Adrian Mole: Diary of a Provincial Man Read online

  Talk about a major infringement of the Trades Description Act! The Dystopia would be a more accurate title for this Draylon hell-hole. I share a draughty attic room with William and Glenn. There is no space in which to swing a dead vole, let alone a cat.

  The view from the skylight is of mournful-looking seagulls with morsels of chips in their beaks. The owners, Barry and Yvonne Windermere, are ex-variety performers. I shall go mad if Barry tells me another «joke». Ivan and my mother think this raddled old duo are "fabulous characters". Personally, whenever I hear the fabulous characters phrase, I want to run — into the sea, until the cold waves close over my head.

  Wednesday, wind shelter, Skegness

  Glenn is sulking in the attic, he has already spent all his pocket money on the slot machines in the arcade where we were forced to take shelter from the cruel wind that blows unchecked from the Urals across the North Sea.

  Ivan and my mother struggled to construct a windbreak, and William, dressed in an anorak, sheltered behind it and tried to make a sandcastle, but his fingers turned blue and I had to take him into a cafe to thaw out. The place was full of shivering families eating terrible food.

  Ivan went on saying to my mother, "This is an authentic working-class experience, isn't it, Pauline?" His eyes were shining with excitement. He is turned on by vulgarity. It is why he fell in love and married my mother.

  My mother drew heavily on her St Moritz menthol fag with the gold-rimmed filter and said, "Ivan, I'm no longer working class. I read the Guardian and buy coffee beans now, or hadn't you noticed?"

  Thursday

  The sun came out today. Ivan bought a kiss-me-quick-and-shag-me-slow sunhat. I saw my mother wince when he put it on, but she kept her mouth shut and feigned interest in a stick of rock shaped like a penis.

  Friday, Queen Mother's birthday

  Barry and Yvonne have decorated the dining room with Union Jack bunting. The little table where the condiments are normally kept has been turned into a shrine to the Queen Mother. Two candles burn either side of a lurid photograph of the aged one.

  Barry met her once, back-stage at the Palladium. "What did she say to you? I asked. "She asked me how long I'd been waiting," he said, his slobbery lips trembling with emotion. "And what did you reply?" I asked. "Not long, ma'am," he said, and almost broke down.

  Unfortunately, Glen knocked over one of the candles at dinner time and set fire to the Queen Mother's photograph. I threw a cup of tea over it, but the damage was considerable. We have been asked to leave. Proof, perhaps, that there is a God.

  Holidays in hell

  Saturday, August 12, 2000, Utopia Boarding House, Skegness

  I've finished packing. Barry Windermere has just wheezed up to the attic to demand compensation for the damage Glenn did (inadvertently) to the Queen Mother's photograph. I refused to give him any more, and told him that the use of unguarded candles is a contravention of the 1981 Hotels & Boarding House Act. He believed this ridiculous lie, and scuttled back down the dark stairs with the stained carpet.

  The rest of the family have voted to continue the holiday elsewhere. I was the only one who voted to return home. I feel like a contestant on Big Brother. (Incidentally, that Nicholas is a great bloke, I hope he wins.)

  Sunday, Plot 8, Sunny Sands Caravan Site, Hunstanton

  There are seven of us squeezed into a six-berth caravan. Rosie and Mad Dog Jackson arrived last night on his Harley-Davidson. I refuse to call him Mad Dog as he requested; it is bad enough having to be seen in his greasy, denimed company. My mother told me proudly that "he's very high up in the Hell's Angels hierarchy". She astounds me. If Rosie was my daughter, I would lock her away in a tall tower until she had woken up from the spell that Jackson has cast over her.

  My whole family are in love with him. William and Glenn hang on to his every word. It is now Glenn's ambition to be inducted into the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Chapter of the Hell's Angels. Apparently, there are six of them living in a maisonette in Rosebud Drive. The induction ceremony involves eating raw tripe while being hung upside down from a tree. I said to Glenn that I had other plans for him. That he is to study the history of art at a decent university. Glenn muttered under his breath "Art fart", but I let it go. My nerves are in shreds. I couldn't face another acrimonious confrontation.

  The caravan is too confined. I can hear everything through the plywood walls. I overheard my mother saying to Ivan Braithwaite tonight, "Ivan, why are we all cramped up in a caravan in Hunstanton when we can easily afford to stay in a decent Aparthotel with free watersports somewhere abroad?" He chuckled in that maddening way that makes me want to rip his smarmy head off his hairy shoulders and said, "Pauline, you're in denial about your working-class heritage. I'm doing this for you. I want you to rediscover your roots".

  My mother snapped that she had spent most of her adult life trying to better herself and hoped to be lower-middle class by the time she was 55, and middle-middle class at death. "The Co-Op won't be doing my funeral," she hissed. I heard her move along their bed in the kitchen (it doubles as a work-top and ironing board during the day). I was glad that their ardour was cooling. I was sick of having to listen to their pathetic attempts at love-making every night. Ivan is having trouble with his prostate. Fortunately, Mad Dog and Rosie are sleeping outside under the awning extension on a double Therm-A-Rest.

  Monday

  Jackson has gone into Norwich to have a drink with Professor Malcolm Bradbury. He is hoping to get some lecturing work out of him. Is Professor Bradbury being terrorised into giving Jackson work? Has the notoriously gentle academic been threatened and intimidated? It would explain why that monosyllabic thicko, Jackson, has two degrees.

  Thursday

  I took the boys to Wells-next-the-Sea today. As we strolled up the crowded main street, I saw Glenn looking with interest at a tray of tripe in a butcher's shop window. "It don't look too bad, Dad," he said. "I could get that down my neck."

  Friday

  The Hog Roast-On-The-Beach has been cancelled due to the unreliability of English pigs.

  Feet of clay

  Friday, August 18, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

  I have been brutally betrayed! I feel humiliated and sick! How could he have told such terrible lies to me over the past five weeks?

  I admired him so much. He was the type of man I would have liked to have been myself. He was a man who could cope with adversity (the death of his young wife in a car crash). A man who led other men (an officer in the Territorial Army). He was also a healer (like Jesus), and a reiki master to boot.

  I would have followed him into the jungle with hardly a qualm. So confident was I that he would win the £70,000 that I withdrew £50 from my long-term diamond deposit savings account (incurring loss of interest) and placed a personal bet with my father. It was with glee that my father phoned me at 4.45pm today from his hospital bed, where he is still languishing with several NHS-bred infections, to tell me that my hero was about to be evicted from the House.

  I didn't believe my father at first, diary. He once told me that I had won £7 million on the lottery. This cost me dearly. To celebrate my «win», I rang the Lotus Flower home-delivery service and ordered the banquet special for six. On discovering my father's cruel joke, I tried to cancel the order, but ended up having an angry confrontation on the doorstep with Mr Wong, who wouldn't get back on his moped without the £96.21 he insisted that I owed him.

  However, when my mother rang my mobile to tell me that she and Ivan were watching on the net, I knew it must be true. I could hear Craig's dental lisp quite clearly down the phone. The Ludlows came from next door to disclose this world-shattering news, and Vince said, "It's a bleedin' triumph for the working class, if you ask me."

  Peggy Ludlow said she'd always thought Nick was Tim Henman, who had fled to the Big Brother House in disguise in order to avoid playing tennis.

  I couldn't sleep last night. Do all my heroes have feet of clay? I have only recently recovered from Mr Aitken's downfall. I
pray that Lord Hattersley will not be unmasked as the secret author of Mills and Boon romances, or that Will Self will not be revealed as a committee member of the Caravan Club of Great Britain.

  Saturday, August 19

  I said to Glenn today, "Glenn, you will always remember where you were when you heard that Nick had been expelled from the House."

  He looked back at me and said, "Course I will, Dad — I was watchin' it on the telly."

  "You were taking part in history," I said.

  "What, like the Second World War?" he asked doubtfully.

  "No, more like the day Beckham had his hair cut," I said.

  "You're mixin' up popular history with proper history, Dad", said Glenn.

  Chastened, I went to my bedroom to start the third chapter of Sty! (Swine fever has wiped out the entire pig population of Britain, apart from Peter, my hero. I may retitle Sty! and call it The Last Pig, instead.

  My father rang this morning and insisted that I honour the bet! Personally, I think it was a great mistake to provide hospital patients with bedside telephones. They give their long-suffering relations no peace with their incessant, peevish demands for Lucozade and boxes of tissues.

  Monday, August 21

  The Last Pig: Peter watched from the sty as the 4x4 drew up by the computer shed in the farmyard. He saw Farmer Brown emerge from the chemical store and greet the Sky News crew. "Where's the last pig in Britain?" shouted a researcher. Peter rolled in the mire. He wanted to look good on camera: he was going to be famous.

  Love in a cold climate

  Thursday 24 August, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire

  Glenn has been upstairs for an hour with the unopened envelope with contains his GCSE results.

  I can hear him muttering to himself as I write this diary entry. The tension in the house is unbelievable. I have promised to take him to Wells-Next-The-Sea if he attains anything over a D. He has fallen in love with a girl called Courtney, who works in French's fish and chip shop on the West Quay. The lad is certainly a quick mover. We were only in Wells for an hour-and-a-half. Apparently they bonded when Glenn knocked a tub of curry sauce off the counter.

  She called him a stupid wanker and that was it. They swapped e-mail addresses and have been in constant contact since. I am a little hurt that Glenn told me none of this and that I had to hear his news from my mother. Why doesn't the boy trust me with the secrets of his heart. I am his father, after all. Even David Archer has started to confide in Phil, since Ruth's chemotherapy treatment commenced.

  Incidentally, I hope Mel has been kicked out of Big Brother by the time you read this. Her motives are so transparent: she obviously intends to set up a chain of massage parlours across the nation. Mark my words, Mel's Massage Parlours will soon be appearing on every high street.

  1pm

  Glenn has just been down and shown me his results. They are not bad, considering the boy could hardly read when he was 13. He said he would have done better if it hadn't been for the girls in his class distracting him with their good behaviour and hard work. I sympathised: my own academic ability plummeted when Pandora Braithwaite joined my class. I simply couldn't tear my eyes away from the slight swelling under her school blouse and put them on the blackboard where they belonged. It's her fault I got poor GCSE results. She has ruined my life.

  Saturday 26, Plot 49, Pinewood Caravan Site, Wells-Next-The-Sea

  Glenn's romance is over before it began. Courtney has been "long promised" to her second cousin, a lad called Eli, who works on the whelks and cockle store on the quay. Things are certainly feudal down here. They are but simple folk — untouched by the sophisticated outside world. It is impossible to get a Leicester Mercury. William is on the beach as I write, digging a pit in which to bury me "until you're dead day". Does he harbour subconscious patricidal desires? I don't think I'll risk getting into his pit.

  Sunday 27, The Caravan

  I have been consumed by caravan fever! My every waking thought is taken up with finding a method of buying a caravan of my own. I have long suspected that I may have Romany blood coursing through my veins. (I cannot stop my feet tapping when flamenco is played.) However, it is not a traditional barrel-shaped horse drawn caravan I lust for.

  Specifically, it is a Willerby Westmorland; a double-glazed six-berth, with microwave and private veranda in a tasteful beige. I have worked out that it would just about fit into my mother's front garden. So, for £18,999, I could have the best of both worlds: complete independence for me and my boys together with baby-sitting services only five yards away. Why didn't I think of it before?

  I have obtained the services of an independent financial adviser, a very nice man called Terry "the shark" Brighton. He is nicknamed shark because he once caught a record-breaking creature of that name while enjoying a shark fishing honeymoon in Australia with his fourth wife. I asked him to help me raise the finance for my Willerby Westmorland. Terry said no probs, but asked me to send him a cheque for £500 as a returnable deposit for his services. I won't tell my mother about the caravan just yet. It will be a lovely surprise for her.

  Satisfaction

  Sunday, September 3, Arthur Askey Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire

  Can you trust anybody nowadays? My financial adviser Terry "The Shark" Brighton has been arrested by the fraud squad. Apparently, he has been operating a caravan finance scam for years. So I can kiss goodbye to my £500 deposit and my dream of owning my own Willerby Westmoreland 'van and siting it on my mother's property. True, she was hostile to my plan, saying, "I don't want trailer trash living on my doorstep", but I could have talked her round, in time.

  At the risk of sounding like a Herman's Hermit song lyric, I've got to get out of this place if it's the last thing I ever do. The Ludlows next door are going through a period of marital discord. Hardly a day or night goes by without a violent argument and the sound of a human head being banged against the party wall. I feel sorry for poor Vince. Peggy is a fearsome woman when she is roused.

  Monday, September 4

  The autumn term has started, thank God. William complained this morning that his school uniform is too big for him. I told him it was his own fault for refusing to try it on in the shop. But I may ask my mother to turn up the trousers. They drag on the ground and make him look as though he is a double amputee.

  Vince came round this morning, begging for sanctuary. He told me that Peggy found him in bed last week with their daughter's best friend, Mandy Trotter.

  "She bleedin' flung herself at me and got me zip undone before I could stop 'er," he whined. "What was I s'posed to do?"

  Glen pointed Mandy Trotter out to me when we were in the Co-Op. She was stacking the lower shelves. She is only four feet eleven inches tall and, though obviously over the age of consent, she looks like an emaciated child. Vince couldn't have fought very hard to keep her off his zip.

  Tuesday, September 5

  Peggy has been round to give her side of the story. Apparently, Mandy Trotter is pregnant with Vince's child. "What's he see in that skinny slag?" she asked. Her magnificent bosom was heaving and her gloriously long fishnetted legs were crossing and uncrossing as she sat at my kitchen table dropping ash on my vinyl tiles. I was speechless with desire for her.

  It's time I found a sexual partner: a non-neurotic, childless, non-smoking, beautiful woman who enjoys literature, spotting Eddie Stobart lorries and housework would be ideal. Is it too much to ask that I should be allowed a little happiness?

  Wednesday, September 6

  I tried to understand what Mr Robin Cook was saying on the Today programme this morning. I think he was talking about his ethical foreign policy. However, he now gabbles his words and speaks at such a rate of knots that it is impossible to understand him. This is an infringement of my human rights as a British voter. Does Gaynor understand a word he says lately, or has she long-stopped listening to her wee bearded elf of a husband?

  Thursday, September 7

  Ivan Braithwaite has
been sectioned under the Mental Health Act! It took four policemen and a straitjacket to get him in the ambulance. His mind snapped when his laptop, his printer, his fax, his three phones, his television, his radio and his pager were all switched on at once relaying different information.

  When my mother came into his workspace and said, "Ivan, do you want to know something?" he flipped and started smashing the place up.

  Robin Cook should take warning.

  Still ill

  Saturday, September 9, Arthur Askey Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

  There are now two male members of our family in hospital: my father's infections keep mutating, and he is now the subject of a controlled trial. He's in an isolation unit. Quite honestly, this has come as quite a relief: visiting is strictly forbidden. It is possible to observe him through a glass panel, but what's the point of driving seven miles there and seven miles back to watch a middle-aged man puzzling over the Sun crossword.

  Ivan Braithwaite has also been forbidden visitors. The psychiatric nurse in charge of him, a certain Steve Harper, said, "Ivan needs a break from the family dynamic." The family dynamic in question, my mother, is furious and spends most of the day sitting outside the locked ward telling anybody who will listen that it is "an overload of information technology that caused Ivan's breakdown". He'd processed 300 emails only half-an-hour before he cracked, she told me. I am now convinced that technology is to blame for most of society's ills.

  I used to scoff at my dead grandmother Edna Mole's assertion that microwaves damage the brain, but since upgrading to a superior wattage I have noticed a diminution of brain power. It took me more than an hour to remember whether it was Shakespeare who wrote, "He that sleeps feels not the toothache", or Sir Walter Raleigh. I spoke these words at 4am to Glenn, who has got an abscess. However, he didn't sleep but kept me awake with his groans of pain. It was just our luck not to have a single painkilling tablet in the house.