I opened it and read,
Dear Adrian,
I hope you had a very happy Christmas and that you will have a happy and preposterous New Year.
I presumed she meant prosperous; a moment with the dictionary would have saved her considerable embarrassment. There was an invoice inside the (bag-piper-with-mountains-in-background-Labrador-in-foreground) card.
To arrears of child maintenance @ £15,000
Payment to be made immediately, to Pankhurst, Barnwell,
Brewin, Laker, Medwin, O’Keefe, Family Law Centre.
I did some mental arithmetic. The £66,000 I owe Arthur Stoat plus £15,000 equals £81,000!!!!
I leaned against the fridge.
‘Sorry, Dad,’ said Glenn. ‘It’s nothin’ to do with me.’
I felt like saying, ‘On the contrary, Glenn, it has everything to do with you.’
This is such an horrific development in the trajectory of my life that I can’t see how I am going to recover from it. I have a morbid horror of debt. My parents have never, to my knowledge, been out of debt. Indeed, my father claims to have been in debt since he was a small child (a loan to buy a Corgi Ferrari).
I can do nothing at the moment: all the Crisis phone lines are clogged up. I’ve tried the Help With Debt line several times. I even tried to get through to Talk Radio’s Anna Raeburn, but I was only one of many to be disappointed.
Later, me and William and Glenn went to Leicester Town Hall square, although I was in no mood to celebrate. There were hundreds of people there. Some in fancy dress. The council had switched all the Christmas decorations off. The place was in total darkness. The only light that could be seen was the red one on the police video camera, which was filming the crowd from the Lord Mayor’s balcony.
At the stroke of midnight the crowd went mad with excitement and the policemen got out of the vans where they’d been sitting waiting. We sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’. There was no trouble, just an air of terrible anticlimax and sadness that the council and the police had such a poor opinion of their citizens.
At 1 a.m. I took my boys home. I was pleased to see that Sharon came to the door to welcome Glenn back. We waved, but didn’t speak. She looked fatter than ever.
Thursday January 1st, 1998
These are my New Year resolutions:
1. I will be charitable. Not give money, just be kinder to those less fortunate than myself.
2. I will support both my sons.
3. I will find somewhere to live.
4. I will take out insurance.
5. I will get The White Van produced.
6. I will resume sexual relations with women.
7. I will give Mr Blair another six months.
8. I will throw all my white socks away.
9. I will stop obsessing about my hair loss.
10. I will join a gym.
Friday January 2nd
I arranged to meet Sharon Bott in McDonald’s ‘Restaurant’, as she calls it, in Leicester city centre. I was a little early and caught her with her mouth full of a triple something or other.
There was an awkward pause, during which she chewed like mad and I tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t require her to speak. I commented that Glenn and I were getting along quite well, considering our short acquaintance. She nodded. I added that he would look better if he allowed the shaved bits of his scalp to ‘grow out’. She chewed and nodded frantically. Her fingers look like Walker’s thick sausages.
Eventually she swallowed and we talked about the £15,000 her solicitors were demanding. I pointed out that, unlike Barry Kent, I was not a rich man. I said I would give Sharon an interim payment of £1,000 if she would not reveal to the Child Support Agency where I lived. ‘They will only claw it back,’ I said, ‘and you could lose your Income Support.’
She agreed to take £1,000 by bank transfer.
Saturday January 3rd
I went to see Pandora at her surgery this afternoon. I needed advice about my entitlement to legal aid. It’s no good, Diary, I can’t lie to you. The truth is I just wanted to see her.
There were dark shadows under her eyes, but she still looked beautiful in her pink cashmere twinset. She took a packet of Ultra Low from out of her grey patent Prada bag. I commented on the handbag. Shouldn’t she be seen to be buying British?
She said, ‘It was a Christmas present.’
‘From a rich man, obviously,’ I said, trying to control my jealousy.
She smiled enigmatically.
I went on to tell her about my failure to write the book, the impending legal action from Stoat, and my maintenance problems re Glenn Bott.
At the end she burst out laughing! And said, ‘Your life is a situation comedy! You’re over thirty, you’re living at home with your mother, you’re frightened of women – you’re a Ronnie Corbett for the nineties!’
When I’d recovered my composure, I asked how she was enjoying the world of Agriculture and Fisheries. She grimaced and said, ‘I should be at the Foreign Office. I speak fluent Mandarin and Serbo-Croat, for Chrissakes! I could be useful. As it is, I’m wasting my bloody time on whelks!’
Her pager bleeped and a message flashed across – RING ALASTAIR. She paled a little and reached for her mobile.
I left with a heavy heart.
Bowels – loose
Alcohol – bottle of Niersteiner, 2 vodkas
Pains – right knee, neck, left testicle
Sleep – v. little
Phobias – licking postage stamps, netting, ring-pulls, Psion Organizer
Sunday January 4th
Now I truly understand the meaning of the phrase ‘mother-love’. I am fortunate to have the most wonderful mother in the world. I blush with shame when I re-read these diaries. There is hardly a positive entry about this truly kind and self-sacrificing woman. Pauline Mole is a saint – she has saved me not only from humiliation, but also from a lifetime of debt.
MY MOTHER WROTE OFFALLY GOOD! –THE BOOK!. WHAT’S MORE, SHE SENT IT TO STOAT ON DECEMBER 24TH! AND IT HAS MY NAME ON THE FRONT PAGE.
I found out this morning after a baffling call from Arthur Stoat. I picked up the phone thinking I was safe from him at 7.30 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
Stoat said, ‘Good, caught you. I’m reading the proofs of Offally Good!. On page forty-three you say, “Take an otter tail.” Should that be, “Take another tail”?’
I didn’t know what he was talking about: there was no page forty-three. However, I remembered some advice my grandma gave me once: ‘If in doubt, say nowt.’ So I kept quiet, apart from making noncommittal grunts every now and then.
Stoat ended by saying that Offally Good! was a ‘fine piece of work, funny, informative, compassionate, even’. He said he hadn’t realized quite how much of a feminist I was, so chapter ten, ‘The Future For Men Is Bleak’, came as ‘quite a surprise in a book about offal’.
He said he was ‘enormously touched’ by the dedication at the front of the book. ‘To my beloved mother, Pauline Mole, who has nurtured me and inspired me throughout my life. Without this magnificent woman’s wisdom and erudition I could not have written this book.’
Stoat sighed and said, ‘You’re a very lucky man, Adrian. My own mother is a dreadful disappointment. She’s a dowdy, whining hypochondriac.’
There was joy in my heart when I put the phone down. When I heard my mother moving about upstairs I put some bacon in the pan to fry, so that when she eventually came downstairs to feed the New Dog she was greeted by the sight of a full English breakfast laid out on the table for her, complete with a pot of freshly brewed coffee and de-crusted toast. I even placed an ashtray within reach of her place setting. I said, ‘Thank you for writing the book,’ and pulled a chair out for her.
She said, ‘I did it for myself. I couldn’t stand another minute of you whingeing on about the bloody thing.’
I said, ‘I can’t wait to read it. Have you got a copy?’
She padded into the alcove and pres
sed a few knobs on the computer. The printer started to whir and throw out neatly typed pages. By the time she’d finished her breakfast, and smoked a fag, Offally Good! – The Manuscript! was sitting there, waiting to be read. My mother said, ‘I shall expect 50 per cent of any monies due or earned, including royalties, a percentage of any merchandising deals and foreign-rights sales and, of course, residuals.’
I was in no position to argue.
10 p.m. I have just finished reading the manuscript. It’s not bad, though there is far too much emphasis on gender politics for my taste. Germaine Greer appears fourteen times in the index.
Monday January 5th
Zippo rang today. He wanted to congratulate me on the book I didn’t write. Pie Crust intend to repeat the first TV series ‘on the back of the book’. He said that it has huge cult potential, especially since the beef-on-the-bone ban. ‘We should pick up some right-wing, beef-eating Telegraph types,’ he said, ‘which will broaden the advertising potential enormously.’ He listed the advertising profile of Daily Telegraph readers. Apparently they go in for: garden sheds, incontinence pants, secateurs, erotic underwear, liquid manure, Egyptian cruises, pergolas, cutlery sets, denture fixatives and anything to do with dogs.
Zippo is liaising with Stoat Books. Publication date is February 24th, which, according to Zippo, is a dead time in publishing. ‘Nobody publishes then,’ he said. ‘It’s a black hole as far as buying books is concerned.’ When I asked why Offally Good! – The Book! was being published in this ‘dead time’, he said, ‘Offally Good! isn’t a book as such, is it, Aidy? It’s a TV tie-in.’
Wednesday January 7th
Archie Tait is dead. A policeman called Darren Edwards rang to tell me. He found my telephone number under a jar of Haywood’s piccalilli. He thinks Archie died on Monday night. I asked the policeman why he’d rung me – I’m not Archie’s next of kin. PC Edwards said that my phone number was the only one they could locate in the house.
Thursday January 8th
I told William about Archie last night. I asked my mother for advice first. How do you explain death to a three-year-old?
She said, ‘I don’t know, it used to be easy when we all believed in God. You just told little kids that dead people had gone to heaven to see Jesus.’
Ivan said, ‘We may have to re-invent God. He served a useful purpose at times.’
Rosie suggested an ecological approach. She said, ‘Tell William that Archie’s dead body is, like, gonna sorta fertilize the ground and make, like, vegetables grow bigger, an’ that.’
In the end I told William that Archie had gone to sleep and didn’t want to wake up. He understood that. He has often seen me unable to get out of bed in the morning.
Saturday January 10th
Do the baby boomers have no sense of morality?
Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, has been revealed to be a serial adulterer! How can this be? I am at least twice as good-looking as him. It must be true that power is an aphrodisiac. How else do you explain the fact that Gaynor Regan is in love with the elf?
Sunday January 11th
I sat out in the garden in the sun today and had a cup of tea! The weather has gone mad. The novelty fruit thermometer I bought from Spain for my mother, which is still nailed to the side of the house, showed the temperature to be two oranges past a banana – 63°F.
Wednesday January 14th
The bloke in the BP shop told me that Archie Tait is to be buried by Social Security unless somebody comes up with an alternative by Friday. It’s not my problem. I hardly knew the bloke. And, anyway, death is death. Archie won’t know, or care, whether he’s cremated by Social Security or Harrods’ Funeral Service. The BP bloke said he died of pneumonia. He asked me if I wanted Archie’s copy of the London Review of Books, which had come on Saturday. I said I’d take it off his hands.
Friday January 16th
Archie is being cremated on Tuesday morning at 11 a.m. I’m doing the music and the words. The BP bloke is supplying Ginster’s Cornish pasties and sausage rolls.
Saturday January 17th
Poor President Clinton has had to put up with a lot since he was elected. The Ku Klux Klan, the Survivalists and the Daughters of the Revolution have all been out to discredit him. Now they had come up with a ludicrous story about him sexually harassing a woman called Paula Jones in a hotel room in Arkansas in 1991. As if! He is a good-looking bloke, he doesn’t need to sexually harass any woman. I asked my mother if she had heard about the Paula Jones case. She looked back at me with pity in her eyes. ‘The whole world has heard about Paula Jones,’ she said. ‘Where have you been? On the planet Zog?’
I said it wasn’t possible to keep up with all the news.
She said, ‘We’re not talking about a three-car pile-up in Market Harborough, Adrian. This is top of the broadcast, world-class, CNN, BBC, headline news.’ She advised me to see a neurologist: she thinks I may be suffering from selective memory loss.
Tuesday January 20th
There were only eight people at Archie’s funeral. Me, my mother, Rosie, the bloke from the BP shop, Archie’s neighbour (a student called Liam), a representative from the Socialist Labour Party, Archie’s solicitor Mr Holden, and a man from the crematorium. I’d only known him since May, yet here I was conducting his funeral service. My mother had made a nice job of desk-top-printing the funeral service.
11 a.m. Louis Armstrong: ‘It’s A Wonderful World’
11.02 Adrian Mole: ‘The Archie Tait I Knew’
11.05 Liam O’Casey: Reading from Tom Paine
11.08 Hymn: ‘Jerusalem’, William Blake
11.10 Open for Archie’s friends to comment on his life
11.15 As coffin slides into oven, ‘Ode to Joy’, Beethoven
Wake to he held at Wisteria Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Refreshments sponsored by BP
Everybody said that it was a lovely occasion. There was none of that morbid Church of England stuff about being ‘born into sin and dying in sin’. The BP bloke came to the lectern to say that Archie came in every day for his groceries and was always polite, even when his London Review of Books hadn’t been delivered. He said that Archie never complained about his artificial leg, even when the pavements were icy. Mr Holden, the solicitor, said that he had only met Archie a couple of times, but had found him to be a true gentleman who had made great personal and professional sacrifices in the cause of socialism. But it was a terrible thing to be at a funeral where nobody cried. I sometimes long for a bit of Mediterranean blood.
Only the Socialist Labour Party man and Liam, the student, came back to Wisteria Walk. The BP bloke had to go back to the shop, and Mr Holden was due in court. William returned from nursery school and entertained the company with his rendition of traditional nursery rhymes until the company tired and went away.
2 a.m. Have I got any principles I would sacrifice my personal and professional life for? I don’t know the answer to this question.
4.30 a.m. Due to Mr Blair’s obvious hatred for war I am never going to be tested in battle. A shame.
Wednesday January 21st
An elaborate brochure from Peter Savage today, promoting his latest venture, an oxygen bar called H2O. A piece of stiff white card with H2O written in tiny silver print in the centre. Inside a list of what I presumed to be a selection of the oxygens available.
Mont Blanc
Bracing Skegness
California Dream
Cape Cod night
Hindu Kush
All oxygens @ £25 per litre inclusive of VAT.
All masks are sterilized between users.
I showed it to my father when he came to visit Rosie and William tonight. He was horrified. He said, ‘Twenty-five quid for sniffing fresh air! Some people would stick tenners up their bums if you told them it was fashionable.’
I reminded him that it cost him at least £45 a week to suck on burning carcinogenic leaves.
He protested that he’d cut down to fifte
en fags a day now Tania was pressurizing him to give up, though conceded that he was spending ‘another six quid a day on nicotine patches’. He said, ‘You’re lucky you haven’t got an addictive personality, Adrian.’
He obviously doesn’t know about my alarming daily consumption of Opal Fruits, and my increasing dependence on the green ones.
Mr Holden, Archie’s solicitor, rang today and asked if I could meet him at his office at 2.30 on Friday afternoon. I expect he’s going to ask me to stump up for part of the funeral expenses – which is not fair. As I’ve said many times, I hardly knew the bloke.
Stoat has faxed through four pages of editorial corrections. My mother is working on them as I write. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Thursday January 22nd
Glenn in trouble at school for farting in maths. His maths teacher, Miss Trellis, says that the fart was deliberate. Glenn claims that his mother is feeding him ‘too many beans’.
I rang the school today and made an appointment to see Miss Trellis (4.30 p.m. on Monday).
Friday January 23rd
Mr Holden smiled, baring his yellow teeth. Then he handed me a document and said, ‘This is Mr Tait’s will, which he amended only three weeks ago.’
The Last Will and Testament of Archibald Erasmus Tait