The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ (1982)

by Sue Townsend

  Here is the poem I wrote inside Pandora’s card.

  Pandora! I adore ya. I implore ye Don’t ignore me.

  I wrote it left-handed so that she wouldn’t know it was from me.

  Sunday February 15th

  Sepruagesima

  Mr Lucas moved back to his empty house last night. I expect he got fed up with all the rowing over the elephant Valentine’s Day card. I told my father that my mother can’t help it if a man secretly admires her. My father gave a nasty laugh and said ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, son’.

  I cleared off to my grandma’s at dinner-time. Shecooked me a proper Sunday dinner with gravy and individual Yorkshire puddings. She is never too busy to make real custard either.

  I took the dog with me and we all went for a walk in the afternoon to settle our dinners.

  My grandma hasn’t spoken to my mother since the row about the cardigans. Grandma says she ‘won’t set foot in that house again!’ Grandma asked me if I believed in life after death. I said I didn’t and grandma told me that she had joined the Spiritualist church and has heard my grandad talking about his rhubarb. My grandad has been dead for four years!!! She is going on Wednesday night to try to get in touch with him again and she wants me to go with her. She says I have got an aura around me.

  The dog choked on a chicken bone but we held it upside down and banged it hard, and the bone fell out. I’ve left the dog at grandma’s to recover from its ordeal.

  Looked up ‘Septuagesima’ in my pocket dictionary. It didn’t have it. Will look in the school dictionary, tomorrow.

  Lay awake for ages thinking about God, Life and Death and Pandora.

  Monday February 16th

  Washington’s Birthday Observance

  A letter from the BBC!!!!! A white oblong envelope with BBC in red fat letters. My name and address onthe front! Could it be that they wanted my poems? Alas, no. But a letter from a bloke called John Tydeman, here is what he wrote:

  Dear Adrian Mole,

  Thank you for the poems which you sent to the BBC and which somehow landed up on my desk. I read them with interest and, taking into account your tender years, I must confess that they do show some promise. However they are not of sufficient quality for us to consider including them in any of our current poetry programmes. Have you thought of offering them to your School Magazine or to your local Parish Magazine? (If you have one.)

  If, in future, you wish to submit any of your work to the BBC may I suggest you get it typed out and retain, also, a copy for yourself. The BBC does not normally consider submissions in handwritten manuscript form and, despite the neatness of presentation, I did have some difficulty in making out all of the words—particularly at the end of one poem entitled ‘The Tap’ where there was a rather nasty blotch which had caused the ink to run. (A teastain or a tear-stain? A case of’Your Tap runneth over’!)

  Since you wish to follow a literary career I suggest you will need to develop a thick skin in order to accept many of the inevitable future rejections you may receive with good grace and the minimum of personal pain.

  With my best wishes to you for future literary efforts—and, above all, Good Luck!

  Yours sincerely,

  John Tydeman

  P.S.: I enclose a poem by a certain John Mole which appeared in this week’s Times Literary Supplement. Is he a relation? It is very good.

  My mother and father were really impressed. I kept getting it out and reading it at school. I was hoping one of the teachers would ask to read it but none of them did.

  Bert Baxter read it while I was doing his rotten washing up. He said they were ‘all a load of drug addicts in the BBC’! His brother-in-law’s uncle once lived next door to a tea lady at Broadcasting House, so Bert knows all about the BBC.

  Pandora got seventeen Valentine’s Day cards. Nigel got seven. Even Barry Kent whom everybody hates got three! I just smiled when everybody asked me how many I got. Anyway I bet I am the only person in the school to get a letter from the BBC.

  Tuesday February 17th

  Barry Kent said he would do me over unless I gave him twenty-five pence every day. I told him that he was wasting his time demanding money with menaces from me. I never have any spare money. My mother puts my pocket money straight into my building-society account and gives me fifteen pence a day for a Mars bar. Barry Kent said I would have to give him my dinner money! I told him that my father pays it by cheque since it went up to sixty pence a day, but Barry Kent hit me in the goolies and walked off saying ‘There’s more where that came from’.

  I have put my name down for a paper round.

  Wednesday February 18th

  Full Moon

  Woke up with a pain in my goolies. Told my mother. She wanted to look but I didn’t want her to so she said I would have to soldier on. She wouldn’t give me a note excusing me from Games, so I had to stumble around in the mud again. Barry Kent trod on my head in the scrum. Mr Jones saw him and sent him off for an early shower.

  I wish I could have a non-painful illness so I could be excused Games. Something like a weak heart would be all right.

  Fetched the dog from grandma’s, she has given it a shampoo and set. It smells like the perfume counter in Woolworth’s.

  I went to the Spiritualist meeting with my grandma, it was full of dead old people. One madman stood up and said he had a radio inside his head which told him what to do. Nobody took any notice of him, so he sat down again. A woman called Alice Tonks started grunting and rolling her eyes about and talking to somebody called Arthur Mayfield, but my grandad kept quiet. My grandma was a bit sad so when we got home I made her a cup of Horlicks. She gave me fifty pence and I walked home with the dog.

  Started reading Animal Farm, by George Orwell. I think I might like to be a vet when I grow up.

  Thursday February 19th

  Prince Andrew bom,1960

  It’s all right for Prince Andrew, he is protected by bodyguards. He doesn’t have Barry Kent nicking money off him. Fifty pence gone just like that! I wish I knew karate, I would chop Barry Kent in his windpipe.

  It is quiet at home, my parents are not speaking to each other.

  Friday February 20th

  Barry Kent told Miss Elf to ‘get stuffed’ in Geography today so she sent him to Mr Scruton to be punished. I hope he gets fifty lashes. I am going to make friends with Craig Thomas. He is one of the biggest third-years. I bought him a Mars bar in break today. I pretended I felt sick and didn’t feel like eating it myself. He said, ‘Ta Moley’. That is the first time he has spoken to me. If I play my cards right I could be in his gang. Then Barry Kent wouldn’t dare touch me again.

  My mother is reading another sex book, it is called The Second Sex, by a frog writer called Simone De Beauvoir. She left it on the coffee table in the livingroom where anybody could have seen it, even my grandma!

  Saturday February 21st

  Had a dead good dream that Sabre was brutally savaging Barry Kent. Mr Scruton and Miss Elf were watching. Pandora was there, she was wearing her split skirt. She put her arms round me and said, ‘I am of the second sex’. Then I woke up to find I had had my second W.D. I have to put my pyjamas in the washing machine so my mother doesn’t find out.

  Had a good look at my face in the bathroom mirror today. I have got five spots as well as the one on my chin. I have got a few hairs on my lip. It looks as if I shall have to start shaving soon.

  Went to the garage with my father, he expected to get the car back today but it still isn’t ready. All the bits are on the work-bench. My father’s eyes rilled up with tears. I was ashamed of him. We walked to Sainsbury’s. My father bought tins of salmon, crab and shrimps and a black forest cake and some dead yukky white cheese covered in grape pips. My mother was dead mad at him when we got home because he had forgotten the bread, butter and toilet paper. She says he can’t be trusted to go on his own again. My father cheered up a bit.

  Sunday February 22nd

  Sexagesima

  My f
ather has gone fishing with the dog. Mr Lucas came for dinner and stayed for tea. He ate three slices of the black forest cake. We played Monopoly. Mr Lucas was banker. My mother kept going into jail. I won because I was the only one concentrating properly. My father came in the front door and Mr Lucas went out of the back door. My father said he had been looking forward to the black forest cake all day. There was none left. My father said he had not had a bite to eat or a bite on his fishing line all day. My mother gave him grape-pip cheese on Ry-king for his supper. He threw it at the wall and said he wasn’t a ******* mouse he was a ******* man and my mother said it was a long time since he had done any *******! I was sent out of the room then. It is a terrible thing to hear your own mother swearing. I blame it on all those books she has been reading. She hasn’t ironed my school uniform yet, I hope she remembers.

  I let the dog sleep in my room tonight, it doesn’t like quarrelling.

  Monday February 23rd

  Got a letter from Mr Cherry the newsagent to say I can start a paper round tomorrow. Worse luck! Bert Baxter is worried about Sabre because he is offhis food and not trying to bite anybody. He asked me to take him to the PDSA for a check-up. I said I would take him tomorrow if his condition hadn’t improved.

  I’m fed up with washing up for Bert. He seems to live off fried eggs, it is no joke trying to wash up in cold water without any washing-up liquid. Also there is never a dry tea towel. In fact there are never any tea towels and Sabre has ripped up all the bath towels so I don’t know how Bert can even have a wash! I think I’ll see if I can get Bert a home help.

  I have got to concentrate on getting my GCEs if I want to be a vet.

  Tuesday February 24th

  St Matthias

  Got up at six o’clock for my paper round. I have got Elm Tree Avenue. It is dead posh. All the papers they read are very heavy: The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. Just my luck! Bert said Sabre is better, he tried to bite the milkman.

  Wednesday February 25th

  Bed early tonight because of my paper round. Delivered twenty-five Punches as well as the papers.

  Thursday February 26th

  The papers got mixed up today. Elm Tree Avenue got the Sun and the Mirror and Corporation Row got the heavy papers.

  I don’t know why everybody went so mad. You’d think they would enjoy reading a different paper for a change.

  Friday February 27th

  Last Quarter

  Early this morning I saw Pandora walking down the drive of 69 Elm Tree Avenue. She had a riding hat and jodphurs on so she couldn’t have been on her way to school. I didn’t let her see me. I don’t want her to know that I am doing a menial job.

  So now I know where Pandora lives! I had a good look at the house. It is much bigger than ours. It has got rolled-up wooden blinds at all the windows, and the rooms look like jungles because of all the green plants. I looked through the letterbox and saw the big ginger cat eating something on the kitchen table. They have the Guardian,Punch, Private Eye, and New Society. Pandora reads Jackie, the comic for girls; she is not an intellectual, like me. But I don’t suppose Malcolm Muggeridge’s wife is either.

  Saturday February 28th

  Pandora has got a little fat horse called ‘Blossom’. She feeds it and makes it jump over barrels every morning before school. I know because I hid behind her father’s Volvo and then followed her to a field next to the disused railway line. I hid behind a scrap car in the corner of the field and watched her. She looked dead good in her riding stuff, her chest was wobbling like mad. She will need to wear a bra soon. My heart was beating so loudly in my throat that I felt like a stereo loudspeaker, so I left before she heard me.

  People complained because the papers were late. I had a Guardian left over in my paper bag so I took it home to read. It was full of spelling mistakes. It is disgusting when you think of how many people who can spell are out of work.

  Sunday March 1st

  Quinquagesima. St David’s Day

  I took some sugar to Blossom before I did my paper round. It brought me closer to Pandora somehow.

  Have strained my back because of carrying all the Sunday supplements. Took the leftover Sunday People home as a present to my mother but she said it was only fit for lining the dustbin. Got my two pounds and six pence for six mornings, it is slave labour! And I have to give Barry Kent half of it. Mr Cherry said hehad a complaint from number 69 Elm Tree Avenue, that they didn’t get a Guardian yesterday. Mr Cherry sent a Daily Express round with his apologies, but Pandora’s father brought it back to the shop and said he ‘would rather go without’.

  Didn’t bother reading the papers today, I am fed up with papers. Had chow mein and beansprouts for Sunday dinner.

  Mr Lucas came round when my father had gone to visit grandma. He was wearing a plastic daffodil in his sports jacket.

  My spots have completely gone. It must be the early morning air.

  Monday March 2nd

  My mother has just come into my room and said she had something awful to tell me. I sat up in bed and put a dead serious expression on my face just in case she’d got six months to live or she’d been caught shoplifting or something. She fiddled with the curtains, dropped cigarette ash all over my Concorde model and started mumbling on about ‘adult relationships’ and ‘life being complicated’ and how she must ‘find herself. She said she was fond of me. Fond!!! And would hate to hurt me. And then she said that for some women marriage was like being in prison. Then she went out.

  Marriage is nothing like being in prison! Women are let out every day to go to the shops and stuff, andquite a lot go to work. I think my mother is being a bit melodramatic.

  Finished Animal Farm. It is dead symbolic. I cried when Boxer was taken to the vet’s. From now on I shall treat pigs with the contempt they deserve. I am boycotting pork of all kinds.

  Tuesday March 3rd

  Shrove Tuesday

  I gave Barry Kent his protection money today. I don’t see how there can be a God. If there was surely he wouldn’t let people like Barry Kent walk about menacing intellectuals? Why are bigger youths unpleasant to smaller youths? Perhaps their brains are easily worn out with all the extra work they have to do making bigger bones and stuff, or it could be that the big youths have got brain damage because of all the sport they play, or perhaps big youths just like menacing and fighting. When I go to university I may study the problem.

  I will have my thesis published and I will send a copy to Barry Kent. Perhaps by then he will have learnt to read.

  My mother had forgotten that today was pancake day. I reminded her at 11 PM. I’m sure she burnt them deliberately. I will be fourteen in one month’s time.

  Wednesday March 4th

  Ash Wednesday.

  Had a nasty shock this morning. Took my empty paper sack back to Mr Cherry’s newsagent’s and saw Mr Lucas looking at those magazines on the top shelf. I stood behind the Mills and Boon rack and distinctly saw him choose Bigand Bouncy, pay for it and leave the shop with it hidden inside his coat. Big and Bouncy is extremely indecent. It is full of disgusting pictures. My mother should be informed.

  Thursday March 5th

  My father got his car back from the garage today. He was cleaning it and gloating over it for a whole two hours. I noticed that the stick-on waving hand I bought him for Christmas was missing from the rear window. I told him he ought to complain to the garage but he said he didn’t want to make a fuss. We went to my grandma’s to test-drive the car. She gave us a cup of Bovril and a piece of yukky seedcake. She didn’t ask how my mother was, she said my father was looking thin and pale and needed ‘feeding up’.

  She told me that Bert Baxter had been thrown out of the Evergreens because of his bad behaviour at Skegness. The coach was waiting for two hours for him at the coach station. A search party was sent out to look in the pubs, then Bert came back, drunk butalone and another search party was sent out to look for the first search party. In the end the police had to be sent f
or and they took hours to round up all the pensioners and get them in the coach.

  My grandma said the journey back was a nightmare. All the pensioners kept falling out (with each other not out of the coach). Bert Baxter was reciting a dirty poem about an Eskimo and Mrs Harriman had a funny turn and had to have her corsets loosened.

  Grandma said two pensioners had passed on since the outing, she blamed Bert Baxter and said ‘He as good as murdered them’, but I think it was more likely that the cold wind at Skegness killed them off. I said, ‘Bert Baxter is not so bad when you get to know him’. She said she didn’t understand why the Good Lord took my grandad and left scum like Baxter. Then she pulled her lips tight and dabbled her eyes with a handkerchief, so we left.

  My mother was out when we got home, she has joined some women’s group.

  Heard my father say ‘goodnight’, to the car. He must be cracking up!

  Friday March 6th

  New Moon

  Mr Cherry is very pleased with my work and he has raised my wages by two and a halfpence an hour. He also offered me the Corporation Row evening round, but I declined his offer. Corporation Row is where thecouncil put all the bad tenants. Barry Kent lives at number 13.

  Mr Cherry gave me two back copies of Big and Bouncy. He told me not tell my mother. As if I would! I have put them under my mattress. Intellectuals like me are allowed to be interested in sex. It is ordinary people like Mr Lucas who should be ashamed of themselves.

  Phoned Social Services today and asked about a home help for Bert Baxter. I told a lie and said I was his grandson. They are sending a social worker to see him on Monday.