by Sue Townsend
Thursday December 31st
The last day of the year! A lot has happened. I have fallen in love. Been a one-parent child. Gone Intellectual. And had two letters from the BBC. Not bad going for a 14¾-year-old!
My mother and father have been to a New Year’s Eve dance at the Grand Hotel. My mother actually wore a dress! It is over a year since she showed her legs in public.
Pandora and I saw the New Year in together, we had a dead passionate session accompanied by Andy Stewart and a bagpiper.
My father came crashing through the front door at 1 AM carrying a lump of coal in his hand. Drunk as usual.
My mother started going on about what a wonderful son I was and how much she loved me. It’s a pity she never says anything like that when she is sober.
Winter 1982
Friday January 1st
Bank Holiday in UK, Rep. of Ireland, USA and Canada
These are my New Year’s resolutions:
I will be true to Pandora.
I will bring my bike in at night.
I will not read unworthy books.
I will study hard for my O levels, and get Grade ‘A’s.
I will try to be more kind to the dog.
I will try to find it in my heart to forgive Barry Kent his multiple sins.
I will clean the bath after use.
I will stop worrying about the size of my thing.
I will do my back-stretching exercises every nightwithout fail.
I will learn a new word and use it every day.
Saturday January 2nd
Bank Holiday in Scotland (a day may be given in lieu)
How interesting it is that Aabec should be an Australian bark used for making sweat.
Sunday January 3rd
Second after Christmas. Moon’s First Quarter
I wouldn’t mind going to Africa and hunting an Aardvark.
Monday January 4th
Whilst in Africa I would go south and look out for an Aardwolf.
Tuesday January 5th
And I would avoid tangling with an Aasvogel.
Wednesday January 6th
Epiphany
I keep having nightmares about the bomb. I hope it isn’t dropped before I get my GCE results in August 1983.1 wouldn’t like to die an unqualified virgin.
Thursday January 7th
Nigel came round to look at my racing bike. He said that it was mass produced, unlike his bike that was ‘made by a craftsman in Nottingham’. I have gone off Nigel, and I have also gone off my bike a bit.
Friday January 8th
Got a wedding invitation from Bert and Queenie, they are getting married on January 16th at Pocklington Street Register Office.
In my opinion it is a waste of time. Bert is nearly ninety and Queenie is nearly eighty. I will leave it until the last minute before I buy a wedding present.
It has started snowing again. I asked my mother to buy me some green Wellingtons like the Queen’s but she came back with dead common black ones. I only need them to walk Pandora to our gate. I am staying in until the snow melts. Unlike most youths of my age, I dislike frolicking in the snow.
Saturday January 9th
Full Moon
Nigel said the end of the world is coming tonight. He said the moon is having a total collapse. (Nigel should read Reader’s Digest and increase his word power.) True enough it did go dark, I held my breath and feared the worst but then the moon recovered and life went on as usual, except in York where fate has flooded the town centre.
Sunday January 10th
First after Epiphany
I can’t understand why my father looks so old at forty-one compared to President Reagan at seventy. My father has got no work or worries yet he looks dead haggard. Poor President Reagan has to carry the world’s safety on his shoulders yet he is always smiling and looking cheerful. It doesn’t make sense.
Monday January 11th
I’ve been looking through last year’s diary and have been reminded that Malcolm Muggeridge never did reply to my letter about what to do if you are an intellectual. That is a first-class stamp wasted! I should have written to the British Museum, that’s where all the intellectuals hang out.
Tuesday January 12th
Pandora and I went to the youth club tonight. It was quite good. Rick Lemon led a discussion on sex. Nobody said anything, but he showed some interesting slides of wombs cut in half.
Wednesday January 13th
Pandora’s parents have had a massive row. They are sleeping in separate bedrooms. Pandora’s mother has joined the SDP and Pandora’s father is staying loyal to the Labour Party.
Pandora is a Liberal, so she gets on all right with them both.
Thursday January 14th
Pandora’s father has come out of the closet and admitted that he is a Bennite. Pandora is staying loyal to him, but if the Co-op Dairy find out he will be finished.
Friday January 15th
Thank God the snow is melting! At last I can walk the streets in safety, secure in the knowledge that no one is going to ram a snowball down the back of my anorak.
Saturday January 16th
Moon’s Last Quarter
Bert got married today.
The Alderman Cooper Sunshine Home hired a coach and took the old ladies to form a guard of honour with their walking-frames.
Bert looked dead good. He cashed his life insurance in and spent the money on a new suit. Queenie was wearing a hat made of flowers and fruit. She had a lot of orange make–up on her face to try and cover the wrinkles. Even Sabre had a red bow round his neck. I think it was kind of the RSPCA to let Sabre out for his master’s wedding. My father and Pandora’s father carried Bert’s wheelchair up the steps with Bert a single man and then down again with Bert a married man. The old ladies threw rice and confetti and my mother and Pandora’s mother gave Queenie a kiss and a lucky horseshoe.
A newspaper reporter and photographer made everyone pose for photographs. I was asked my name, but I said I didn’t want publicity for my acts of charity to Bert.
The reception took place back at the home. Matron made a cake with ‘B’ and ‘Q’ written in Jellytots.
Bert and Queenie are moving into a bungalow on Monday, after they have had their honeymoon in the home.
Honeymoon! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Sunday January 17th
Second after Epiphany
Last night I dreamed about a boy like me collecting pebbles in the rain. It was a dead strange dream.
I am reading The Black Prince, by Iris Murdoch. I can only understand one word in ten. It is now my ambition to actually enjoy one of her books. Then I will know I am above the common herd.
Monday January 18th
School. First day of term. Loads of GCE homework. I will never cope. I am an intellectual but at the same time I am not very clever.
Tuesday January 19th
Brought four hundred and eighty-three copies of The Voice of Youth home in my satchel and Adidas bag. Mr Jones needs the games cupboard.
Wednesday January 20th
Two-and-a-half hours of homework! I will crack under the strain.
Thursday January 21st
My brain is hurting. I have just had two pages of Macbeth to translate into English.
Friday January 22nd
I am destined to become a manual worker. I can’t keep working under this pressure. Miss Elf said my work is perfectly satisfactory, but that isn’t good enough when Pandora keeps getting ‘Excellent’ in red pen on everything she does.
Saturday January 23rd
Stayed in bed until five-thirty to make sure I missed Salisbury’s. Listened to Radio Four play about domestic unhappiness. Phoned Pandora. Did Geography homework. Teased dog. Went to sleep. Woke up. Worried for ten minutes. Got up. Made cocoa. I am a nervous wreck.
Sunday January 24th
Third after Epiphany
My mother blames my bad nerves on Iris Murdoch.
She says painful adolescence shouldn’
t be read about when one is studying for O levels.
Monday January 25th
New Moon
Couldn’t do my Maths homework. Phoned the Samaritans. The nice man on the end of the phone told me the answer was nine-eighths. He was dead kind to someone in despair.
Tuesday January 26th
The stupid Samaritan got the answer wrong! It’s only seven-fifths. I only got six out of twenty. Pandora got them all right. In fact she got a hundred per cent.
Wednesday January 27th
My mother is holding her women’s rights meetings in our lounge. I can’t concentrate on my homework properly with women laughing and shouting and stamping up the stairs. They are not a bit ladylike.
Thursday January 28th
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.
Friday January 29th
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.
Saturday January 30th
Migraine. Too ill to write.
Sunday January 31st
Fourth after Epiphany
Pandora came round. I copied her homework. Feel better.
Monday February 1st
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.
Tuesday February 2nd
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.
Wednesday February 3rd
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.
Thursday February 4th
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.
Friday February 5th
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.
Saturday February 6th
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.
Sunday February 7th
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.
Monday February 8th
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.
Tuesday February 9th
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.
Wednesday February 10th
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!
Thursday February 11th
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.
Friday February 12th
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.
Saturday February 13th
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.
Sunday February 14th
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.
Monday February 15th
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.
Tuesday February 16th
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.
Wednesday February 17th
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.
Thursday February 18th
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.
Friday February 19th
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.
Saturday February 20th
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!
Sunday February 21st
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.
Monday February 22nd
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.
Tuesday February 23rd
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.
