As I read his letter, Rosie and Ivan clashed at the fridge. He objected to her drinking straight from the milk bottle rather than using a glass. My intervention was not appreciated by either of them. I must remove William from this hellhole.
Dear Arthur Stoat,
Yes, I would be interested. Please furnish details. Forgive this terse reply, but my time is entirely taken up with family problems at present.
Yours, etc. A. A. Mole.
PS. Do you publish fiction? I have a MS called Birdwatching available for publication.
Wednesday August 27th
I found Rosie crying in the bathroom. She was holding Ivan’s burgundy leather washbag over the toilet (the lid was up). I comforted her as best I could. She put the washbag back on to the cistern, where he keeps it. After a minute or two of silence I said, ‘You look pink and pretty. What have you done to yourself?’
She said, ‘I’ve washed my face. This is what I look like without make-up.’
‘And your hair, it’s sort of fluffy,’ I said.
‘Yeah, it’s not gelled down,’ she explained, frowning into the washbasin mirror. She lowered her voice and said, ‘Ivan complimented me yesterday on my aggressive and provocative image.’
‘So, you’re changing it?’ I checked.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I dunno what to go for,’ she said. ‘Any suggestions?’
‘He was banging on about the “iniquities of fox-hunting” the other day,’ I said. ‘You could take to wearing the Quorn Hunt regalia, jodhpurs and a riding whip.’
‘Yeah,’ she laughed, ‘that would f------ provoke him, the b------.’
I took advantage of our mutual antipathy to Ivan the Terrible to say, ‘Rosie, have you ever thought you might be suffering from Tourette’s syndrome?’
‘F--- off,’ she said. And flushed Ivan’s exfoliating hand mitt down the loo.
Drink – half a bottle of vodka
Drugs – 6 Nurofen, 2 skunk weed
Bowels – nil
Penis – 0/10
Thursday August 28th
The plumber has only just unblocked the toilet. The mitt damage cost £275. I met my mother on the stairs. She was in a defiant mood. She said, ‘I love Ivan, and he adores me. So try, at least, to be courteous to him, will you?’
I said, ‘Has he seen you without make-up yet?’
She shouted, ‘Yes, he has, and he worships every wrinkle, bag and line! He loves me to bits.’
Ivan came out of the lounge. He was halfway through the Guardian crossword (the difficult one – he does the quick one while he waits for the kettle to boil). He said, ‘I’m enormously aware of the trauma you’re all suffering. Perhaps when things have calmed down a little we can regroup and present ourselves for family therapy, eh?’
I would sooner eat live toads than sit in a circle with him while he drones on about our family’s dysfunction.
Friday August 29th
It is true. In times of crisis the Royal Family are a great comfort. It has certainly comforted me to think that they are even more dysfunctional than we are. Neurotic Diana is racketing around with a bloke whose family’s money came from associating with arms dealers. Charles is morbidly unhappy, crippled by his unnatural childhood and his Tampax-fixation. They should scrap The Archers on the radio and do a soap opera based on the Royal Family. I may write it myself.
Saturday August 30th
Relations between Rosie and my mother have now broken down completely and she has gone to live at Aaron Michelwaite’s house. My mother found out that Rosie has had a monkey tattooed on her belly.
William cried himself to sleep last night (in my bed): he misses Rosie. She used to partner him when he played the boring board games he’s so fond of. I am his new opponent, but I am a poor substitute. He gets fed up with me because I don’t give a toss if I go up the ladders or down the snakes, and I can’t be arsed to learn the rules. Quite honestly, dear Diary, I can’t see the point of learning any rules. Nobody keeps to them any more.
William starts at Kidsplay Ltd nursery school on September 15th. It can’t come too soon for me. I’m happy to pay someone to play with him.
Dear John Tydeman,
It is some years since I wrote to you but you may remember me. I offered you several chances to broadcast my work when you worked at the BBC.
Unfortunately you rejected me then and asked me not to bother you again. However, I approach you now under entirely different circumstances.
I have written a soap opera, which will replace The Archers. I think that all thinking people recognize The Archers in its present form has had its day.
The nadir for me was listening to the bedsprings when two oldie Ambridge lovers prepared for intercourse…
My soap opera cleverly includes the Royal Family.
I enclose a few pages of the opening episode. I have followed the ‘Writing for Radio’ rules and included many sound effects.
I know it is currently fashionable to record on location, but in this case permissions may not be granted.
Anyway, Mr Tydeman, cast your eye over the pages. If you are interested perhaps we could meet up at the new Oxygen bar H2O for a sniff of clean air.
Yours
A. A. Mole
THE WINDSORS
A soap opera based on the Royal Family. To replace The Archers.
SCENE 1. QUEEN’S LIVING ROOM
Sound: Richard and Judy show in the background; Sun newspaper being read; a female corgi barks.
PRINCE PHILIP: It’s appalling, what the papers are saying about Charles, our son!
(Sound: Concorde flies over.)
QUEEN: I know who Charles is, Philip.
(Sound: A helicopter lands outside.)
PHILIP: There was a time when you didn’t. He spent so much time with his nanny that you passed him in the corridor once and assumed he was a jockey because he was so small.
(Sound: Feet walking on priceless Persian carpet.)
QUEEN: (breaking into violent sobs) Don’t! Don’t! I was a terrible mother.
(Sound: A handbag is opened.)
ANDREW: Hi there, aged parents! What’s new?
QUEEN: Andrew, darling, was I a terrible mother?
(Sound: A royal nose is blown into a damask linen handkerchief.)
ANDREW: Dunno. I can’t remember you doing any mothering, Ma. You were sat all day stickin’ stamps in a album.
(Sound: A door slams.)
CHARLES: It’s an album, Andrew. Not a album. I find your grammatical errors to be quite simply er… unforgivable.
(Sound: Charles frowns; a door opens.)
ANNE: Why have you called us here, Ma? I’ve got an appointment with the horse doctor at eleven-thirty.
(Sound: A door slams; a nervous cough.)
EDWARD: Sorry I’m late, everybody.
QUEEN: Hello… Er…
EDWARD: Edward. My name is Edward.
QUEEN: So it is… I’ve called you together for a most important reason. A most important reason indeed…
(Sound: Music plays, leaving listeners in suspense.)
Copyright: Adrian Mole, August 1997
I feel in my bones that this could be a winner. Princess Diana would be the star eventually, of course. She is at present starring in her own soap opera, and the whole country wants to know what will happen to her next.
Sunday August 31st
The soap opera of life has made a tragic mistake. You do not kill off your star halfway through a series. Now we will never know how the story ends.
Impressions on Diana’s Tragic Death
William and Harry being driven to Crathie church, where the priest politely made no mention of the raw fact that their beloved mother had been killed only ten hours earlier.
It was a tawdry way to die. Joy-riders perish in the same way, believing themselves to be invincible against speed and a turn in the road.
Self-control on the tarmac as the Prince moved along the line, shaking the hands of those who had
brought the coffin home. The woman inside it had thought that Charles would cherish a video of herself and a much smaller man, Wayne Sleep, dancing together. She didn’t know how much he would hate this video. I hope she never found out.
Her only school prize was for ‘Best-kept Hamster Cage’.
She once phoned Oliver Hoare, with whom she was obsessed, over twenty times in one hour. She hung up each time he answered. She was subsequently ‘spoken to’ by the police.
Monday September 1st
This household has cried enough to fill several rivers, a canal and several lakes. My mother keeps saying, ‘Those boys,’ and dissolving into yet more tears. None of us have moved away from the television. I have even managed to watch Michael Cole, Mohammed Al-Fayed’s spokesman, slither across the screen without leaving the room.
Rosie came back home and threw herself into my mother’s arms. They cried together until I thought they would need medical rehydration.
Tuesday September 2nd
Ivan Braithwaite, who is a republican, made a major faux pas today. He said, in front of my mother, ‘I can’t help feeling that this hysterical outpouring of grief is way over the top.’
She started to cry again and said, ‘We’re not just crying for her, we’re crying for the sadness in our own lives. I’m crying for the hurt I’ve caused George.’
I said, to try and comfort her, ‘Mum, don’t worry about Dad. He and Tania are getting on amazingly well.’
This made my mother cry even more. She asked Ivan if he would take her to Kensington Palace so that she could lay some flowers at the gates and then go to St James’s Palace to pay her respects. Ivan said he was not prepared to queue up for eight hours to watch my mother sign her name in a book. My mother said, ‘I’m doing more than sign my name. Adrian’s going to write me a poem about Princess Di, aren’t you, Aidy?’
What could I say? The poor woman is grief-stricken. I agreed to write the poem and accompany her to the various shrines. Rosie preferred to watch the Diana-mourning on television. She said it was ‘more real’.
Wednesday September 3rd
We Sellotaped my poem on to the trunk of a tree in Kensington Gardens this morning.
Oh Diana!
Oh Diana! Was a song, of
my mother’s youth. Sung by
Paul Anka, who was small
and white of tooth.
The refrain, Oh Diana!
Beats inside Mum’s head.
A blank, a blank, a doo-dah
that her Diana is dead.
I told my mother that I needed more time to finish the poem properly, but she refused to wait. She was afraid that we would miss the space on the tree. There was a queue of poets behind us. On the way back up the M1, my mother said, ‘I’m going to make something of my life.’ I advised her to drop Ivan Braithwaite. She said, ‘No, Ivan’s going to help me. He’s already offered.’
Saw the crisp-eating boy walking past our house as I was pulling the curtains at 11 p.m. He is surely too young to be out on his own.
Thursday September 4th
My mother is furious with the Queen for not flying the flag at half-mast over Buckingham Palace, and for not coming to London to see and comfort the huge crowds of mourners who continue to throng the parks and streets near the royal palaces. The press are being blamed for her death, and my mother is threatening to cancel Hello!.
Over dinner tonight Ivan said, ‘What Diana didn’t understand was that you can’t invite photographers to put you on the cover of Vogue one day, then scream press intrusion the next because you’re on the front of the Sun. You can’t be a little bit famous.’
He could win a Bore of the Solar System contest. However, what he said about fame worried me. I took a sip of Tizer and said, ‘Yes, I myself face the fame problem. I am broadcasting to the nation on September 10th.’
My mother said, ‘I shouldn’t think you’ll have a problem with fame, Adrian. Nobody at all watches the Millennium Channel.’
I told her about the students.
She said, ‘Students don’t count.’
Friday September 5th
Visited my father and Tania today. When I arrived Tania was demonstrating to my father several uses for sun-dried tomatoes. I saw my father stifle a yawn when Tania turned her back to grate some Parmesan. She told me that she was cooking some quickly heated-through food today, so that she and my father could ‘maximize their time in front of the funeral coverage’.
My father’s depression seems to have lifted. He is going to a Job Club on Monday. Apparently Tania has told him that he is a ‘highly intelligent man’. She has promised to help him ‘realize his potential’ if he stops smoking. This shows how little she knows my father.
He will choose Rothman’s over fame and fortune any day.
Saturday September 6th
Oh! The card on the wreath on the coffin. ‘Mummy’. Oh!
We ran out of man-sized tissues very early in the day. My mother saw her friends from Groby Theatre Workshop, Alan and Abbo, walking in the procession behind the coffin. They were representing the Ashby-de-la-Zouch branch of the Terrence Higgins Trust. She said it was the first time she’d seen them without a smile on their faces.
Sunday September 7th
Another mini-lecture from Ivan at breakfast about the virtues of New Labour. I said that I personally thought Tony Blair’s reading in the pulpit at Westminster Abbey was a bit on the theatrical side. I couldn’t help thinking that those endless pauses had been timed by Alastair Campbell with a stopwatch.
My mother accused me of ‘heartless cynicism’. Since Ivan came to live here she has changed her vocabulary and she has now started to wear Pink Blush lipstick instead of her usual colour, Erotic Flame. The Beginner’s Guide to the Internet is on her bedside table, next to Pass Your Driving Test.
Monday September 8th
I overheard a gruesome conversation in the bathroom today. Ivan said, ‘Oh, God, Pauline, you’re so beautiful.’
My mother sniggered, then said, ‘But look at my hideous cellulite, Ivy.’
‘Pauline, baby,’ he crooned, ‘cellulite is just a thousand little dimples, and I love every one of those dimples.’
As I passed by the open bathroom door I saw him bend and kiss a patch of cellulite on her left outside thigh. Perhaps he does truly love her.
Only three days to go before I am a household name. Perhaps I should get a second phone line put in.
Tuesday September 9th
Archie Tait rang from a phone box to wish me good luck – it was kind of him to remember. Why, though? I haven’t given him a second thought.
Wednesday September 10th
Zippo rang early this morning to say that they had shown Offally Good! to a focus group of Oxford undergraduates, and they had given it the thumbs up. ‘They said it was great comedy,’ Zippo said. After I had put the phone down I puzzled over this remark.
There was a preview from A. A. Gill in The Times. He wrote,
Offally Good! is offally bad. A wooden presenter, Adrian Mole, stumbles and bumbles through twenty minutes of Crossroads-quality TV. We watch with horrible fascination as he makes sheep’s-head broth. (Which is not even offal, so the Tristans behind the programme are deceiving us from the start.) After twenty minutes Mole produces a pot of grey liquid, on the surface of which floats a layer of scum. Dev Singh, however, was brilliantly and genuinely funny. I sense that a star has been conceived, if not yet born.
Both sets of ‘parents’ have invited me to watch the programme with them. How can I possibly choose between them? Both have had Cable TV installed specifically to watch Offally Good!.
A compromise was reached. I watched the first half at Wisteria Walk, then got in the car during the commercial break, drove like a maniac and watched the second half at The Lawns. Both households watched in silence. The New Dog seemed to enjoy it at first, but then lost interest and went to sit on its cushion.
I overheard my mother saying to Ivan, ‘I don’t know
if I can face showing myself in public.’
Thursday September 11th
I stayed in bed all day with the duvet pulled over my head. Nobody rang to congratulate me. My own family cannot look me in the eye. The next five Wednesdays are going to be torment for me.
Friday September 12th
Zippo rang to say that the ratings for Offally Good! showed that Richard and Judy ‘should not buy a retirement property yet’. He said that 55,000 people had switched over to Good Morning when I cleavered the sheep’s head open, leaving 57,000 watching me.
I told Zippo about the proposed book deal with Stoat. He said, ‘Pie Crust own 25 per cent of any exploitation.’ When I protested, he said, ‘Take a peek at your contract, Aid.’ I did. He is right.
I was alarmed to see that I am due to deliver the manuscript to Stoat on October 15th. He is going for the Christmas market.
Monday September 15th
An historic day. William embarked on the first step in an educational journey that will culminate in his attending either Oxford or Cambridge. He started at Kidsplay Ltd today, a private nursery school owned by Mrs Parvez, Liberal councillor and local entrepreneur.
I resent having to pay £9 a day to Mrs Parvez. However I can’t put up with the boy hanging on to my legs all day any longer. I have things to do, and places to go. (Though now I will have to do the things and go to places between the hours of 9.15 and 3.15.)