by Sue Townsend
When I went into the sluice room to find a vase for the carnations I’d bought, I heard a registrar at the nurses station whining about the ‘bed-blockers’. When I said goodbye to Mrs Wormington, she said, ‘Tara lad, God bless, see you tomorrow’ I’m trapped! Trapped!
Another pensioner has broken into my life and is holding me to ransom.
Friday, May 19
Glenn asked why the washing line was full of wincey-ette nighties and big knickers. I explained, and he said, ‘I’m relieved, Dad, I thought you was on the turn.’
Saturday, May 20
I woke with a jolt at 3am just as Leo Blair was being born (am I psychically connected to Cherie?). I went downstairs to discover that Pamela Pigg had shoved a note through the letterbox at some time during the night. On pink Filofax paper, she had written:
Dear Adrian,
I went out on a hen night with the girls from the homeless unit tonight. Phillipa, the one with the teeth, is getting ‘married’ to Mary, the one with the nose, on Wednesday morning. We went to Humperdink’s, the new nightclub in Melton Mowbray. I felt terribly out of place. It was full of teenage girls wearing very small garments. I felt horribly frumpy in my Principles polka-dot outfit. It’s the last time I follow the advice of the Leicester Mercury’s fashion correspondent.
However, the point is, Adrian, the DJ played our song, My Heart Will Go On. I had to leave the dancefloor. Do you remember your emotional state when we came out of the multiplex, after seeing Titanic? It was the first time I had seen a grown man cry. I felt very privileged. I miss you, Adrian. Can we try again? It was stupid of me to have flown into a temper over a silly book.
Love, forever, Pammy.
PS: Mary and Phillipa say you are welcome to come to the wedding. I am to be their best person. No presents, but donations to the Fawcett Society appreciated.
PPS: I’ve had disturbing thoughts of yielding myself to you.
Talk about blackmail! If I attend the lesbian wedding with her, she will ‘yield’ to me, will she? Does she imagine that I am so sexually frustrated that I would spend another minute in the company of a woman who became hysterical when she discovered a copy of Philip Larkin’s Diaries on my bookshelf?
Wednesday, May 24
The wedding went off all right. I was the only man there. Even the registrar was a woman. Is this the beginning of the end for men? Pamela came back to Arthur Askey Way, but refused to ‘yield’ to me when she saw Kingsley Amis’s Letters on my bedside table and Mrs Wormington’s knickers on the line.
Sunday, May 28
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
The resemblance between Leo Blair and William Hague is uncanny. Each is the other’s doppelgänger. Put Mr Hague in a romper suit, bootees and a woolly hat, and he is the living embodiment of Master Blair. Can Cherie and William account for their movements on the day of Leo’s conception? I wouldn’t be surprised if, even as I write, Mr Blair is angrily confronting a tearful Mrs Blair at Chequers. And Ffion must have seen Leo’s photograph and questioned her husband’s fidelity.
My mother shares my suspicions – we have several children in our family whose paternity remains a mystery. If I were Mr Blair, I would demand a DNA test immediately. How can he concentrate on affairs of state or face Mr Hague across the dispatch box until he knows the Truth?
Incidentally, if my long-held theory is true (that William Hague is Margaret Thatcher’s love child) this would mean that young Leo has Thatcher’s blood in his veins. I do not usually prescribe to conspiracy theories, but in this case I feel compelled to warn somebody – but who?
Tuesday, May 30
Pandora is in the constituency tomorrow. She is the guest of honour at the closing-down ceremony at St Barnabas’ Library. The barbecue in the library car park starts at 6.30pm. I may take the boys. I will also voice my fears to Pandora about the right-wing blood alliance of Blair, Hague and Thatcher.
Wednesday, May 31
It was a painful sight to see hardbacks being used to fuel the cooking of WhoppaBurgers and Buy A Big Boy Hot Dog. The newly retired librarian, Mrs Froggatt, threw a few Barbara Cartlands on to the barbecue when the heat died down. They flared up with an eerie, pink glow. I managed to save some PG Wodehouses and William Browns from the flames, but there was nothing I could do for the others. Glenn couldn’t watch. ‘It ain’t right, Dad,’ he said. Underneath his rough exterior, he is quite a sensitive lad.
Pandora turned up at 7pm and made a speech saying that libraries are now redundant due to the growth of the internet.
One old man in the crowd shouted: ‘I can’t afford to go on-line on 75p a week!’
I tried to talk to Pandora about my suspicions regarding Leo Blair, but she was in a hurry to get away, having realised that being photographed in front of a pyre of books was a potential public-relations disaster.
Thursday, June 1
Mrs Wormington is well enough to come out of hospital. Her son, Ted, turned up out of the blue and tried to persuade her to go into a nursing home. I was visiting her at the time with Glenn and William. She hadn’t seen Ted for 21 years, because of a row about a clock. She was adamant that she wanted to return to her own home.
Ted said: ‘You’re being daft, Mam. You can’t live on your own at the age of 95. If you won’t go into a nursing home, you’ll have to come and live with me and Eunice.’
A look of horror passed over her multi-wrinkled face. While Ted went to telephone Eunice, Mrs Wormington clutched at my sleeve. She said, ‘Don’t let him take me to live with him and Eunice. I’ll be dead in a week. That Eunice is a miserable bugger – she’s never been known to crack her face’ When Ted came back, he said that Eunice was still resentful about the clock. Glenn announced, ‘It’s alright, she’s comin’ ‘ome with us’ I could easily have killed him.
Friday, June 2
Mrs Wormington has been slagging off the Queen Mother. ‘She’s never done a hand’s turn in her life,’ she said. ‘No wonder she’s always smilin’’ She moves in with us tomorrow. The adult Pampers delivery service has been alerted.
Saturday, June 3
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Because of Mrs Wormington’s advanced age (95), it is like having a living history book permanently open on the kitchen table. A mention of Dunkirk brings an anecdote about the little boat, the Betty Grable, that her younger brother Cedric sailed across the English Channel during the evacuation. ‘He weren’t the same when he came back,’ she said. ‘He took up knitting and joined the Communist party’ Apparently, both of these activities were enough to banish him from the bosom of the Wormington family. ‘I used to write to him in secret,’ she said. ‘And on his birthday I’d send him a knitting pattern’ William and Glen have been glued to the Dunkirk coverage across television, hoping to see Cedric on the Betty Grable.
Sunday, June 4
My mother came round to stay with Mrs Wormington and the boys while I went to see my father in hospital. His original injuries are healing, but he is still ill with the infection he caught in hospital. Apparently, his body has shrugged off most of the powerful antibiotics given to him. My father has taken to boasting about this – as in ‘there’s not an antibiotic alive that can touch George Mole’.
Tania, his newish wife, has worked hard to turn him into a middle-class new man. But, I fear, to no avail. Since his garden pagoda accident, he has reverted to type: the Sun is delivered to his bed every morning by the Women’s Voluntary Service, and he inevitably picks all the stodgy items on the computerised menu form. Tania has given up reading improving literature to him, since he laughed out loud at the end of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
When I arrive home, I find a heartening scene of inter-generational harmony. Mrs Wormington, my mother, Glen and William are sitting in a circle passing the nit comb from one to the other. William has introduced head lice into our house yet again.
Ivan Braithwaite came to pick up my mother. He has recently been diagnosed as suffering from over-choice syndrome. He broke down
in the washing-powder aisle at Safeway. He was observed on a CCTV camera to be acting bizarrely – walking up and down the aisle for a full 20 minutes while scribbling calculations on a notepad. He then knelt by the boxes of Persil biological tablets and wept. When my mother finally turned up to collect him, he was sitting in the manager’s office, hungry and thirsty. He’d been offered tea or coffee and ginger nuts or digestives, but had, of course, been unable to choose between them.
I don’t like the man, but I sympathise with his affliction. My own temples start to throb when it comes to choosing between the hundreds of shampoos on offer.
Monday June 5
Worked on Sty, my pig novel. Since finishing with Pamela Pigg, I have been writing better than ever I have done before. Was P Pig blocking me in some way?
Tuesday, June 6
While the boys were at school and Mrs Wormington was having her feet done by a peripatetic chiropodist, I wrote 250 words of Sty. Should I give my pig-hero a name, or should the pig stand for struggling humanity? I need literary advice from an editor.
10pm. Just looked up ‘Editors’ on the net and found the editor of the year…
To:
Walrus Books, Kensington
Dear Louise Moore,
Congratulations on your prestigious win. My name is Adrian Mole. I am a full-time carer and part-time novelist and dramatist (as yet unpublished and unperformed). My current work-in-progress is a stream-of-consciousness novel about a pig. I have set myself some problems – obviously, I am not a pig myself and I have no idea what pigs think about all day. May I come to see you? I remain, madam your most humble and obedient servant,
Adrian Mole.
Friday, June 8
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
I am on the very horns of a dilemma. An insert fell out of my Daily Express today, a colourful shiny piece of A6 paper headed ‘Celebrity Star Match!’ invited me to scratch off the panel on an illustration of a Mercedes convertible, to reveal a picture of a famous star. I did as instructed. Slowly, as a tiny pile of metallic grey dust collected, I began to see features of Cameron Diaz.
Mrs Wormington was looking over my shoulder. ‘Oos she when she’s at ‘ome?’ she said (the last time she went to the cinema was to see Rock Hudson. I pray she never finds out that Rock had to steel himself to kiss Doris Day, the truth could easily kill her.) I carried on reading the instructions: ‘Now, one at a time, starting with panel one, scratch the four panels alongside’ At this point, Glenn and William begged to be allowed to scratch two panels each. Glenn read further instructions aloud as William scratched. ‘If you reveal a matching picture – stop scratching – you’re a winner!’ Alas, his vigorous work with the two-pence piece revealed Tom Cruise and George Clooney. Mrs Wormington peered at these two megga heart-throbs and pronounced them ‘Nancy boys’ who looked as if they ‘couldn’t stuff a lavender bag’.
William pronounced himself to be ‘devastated’ at his failure. I must stop him watching so much television, it is having a deleterious effect on his vocabulary. He has no sense of proportion. He fell off his tricycle yesterday. When I asked him if he was all right he said, ‘I’m cool Dad, I just want to get on with the rest of my life.’
The tension grew as Glenn picked up the coin. He took a deep breath and scratched away. The features of Samuel L Jackson gradually took shape. Mrs Wormington confused him with Michael Jackson and seemed to be under the impression that M Jackson had actually married his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles. I tried to explain to her that the ape had, in fact, been the best man at Elizabeth Taylor’s last wedding, but I could see that the ways of the modern world were beyond her comprehension.
The atmosphere was now so tense that I could feel the word ‘palpable’ vibrating in the air of the room. Glenn closed his eyes in silent prayer, then scratched at the fourth panel. Unbelievably, incredibly, the smiling face of Cameron Diaz appeared from among the grey filings. Our collective shout of delight brought Vince and Peggy Ludlow round from next door. ‘I’ve won a Mercedes, Dad!’ shouted Glenn and we had a collective hug, though we didn’t include Mrs Wormington, who has brittle bones. I read on feverishly.
‘Winners can find out what they’ve won right now. Just call 09065511020 and listen. Have a pen ready to write down your personal claims number which you will need if you claim a prize.’
I turned the leaflet over. Glenn hadn’t necessarily won a convertible Mercedes, though for at least 10 deliriously happy seconds, he thought he had. He told me later that he had fantasised in that short time about driving to school in the silver car with the hood down and gangsta rap playing on the in-car stereo. He’d parked next to the headmaster’s clapped-out VW and had walked across the playground with the car keys swinging from his index finger. I had to break the news to him that he may have won other, lesser prizes, including: a weekend in Cannes with £500, a dishwasher, a set of hardwood garden furniture, or, even lesser prizes such as key cases, razor sets, kitchen scissors and mixed seed packs.
Peggy read further down the leaflet and pointed out that to discover what Glenn had actually won would cost me £1 a minute, and that the average call lasted longer than 3.5 minutes.
You see my dilemma, diary? Do I fork out more than three quid only to find that Glenn has won a packet of mixed seeds, or do I take a stand against exploitation and risk losing a convertible Mercedes?
Thursday, June 22
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire
There is great excitement in the street. Brandon Ludlow, 22-year-old soccer fan, is due home this afternoon from Charleroi, Belgium. A banner has been erected outside the Ludlows’ house. It says Welcome Home Our Hero.
Brandon was arrested before the England Romania match. Apparently, he was having a quiet meal at a pavement café and was talking about Jane Austen with his friend, ‘Mad Dog’ Jackson, when a brutal Belgian policeman in riot gear thrashed him unmercifully with a baton.
Mad Dog Jackson escaped, but Brandon was restrained with a cable tie and thrown into the back of a police van where he lay, face down, only inches from a pool of urine. When the van was full, it was driven to a police station. Brandon was pushed towards a holding cell, where he and 40 others stood until daybreak. Brandon was not allowed to phone the Ludlows, his family (and anyway, it would have been a futile exercise since the Ludlows’ phone had been cut off by BT for non-payment).
Peggy Ludlow is threatening to sue the Belgian prime minister as soon as she finds out who he is. As she was preparing the party food, she said, ‘Adrian, our Brandon is the only one of my kids who ain’t a hooligan. Our Brandon’s always been a strange kid, you know, reading books for pleasure and talking about things that none of the rest of us are interested in.’
She told me that Brandon only went to the match for research purposes. He is writing an essay about David Beckham, entitled God Or Idiot Savant? He is hoping to see it published in the London Review Of Books.
4pm: I can tell from the noise outside – car horns blaring, whistles blowing, Dobermans barking – that Brandon has arrived home. We have all been invited to the party. Glenn and William are very excited, as they have been watching the rioting in Charleroi avidly.
In fact, they have shown more interest in the fighting on the streets than they have shown in the football on the pitch. Mrs Wormington talked to me as I ironed one of her vast, full-skirted summer frocks. According to her, certain sections of young Englishmen have always behaved like Barbarians when they have travelled abroad as a group. She said, ‘How do you think we managed to capture all them foreign countries. It weren’t the limp-wristed brigade what done it and coloured the map pink.’
She insisted on wearing a hat to the Ludlows’ party, seemingly under the impression that it was Ludlow Castle she was going to rather than the front room of a council house. I had a very interesting talk to Brandon, who is indeed a sensitive, intelligent, young man. He reminded me of my younger self, before I became trapped in single fatherhood and the endless round of domestic duties (whi
ch now includes caring for a nonagenarian). Over Mother’s Pride and Kraft processed cheese sandwiches, we discussed his ordeal. Brandon said that his night in the cells was only made tolerable by the fact that a barrister had also been arrested and had happened to have a copy of last week’s Spectator magazine on him. This same barrister kept trying to get his fellow hooligans to chant Boris Johnson’s name, but few joined in and eventually he gave up and went to sleep, but only after confessing to Brandon a particularly lurid sexual fantasy that included Petronella Wyatt and Bruce Anderson.
After a heated discussion with Vince Ludlow about Mrs Worthington’s habit of banging on the party wall with an orthopaedic shoe every time the Ludlows enjoyed sexual congress, I took my family home.
Sunday, June 25
Brandon came round as promised to read my manuscript of Sty! I dare not let it out of my sight. A lot of work has gone into the first three chapters. Brandon looked up after the first few pages and said that he thought it was a mistake to call my pig hero Lucifer, as it set up false Mephistophelean expectations in the reader. I could have done without such stinging criticism but I have to concede that Brandon has a point. While waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle, I re-christened Lucifer and call him Peter. It is amazing what a difference this has made to the tone. It now reads like a children’s book. I may subtitle it A Farm Yard Allegory. Watch out, Harry Potter. Peter Pig is on the way!
Saturday, July 1
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire
To kill two birds with one stone, I decided to read the opening chapter of Sty! to William as a bedtime story. The political and philosophical sub-text will be beyond him, but I hoped that the narrative would grip him. After a few paragraphs, he bleated that he wanted a Noddy And Big Ears story, but I persevered.
