a daily bath.

Miss Elf told us about her boyfriend today. He is called Winston Johnson. He is a Master of Arts and can’t get a job! So what chance do I stand?

Miss Elf said that school-leavers are despairing all over the country. She said that Mr Scruton should be ashamed to have a portrait of Mrs Thatcher over his desk.

I think I am turning radical.

This morning the whole school was ordered to go to the assembly hall. Mr Scruton got up on the stage and acted like the films of Hitler. He said in all his long years of teaching he had never come across an act ofsuch serious vandalism. Everybody went dead quiet and wondered what had happened. Scruton said that somebody had entered his office and drawn a moustache on Margaret Thatcher and written ‘Three million unemployed’ in her cleavage.

He said that defiling the greatest leader this country has ever known was a crime against humanity. It was tantamount to treason and that when the culprit was found they would be immediately expelled. Scru-ton’s eyes bulged out so far that a few of the first-years started to cry. Miss Elf led them outside to safety.

The whole school has got to have handwriting tests.

Miss Elf has resigned. I will miss her, she was responsible for my political development. I am a committed radical. I am against nearly everything.

Pandora, Nigel, Claire Neilson and myself have formed a radical group. We are the ‘Pink Brigade’. We discuss things like war (we are against it); peace (we are for it); and the ultimate destruction of capitalist society. Claire Neilson’s father is a capitalist; he owns a greengrocer’s shop. Claire is trying to get her father to give cheap food to the unwaged but he refuses. He waxes fat on their starvation!

Quinquagesima

Had an argument with my father over the
Sunday Express
. He can’t see that he is a willing tool of the reactionary right. He refuses to change to the
Morning Star
. My mother reads anything; she is prostituting her literacy.

Once again I am spotty. I am also extremely sexually frustrated. I’m sure a session of passionate lovemaking would improve my skin.

Pandora says she is not going to risk being a single parent just for the sake of a few spots. So I will have to fall back on self-indulgence.

Shrove Tuesday. New Moon

Ate nine pancakes at home, three at Pandora’s and four at Bert and Queenie’s. Grandma was very hurt when I refused her kind offer to whip me a batter, but I was full up.

It is disgusting when the Third World is living on a few grains of rice.

I feel dead guilty.

Ash Wednesday

Our school dinner-ladies have got the sack! The dinners now come in hot boxes from a central kitchen. I would have staged a protest but I have got a Geography test tomorrow.

Mrs Leech was presented with a microwave oven for her thirty years of toil over the custard jug.

Got fifteen out of twenty for Geography. I lost points for saying that the Falkland Islands belonged to Argentina.

My thing is now thirteen centimetres long when it is extended. When it is contracted it is hardly worth measuring. My general physique is improving. I think the back-stretching exercises are paying off. I used to be the sort of boy who had sand kicked in his face, now I’m the sort of boy who watches somebody else have it kicked in their face.

My father hasn’t made or sold a single spice-rack all week. We are now living on Social Security and dole money.

My mother has stopped smoking. The dog is down to half a tin of Chum a day.

Quadragesima (Firstin Lent
)

Had egg and chips and peas for Sunday dinner! No pudding! Not even a proper serviette. My mother says we are the
nouveau poor
.

St David’s Day(Wales
)

My father has stopped smoking. He is going around with a white face finding fault with everything I do.

My mother and him had their first row since she came back. The dog caused it by eating the Spam for tea. It couldn’t help it, the poor thing was half crazed with hunger. It is back on a full tin of Chum a day.

Moon’s First Quarter

My parents are suffering severe nicotine withdrawal symptoms. It is quite amusing to a non-smoker like me.

I had to lend my father enough money for a gallon of petrol, he had an interview for a job. My mother cut his hair and gave him a shave and told him what to say and how to behave. It is pathetic to see how unemployment has reduced my father to childish dependence on others.

He is waiting to hear from Manpower Services.

He is still ill from not smoking. His temper has reached new peaks of explosion.

No news yet about the job. I spend as much time as I can out of the house. My parents are unbearable. I almost wish they would start smoking again.

He got it!!!

He starts on Monday as a Canal Bank Renovation Supervisor. He is in charge of a gang of school-leavers. To celebrate he bought my mother sixty Benson and Hedges and himself sixty Players. I got a family pack of Mars bars.

Everybody is dead happy for once. Even the dog has cheered up a bit. Grandma is knitting my father a woolly hat for work.

Pandora and I went to see the bit of canal bank that my father is now in charge of. If he worked for a thousand years he will never get it cleaned of all the old bikes and prams and weeds and Coca-Cola tins! I told my father that he was in a no-win situation, but he said, ‘On the contrary, in one year’s time it will be a beauty spot’. Yes! And I am Nancy Reagan, Dad!

Second in Lent

My father went to see his canal bank this morning. He came home and shut himself in his bedroom. Heis still there, I can hear my mother saying encouraging words to him.

It is uncertain whether or not he will turn up for work tomorrow. On the whole I think not.

He went to work.

After school I walked home along the canal bank. I found him bossing a gang of skinheads and punks about. They were looking surly and unco-operative. None of them wanted to get their clothes dirty. My father seemed to be the only one doing any work. He was covered in mud. I attempted to exchange a few civilities with the lads, but they spurned my overtures. I pointed out that the lads are alienated by a cruel, uncaring society, but my father said,’ Bugger off home, Adrian. You’re talking a load of lefty crap’. He will have a mutiny on his hands soon if he’s not careful.