by Sue Townsend
Dear Mr Kipling, Hear through the Leicester grapevine that you have been tossing and turning in your bed. Sounds like fun. Love French Fancy.
Dear French Fancy, Wish your buns were in my oven. Mr Kipling.
Friday January 24th
I managed to crawl into the shower today. Daisy texted:
Dear Kipling, My muffin is moist. French Fancy.
After hours of racking my brains, I rang my father, who is an expert on Mr Kipling’s cakes. He gave me a comprehensive list of Kipling products. Throughout my childhood, there were at least three boxes of miniature cakes a week in our cupboard.
He said, ‘Right, let me light a fag.’ I heard him sucking on one of his filthy cigarettes, then he said, ‘Have you got pen and paper?’
I told him I had.
‘Right,’ he said again, ‘you’ve got your Mini Batten-bergs, French Fancies, Iced Fancies, Coconut Classics, Butterfly Cakes, Toffee and Pecan Muffins, Apple and Custard Pie. Then there’s your mother’s favourite, Apple and Blackcurrant Pie. Then you’ve got Jam Tarts, Strawberry Sundaes, Cherry Bakewells, Almond Slices, Country Slices, Bakewell Slices, Angel Slices.’
I heard my mother shouting from the field, ‘Caramel Shortcakes, Viennese Fingers, Flapjacks and Chocolate Slices.’
My father shouted back, ‘The boy rang me, Pauline. Why do you always have to muscle in?’
My mother shouted defiantly, ‘Blueberry Muffins and Apple Pies.’
I know how my father feels. My ex-wife Jo Jo always finished my sentences for me.
Dear French Fancy, I would like to batten your berg. Kipling.
Saturday January 25th
Another text from Daisy:
Dear Mr Kipling, I’m a bit of a Bakewell tart. Do you want to eat the cherry on my muffin? Love French Fancy.
Dear FF. Yes. K.
An invitation arrived this morning. It said:
Please join us on Sunday February 2nd 2003
from 4 p.m. at the Hoxton Gallery, London N1,
to preview a new exhibition of faecal paintings
by Catherine Leidensteiner.
Somebody had scribbled in the bottom left-hand corner in thick black ink ‘PTO’. I turned the card over and read, ‘Please come. It should be a hoot!!! French Fancy.’
Surely faecal paintings was a misprint and it should have read foetal paintings?
I RSVPed by ringing the number given and leaving a message of acceptance with a robot.
Sunday January 26th
I almost won £5,000 today! My newsagent had run out of the quality Sundays so I was forced to read the scandal rags. The sex in them stuck in my throat, but in a moment of boredom I opened an envelope that had been inserted inside the colour supplement. It said, ‘If you tear open this fortune bag, will you find a platinum ticket inside worth £10,000 cash?’ I opened the envelope. It said, ‘CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE FOUND A GOLDEN TICKET!’
I was slightly disappointed, as gold is less valuable than platinum.
With this ticket you have been awarded one of the gifts listed!
£5,000 cash
32” Sony TV/DVD/video player
Your mortgage paid for one year
Holiday to Cyprus
£250 B&Q gift vouchers
Credit card paid up to £2,500
£450 of British hotel weekend break accommodation
vouchers
£125 worth of Woolworths vouchers
£300 cash payment
A Lake Windermere cruise
Six months’ supply of Supreme Kutz Kat Food
Game code 29801.
To claim your gift, call the hotline and you’ll be informed which gift you’ve won from those listed. Your game code refers to which of the gifts you can claim. At the end of the call you’ll be given a personal claim number. This is very important! Write this number below and complete the rest of the details and send it to the address shown.
If you haven’t got a phone, you can apply for a claim number and then play by post (see below).
To claim your gift you must include:
1. This ticket
2. Claim number
3. A 20p coin or first-class stamp
Without these items we cannot send your gift or notification.
I will cut to the chase. After a telephone call lasting six and a half minutes, during which an overexcited man repeated what I had already read, he informed me that I had won six months’ supply of cat food. However, he cautioned me to remember that I might be sharing my prize with other lucky winners. I decided not to post a claims form, mainly because I haven’t got a cat and never intend to get one.
Monday January 27th
I saw a scruffy man on the towpath this morning. He was wearing a dark jacket on which was pinned a post office badge. He was carrying a bundle of letters in his hand. Assuming he was a postman, I told him my name and address and asked him if he had any post for me.
Unfortunately he spoke very little English. I asked him where he came from.
‘I am Albania man, David Beckham good, Manchester United good,’ he said enthusiastically, sticking up his thumbs.
I stuck my thumbs up in return and carried on walking to work.
Tuesday January 28th
Gielgud barred my way on the towpath this morning. He wouldn’t let me pass. I was forced to climb the chain link fence to the MFI car park and walk to work the long way.
The authorities should be informed. He is a clear and present danger.
Wednesday January 29th
Mr Carlton-Hayes and I spent most of the afternoon moving furniture around, so as to accommodate the readers’ club, which holds its first meeting tonight. Four people had put their name down – a modest number, but these are early days.
Lorraine Harris turned up first. She is stunningly beautiful, black and owns her own hair salon. While I was making the coffee I told her that my ex-wife, Jo Jo, was Nigerian. Lorraine looked at me and said, ‘So?’ I hope she’s not going to be difficult.
Melanie Oates’s first words to me were, ‘I’m only a housewife.’ She said she had joined the group because she wanted to help her children with their ‘prospects’.
Darren Birdsall had put on a suit, shirt and tie for the occasion. I was very touched. He reminded me that the last time I saw him was on Christmas Eve, when he’d been drunk and wearing his plasterer’s clothes.
‘So you were half plastered,’ I said.
He smiled politely.
Mohammed Udeen works for the Alliance and Leicester. He said that reading was his main love after his wife and children.
We were settled in a comfortable semicircle around the fire with cups of coffee or glasses of juice when Marigold tapped on the shop door. I went to the door and told her that I was about to begin a very important meeting and couldn’t talk.
She said, ‘But I’ve come to join the readers’ club. Let me in.’
I didn’t want to have a scene on the doorstep, so I let her in and she went and sat down in my vacant chair.
I fetched another chair out of the back room, but it was the one with the wobbly leg and I was slightly uncomfortable for the rest of the evening.
Mr Carlton-Hayes led the discussion by talking about the nature of totalitarian governments. According to him, Animal Farm is about the old Soviet Union and Stalinism. When Mr Carlton-Hayes said that the carthorse, Boxer, represented the Trades Union Congress, Darren said, ‘I thought Boxer was just an ’orse.’
Mr Carlton-Hayes patiently explained to Darren what a metaphor was.
Darren quickly grasped the idea and surprised us all by saying, ‘So when I’ve plastered a wall and I’m, like, looking at it, and it’s all lovely and smooth, and I think that the wall is like a deep still lake without a ripple on it, that’s a metaphor, is it?’
Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘Not exactly. That’s a simile. But if you’d said that a freshly plastered wall was a newborn baby waiting to be clothed, you’d be using a metaphor.’
The ‘hous
ewife’, Melanie Oates, wanted to know if Animal Farm was a good or a bad book.
Mr Carlton-Hayes said that books could not be judged by moral standards, and that it was up to the individual reader to make that judgement.
Lorraine said that she thought the pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, were nightmares who sold out the other animals while feathering their own nests.
Darren asked, ‘Is feathering a nest a metaphor?’
And when Mohammed confirmed that it was, there was a ripple of applause from the group.
Marigold listened in silence mostly and then, after Darren said the sheep in the book were like Sun readers, she burst into a passionate defence of Mr Jones, the cruel, drunken farmer.
I didn’t know where to put my face.
She continued, ‘Farmer Jones is obviously heading for a nervous breakdown and has probably suffered from a stress-related illness for many years. And remember Mrs Jones. She deserted him at the beginning of the book. No wonder he took to drink. And I don’t see why Farmer Jones shouldn’t have made a profit out of the animals. I mean, they are only animals.’
There was a silence of the sort that is often described by lesser writers as stunned.
Eventually Darren said, ‘I reckon it’s like what’s happened to the Labour Party. Four legs good, two legs better – Socialism good, New Labour better.’
Mohammed asked, ‘If the sheep are Labour MPs, which animal in the book is Gordon Brown?’
At the end of the session, Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘You didn’t have much to say, Adrian.’
I said, ‘I didn’t want to dominate the proceedings.’
But the truth was, diary, that I remembered Animal Farm as being simply a book about animals on a farm.
After the meeting Darren stayed behind, talking to Mr Carlton-Hayes about other Orwell books, and I was forced to drive Marigold home because the last bus to Beeby on the Wold had left hours before.
I asked why she had come down on the side of the oppressor rather than the oppressed.
She said, ‘Farmer Jones and Daddy have a lot in common.’
I said, ‘I thought your father was a man of the left.’
She said, ‘Not any more. In the shop today he said anyone who is a socialist over the age of thirty is a damn fool.’
When I let her out of the car I warned her that she mustn’t in future rely on me for a lift home. I said, ‘We’re finished, Marigold. That means we don’t meet socially.’
She covered her ears with her hands and said, ‘I’m not hearing you.’
Michael Flowers appeared at the front door in his bedtime-kaftan, and I drove off.
Thursday January 30th
Went round to the granny annexe to read Private Eye to Nigel.
He said, ‘You don’t understand half of what you’re reading, do you, Moley?’
I had to admit that I didn’t.
He said, ‘Pick a novel that you think you’d enjoy reading and bring it next time you come.’
When we were sharing a bottle of Japanese beer he asked me if I knew that Iain Duncan Smith’s great-grandmother was Japanese.
I said, ‘No, but I always thought there was something of the Orient about him.’
Nigel said, ‘I wonder if he is genetically predisposed to liking sushi or is any good at origami.’
I told Nigel that he shouldn’t fall into the racial-stereotype trap.
Nigel said, ‘Oh, shut your gob, you repressed English wanker.’
The next readers’ club book is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
Friday January 31st
Glenn rang to say that he is still in Cyprus but his unit has been confined to barracks because of the fighting between soldiers and the local Cypriot youth. He said he can now receive parcels from home.
I asked him what he missed most, thinking that he would say Marmite or Cadbury’s Creme Eggs, but he said, to my surprise, ‘The family.’
Saturday February 1st
I have sent Glenn a parcel of ‘improving books’, Marmite and Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.
Sunday February 2nd
I travelled to St Pancras with Midland Mainline. I think it was a mistake to ban smoking in carriage A as the riff-raff that used to congregate there are now dispersed throughout the train.
I could not afford to take a black cab to Hoxton but I did anyway. I was glad that I had decided to wear all-black, because everybody at the exhibition was similarly attired, apart from one woman, obviously an eccentric, who was wearing a red dress.
I was handed a miniature bottle of Moët & Chandon, complete with a silver drinking straw and a catalogue. On the front cover was a picture of what I took at first glance to be a disposable nappy filled with poo. I thought it must have been an optical illusion, but when I pushed through the throng of black-clad art aficionados into the main gallery I saw that the walls were hung with tastefully framed, stained, disposable nappies.
I stood in front of one entitled Overnight Nappy.
A woman next to me said, ‘I love its soddenness, its mundanity. It’s a visceral reminder of our animalism.’
The man next to her murmured, ‘It’s certainly different.’
She said, ‘We need something over the fireplace in the sitting room. What do you think?’
He said, ‘The brown bits would tone with the sofas.’
Daisy slid her arms around my waist from behind and said, ‘What do you think of Overnight Nappy, Kipling?’
I said, without turning round, ‘I know a lot about art, but I don’t know what I like.’
She said, ‘I hope you don’t want to buy anything, because everything in the exhibition has been bought by Saatchi.’
I turned round to look at her. She was wearing a black dress that showed her beautiful arms, shoulders and breasts, à la Nigella. Her black hair was loose around her sultry face. She exuded a musky sexiness that almost made me swoon.
She asked, ‘Do you want to meet the artist, Catherine Leidensteiner?’ and indicated the woman in the red dress.
I said, ‘Why not?’
Daisy skilfully wove us through the crowd. She seemed to know everybody in the room.
I said, ‘You’ve got a lot of friends.’
She said, ‘I’m in PR, sweetheart – they’re not friends, they’re clients.’
I was thrilled to be called ‘sweetheart’ by a woman who could easily be mistaken for Nigella.
Catherine Leidensteiner was surrounded by admirers.
Daisy said, ‘Catherine, I would like to introduce you to my friend, Adrian Mole.’
The artist extended an elegant hand and said, ‘How do you do?’
My tongue seemed to swell in my mouth and I could think of absolutely nothing to say to this woman, but Catherine said, ‘I see what you mean, Daisy. That combination of soft grey eyes and long dark eyelashes is, somehow, heartbreaking.’
She said to me, ‘Daisy tells me that you keep the flames of culture burning in Leicester.’
I said modestly, ‘I just sell a few books,’ and congratulated her on selling her pieces.
She said, ‘I must admit, I’m very relieved. Have you seen the price of Pampers these days?’
How we laughed.
Daisy lived around the corner in Baldwin Street, in a one-roomed studio conversion in a building that used to make boiled sweets. Her place smelt of pineapple chunks. We were in bed together within ten minutes of stepping into her spectacularly untidy room. Our clothes made a small black mountain on the floor.
I have never seen so many shoes, bags, belts and items of jewellery in one place, outside a retail outlet.
The sex was fog khed dkybwlcu ghtr gthfdsw, as Mr Pepys might have written.
*
Daisy came with me to St Pancras, where I only just caught the last train. I hadn’t had time to wash before I left her place and her smell stayed with me until I showered it off at Rat Wharf.
I wanted to tell somebody about Daisy, but it was too late to ring Nigel. I went out on to t
he balcony. Gielgud was there, asleep next to his wife, with his head tucked under his wing. I’m glad he was asleep. It would have been ridiculous to talk to a swan, and anyway he hates me.
Monday February 3rd
Went out on my balcony this morning. Gielgud was attacking what looked like a dead body in the reeds on the opposite bank. Fearing the worst, I rang the local police station. A recorded message told me that PC Aaron Drinkwater, our local community police officer, was away from his desk but would get back to me later if I left a message on his voicemail.
A couple of minutes later Professor Green banged on my door and told me there was a postbag full of letters in the canal.
We walked down to Packhorse Bridge and crossed to the opposite towpath. Gielgud and his gang were at a safe distance now, paddling towards the town.
We heaved the postbag out of the water. Almost the first letter I saw was addressed to me. It was from M&S, offering me a store card.
Professor Green and I tried to remember what the organization that delivers the letters is called these days. Was it still Royal Mail, Consignia, Post Offices Ltd, Parcelforce or just the post office? Neither of us knew who to contact. Eventually I made an executive decision, dialled 999 and asked for the police. After a short delay a woman requested my name and address, and then asked what the problem was. I explained about the postbag in the canal.
The policewoman said, ‘It’s hardly an emergency, sir. You are asking me to divert police personnel from possible life-and-death duties.’
I said, ‘I’m not asking for a team of frog persons and a police helicopter, am I?’
She said, ‘Our patrol cars are engaged in fighting crime, sir.’
I told her that I had passed a patrol car in a lay-by on the A6 last week and both of the policemen inside had been eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.
She said, ‘I am terminating this call now, but you might be hearing from us some time in the near future. Wasting police time is a criminal offence.’
