by Sue Townsend
When I next looked back at the stage, Raki was giving an improvised speech about the difficulties of being a radical feminist growing up in a fundamentalist Muslim household. Mohammed muttered, ‘If she thinks she’s gettin’ them Timberland boots for Christmas, she’s gotta nuther think comin’’ Mr Billington gave a speech at the end thanking the children for their ‘enthusiastic grasp of improvisational techniques’. He wished us all a ‘merry holiday’.
As we walked to the car park together, Mohammed said, ‘Moley, why don’t they do a proper Nativity play no more?’ I said that it was felt in some circles that it was inappropriate in a multicultural school. Mohammed laughed and said, ‘What kinda circles? Crop?’
We went for a Christmas drink at the Kings Head. I asked for a cheese roll, but was told that they only do Thai food now. I didn’t fancy slurping on a bowl of noodles as I drank, so I ate nothing. As a consequence, I felt slightly drunk when I got home and phoned Pamela Pigg and asked her out. She accepted eagerly, saying, ‘I’ve longed for this moment’ After putting down the phone, I cursed the two pints of shandy I had consumed earlier.
Monday, December 25
Christmas Day has been blighted. A tragedy has befallen my family. Last night, my mother was arrested and charged with GBH. The tableau of Becks, Posh and Brooklyn in her front garden drew huge crowds of gawpers. Bail was refused because she gave a policeman a Chinese burn on his wrist when he tried to dismantle Brooklyn’s crib. The policeman is undergoing trauma counselling, and is expected to be on sick leave for two months.
∨ The Lost Diaries 1999-2001 ∧
2001
Monday, January 1
1.30am
I saw the new year in alone. Glenn has gone to a fancy-dress party at his mother’s house. Rather disturbingly, he went as Hannibal Lecter. William is spending the weekend with his mother and her new husband, who are on honeymoon in London.
I hope my ex-wife and her new spouse can forget their sexual passion for long enough to pay proper attention to William. The lad has had two major disappointments in his life lately:
Santa’s broken promise to bring him a Sony PlayStation 2;
Santa’s broken promise to bring him a Barbie Plane.
As midnight struck, I reopened the bottle of sparkling chardonnay I failed to finish on Christmas Day, but the sparkle had gone out of it. So I poured it down the sink.
As I wrote the numbers 2001, I was transported back to a classroom at the Neil Armstrong comprehensive, and a lesson on ‘the future’ given by Miss Elf, the humanities teacher. By 2001, according to Miss Elf, the world would be one, big, happy, cappuccino-coloured family. I remember her drawing this frontier-less world. How the chalk dust flew!
Miss Elf was a passionate and committed teacher. In fact, not long after I left school she was committed to the High Towers mental hospital, following a doomed staff-room romance with Podgy Perkins, the games master. He was married with seven children, all boys. (Interestingly, all the boys’ names began with G.) Strange what the memory throws up.
Anyway, Miss Elf envisaged that, by 2001, there would be no hunger in the world and that everybody would have access to clean water and a flushing toilet. She drew a typical 2001 world family on the board, using a fresh box of coloured chalks. They all had brown skin and wore white, shiny, body-suits with pointy shoulders. Attached to their ankles were tiny jet engines. These devices enabled the 2001 family to fly like the birds. Though, as she pointed out, intercontinental travel would necessitate many refuelling stops.
Perhaps it is a good thing that Miss Elf is gibbering behind the high walls of an institution. She would be heartbroken to know that her utopian vision is as far away as ever, and that Israel and Palestine are still arguing the toss.
New Year Resolutions
I will try and secure the services of Dame Helena Kennedy in a bid to get my mother out of prison.
I will persist in trying to get my serial killer comedy, The White Van, made by the BBC.
I will try to be less judgmental. Perhaps Jeffrey Archer is innocent. Perhaps the Dome was worth a billion pounds.
I will look into the Buddhist religion with a view to becoming a cohort. I have always had a horror of treading on insects. Ants in particular.
I will attempt to fall in love with a suitable woman this year. One that doesn’t cry a lot or use too much blue eye shadow.
I’ll teach my son’s the proper use of the apostrophe.
Tuesday, January 2
Pandora is back from Israel where she claimed to be on a fact-finding mission about Jerusalem. I remarked on her tan. She said, ‘Yeah, I managed to get a few days off in Eilat, swimming with the dolphins’ How I envy Pandora’s physical prowess! I would find it difficult to swim with goldfish.
I asked her if she was any nearer to achieving her medium-term goal, that of becoming foreign secretary. She tossed her treacle-coloured hair back and said, ‘It’s acknowledged by those that count – Ian Hislop, Auberon Waugh and Andrew Rawnsley – that Robin’s got to go. The man is now totally incomprehensible. How poor bloody foreigners understand his mad gabble, God only knows.’
Monday, January 8
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
I woke at 7.32am with a headache. Thankfully, the boys were still asleep, so I was able to dress and attend to my toilette in peace for once. I did not wash my hair in the shower. The friction caused by the massaging of the shampoo into the scalp is putting a strain on my follicles and causing hair loss. I was pleased to use one of those shower caps, which I have collected from hotel bathrooms over the years.
The reason for my tension headache must be linked to the fact that Pamela Pigg stayed last night. Or, at least, most of the night – she left my bed at 4.30 after sobbing for an hour and a half, incidentally smearing one of my finest pillow slips in blue eye-shadow.
Our date went well considering that Pamela had a heavy cold and kept asking the waiter for more paper serviettes in which to blow her nose. We talked about our on⁄off relationship, and Pamela blamed our sexual incompatibility for the fact that it was mostly off. She said she was willing to try again, and told me she had forced herself to read The Joy Of Sex, and then been astonished at the range of things on offer. She made it sound like the Argos catalogue.
After a protracted argument with the waiter about the bill (I refused to pay £3.50 for the extra services), we left the restaurant arm in arm. In the car on the way home, she placed her right hand over my left. It was difficult changing gear, but I didn’t complain.
When we got home, Glenn was still up, doing his humanities homework. He was stuck on one question: ‘Name three members of the shadow cabinet, apart from William Hague.’
Unfortunately, neither me nor Pamela could help him out. When Pamela went to the lavatory, Glenn glanced at her and whispered, ‘You must be desperate, Dad’ In the lull before Pamela’s return, I remembered Ann Widdecombe. When Pamela returned, smelling of Poison, and with newly applied pink lipstick, Glenn tactfully withdrew and went to bed.
I put on a Beethoven CD, the 1812, and tried to dim the lights, but the dimmer switch refused to work, so we sat under the glare of 500-watt spotlights. After a little conversation about my mother in prison, we went upstairs. Pamela apologised for her sports bra and utility-type knickers, saying that her best underwear was in the wash. I said it didn’t matter, but, in truth, I was very hurt. She had known about our date for over a week. Surely that was enough time in which to hand-wash a few delicate scraps of lace and satin, and dry them on the radiator?
She commented on the fact that the spots on my back had almost cleared up, then turned the bedside light out and lovemaking commenced. The problems began when she requested that, for safety’s sake, I wear two condoms, one on top of the other. God knows, I tried, Diary, but by the time I’d got the first fitted, the second had got lost in the bed.
The second problem was that Glenn shouted through the party wall, ‘For God’s sake Dad, ‘urry up an’ get it over wiv�
�� Which made Pamela roll over to her side of the bed, where she lay with rigid limbs and a set jaw. I tried to relax her by talking about my father’s treatment for his hospital-borne infection, but she started to cry. And nothing I said would stop her.
An hour later: Glenn has just come into the kitchen angrily flourishing the used shower cap and shouting, ‘Tell that Pamela Pigg, to take ‘er female condom ‘ome wiv ‘er in future’ The lad obviously knows nothing about the female anatomy.
Saturday, January 13
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
My ex-wife Jo-Jo has faxed me to ask if she can take William with her when she returns to her home in Lagos, Nigeria. For what she’s called ‘an extended visit’.
I faxed back immediately, c⁄o The Hempel Hotel in Craven Hill Gardens, London. (She is rolling in money – her new husband imports ‘cattle prods’ from Turkey. One dreads to think to what purpose the prods are used. I suspect that cattle don’t enter the equation).
Dear Jo-Jo,
I will cut immediately to the chase. No, you cannot take William back to Nigeria with you. He is extremely happy living in the small town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The culture shock could kill him. If, when he gets to the age of reason, he wants to ‘discover his roots’, I will help him to do so. But he has told me that he wants to continue to attend Mrs Claricoates’ reception class, where he is excelling at colouring in and computer studies. Besides, he has a school trip to Flyingdales Moor in Yorkshire, planned in February.
Incidentally, I am surprised at your choice of new husband. William tells me that the man has never heard of Pokémon cards, and that he was unable to name the individual members of Steps. He sounds an unworldly man.
How could a sophisticated woman like you saddle yourself with such a dolt? I cannot but fear for the longevity of your marriage. As you will recall (perhaps fondly), when we were man and wife, we used to talk in bed for hours about world and current affairs.
Anyway, Jo-Jo, I’m afraid you must return to Nigeria without William.
I remain, yours, as ever, Adrian.
Sunday, January 14
I received the following fax this morning:
The Hempel, Craven Hill Gardens, London.
To Adrian Mole from Mrs Jo-Jo Mapfumo.
Thank you for your fax. I am, of course, disappointed that you will not give your permission for William to visit Nigeria with me and my new husband, Colonel Ephat Mapfumo. My family in Lagos are most anxious to meet him. He is, after all, my first son and is accordingly held in high esteem by them.
I found your remarks about my husband offensive in the extreme. He is far from being a dolt. He was educated at the Sorbonne and Sandhurst. He plays the piano, violin and oboe, collects contemporary African art and has written an acclaimed book: The Coup – A post-Colonial Alternative To Democracy.
As to our own marriage, I do not recall our conversations in or out of bed ‘fondly’. My recollection is that you talked at length about three subjects: 1. Your unpublished novels; 2. Dostoevsky; 3. The Norwegian leather industry. I realised that our marriage was a mistake five minutes after the wedding, when you accused me of exhibitionism, because I chose to wear my traditional tribal dress.
Yours, Mrs Jo-Jo Mapfumo.
PS: If you will not allow William to visit Nigeria, then my family must visit him in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. I will proceed with these arrangements as soon as I return to Lagos.
I admit that I was taken aback when I saw Jo-Jo enter Leicester Register Office. She had told me that she was going to wear ‘traditional dress’. Therefore, I was expecting white lace and a veil – not a riot of pattern and primary colours. In her tribal turban, she stood 6ft 3in tall. She towered over me. We looked ridiculous as we lined up in front of the registrar.
I distinctly heard Pandora (the best man) whisper, ‘Talk about a folie à deux’.
Monday, January 15
At the last count, there were 213 members of Jo-Jo’s immediate family. There’s no way I can give even minimal hospitality to 213, as Nigerian custom demands. It may be easier if William went to them. Perhaps during the summer holidays.
Tuesday, January 16
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Clive Box, the postman, banged on the door at 6.15 this morning, which startled me out of my sleep. For some reason, I keep expecting to be raided at dawn by the police, though I have done absolutely nothing wrong. Clive had no proper letters for me, only a multicoloured envelope that informed me in fat multiple exclamation marks that I had won £1,000,000.
I said irritably, ‘Couldn’t you have just put it through the letterbox?’
‘Sorry,’ Box mumbled, ‘but I wanted to ask you sommat important.’
Behind Box’s uniformed back, I could see that the estate was covered in frost. Box looked longingly at the radiator in the hall. I asked him in and shut the front door. He put his sack of letters on the floor and blew on his hands. He looked at the self-portrait of Van Gogh that hangs on the wall.
‘Who’s that? Your granddad?’ he said.
‘No!’ I said. ‘That’s Van Gogh, whose genius went unrecognised in his lifetime. He only ever sold one of his paintings before he died.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Clive Box, after looking more closely at Gogh’s haunted expression. ‘He’s an ugly bugger.’
The hall is tiny. We stood in too close proximity. I led the way into the kitchen and plugged in the kettle. Box sat at the table and said, ‘You’re an educated man, ain’t you, Mr Mole?’
I replied that I was a bit of an autodidact.
‘I ain’t interested in your sex life,’ he said, ‘but I’ve seen them letters from book clubs, so I’ve chosen you to ‘elp me out. Do you speak French?’
‘Mais oui,’ I replied.
He took out a sheet of paper from his uniform pocket and pushed it across the table. ’ ‘Ow do you pronounce this?’ he asked, stabbing with a stubby finger at a word in block capitals in the middle of a paragraph. I looked at the word. I wasn’t familiar with it. ‘CONSIGNIA’ I said it out loud, slowly. ‘Con-sig-nia.’
He then said it many times, like a toddler learning the word hippopotamus. ‘What does it mean?’ he asked, eventually.
I told him that I had no idea. I read the paper in front of me. It said that the Post Office had given itself a ‘modern and meaningful title’. And that the words, ‘Post’ and ‘Office’ no longer described the work that this organisation did.
Box looked at me with bewilderment in his eyes. ‘So I ain’t a postman now?’ he said. ‘Apparently not,’ I replied. ‘You’re a consignée.’
Wednesday, January 17
On the train to London to visit my mother in Holloway, I noticed that that ticket collector wore a badge that said ‘Roger Morris, Revenue Protection Officer’.
My mother was in good spirits. She has made friends with her cellmate, a woman called Yvonne, who is in prison for not having a TV licence. Yvonne’s defence – that she never watched BBC1 or BBC2 – was thrown out by the court. My mother pointed her out across the visiting room.
Yvonne saw us looking at her and blew my mother a kiss.
My mother blew one back!
I said to my mother, ‘You and Yvonne appear to be very fond of each other’ She looked me in the eye and said, ‘Yes, we are very, very, very fond of each other’ I took a closer look at Yvonne. She looks like Diana Dors, the black-and-white film star. I stumbled through the prison gates – has my mother taken up lesbianism, as she once took up badminton and feminism? And, if she has, will she tire of it, as she so quickly tired of aforementioned hobbies?
Saturday, January 27
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
It is Glenn’s birthday on Friday. Yes, the lad will be 14. Mohammed, whose brother works for Midland Main-line, gave me two Eurostar vouchers to Paris last week saying, ‘You use ‘em, Aidy. I daren’t leave the country. I’m frit that immigration won’t let me back in.’
I said, ‘Mohammed, you were born in the Leicester Royal
Infirmary maternity unit, you have a strong Leicester accent, you cried when Martin O’Neill left Leicester City Football Club. Nobody could possibly question your English nationality.’
‘Oh, yeh,’ said Mohammed cynically. ‘And who was the only kid to be stopped at Dover when we come back from that school trip to France?’
I cast my mind back to that heady day when I became a European. I will never forget my first sight of la belle France. As the ferry prepared to dock, Miss Elf gathered her class of 30 around her on the vomit-stained deck and said, ‘Mes petits enfants, regardez vous la belle France, la crème de la crème, de la Continent’. (Or words to that effect, diary. My French is a little rusty, as I rarely have occasion to use it.)
We lost precious time in France because Barry Kent tried to leap from the ferry on to the harbour wall before the docking procedure was quite finished. He wasn’t in the water long, but by the time the gendarmes had finished their paperwork, a couple of hours had been lost.
On the coach, Miss Elf announced that, due to Barry Kent’s foolhardy leap, there would now be no time for the planned visit to the war graves cemetery (we were doing a class project on first world war poetry). A few of the more sentimental girls wept, I recall, though Pandora was not among them. ‘Instead,’ she said, ‘we will sample French bread and French coffee, and we will visit a market and observe the care with which the French choose their fruit and vegetables.’
When I returned home late that night, my mother was waiting for me in the car park of Neil Armstrong comprehensive. As I stepped off the coach, I said to her, ‘Maman, I have seen and tasted paradise. You must throw away your Maxwell House and your Mothers Pride thin-sliced and embrace the baguette and café au lait’ I can’t recall her exact words of reply, but they were said with a snarl.
