Made a payment into Sharon’s bank of £1,000. The bank clerk asked if I was all right (my hands were trembling, my cheeks were wet with tears, as I passed the banknotes over). I said I had an allergy to pot plants; the bank is full of them.
Took Glenn to see his mother in the maternity hospital. Her moronic relations were crowded round her bed. Nobody greeted us. Apparently the Botts don’t go in for greetings or introductions. Sharon gave Glenn two pound coins for his pocket money and said she hoped he was ‘being good’. I said he was ‘behaving impeccably’. Several of the Botts sniggered at this. I took the boy away as soon as was decent. I called in at Wisteria Walk on the way back and told my mother that she must release her tenacious hold on William. I said that there was a fan heater in his bedroom, should he need it.
She went upstairs to pack his things with the air of a woman on her way to the gallows.
William loves his room, which overlooks the back yard. He especially likes the racing-car posters that Glenn drew with felt-tip pens from the Everything’s A Pound shop, and which now adorn his walls.
Friday February 13th
Rampart Terrace
My mother made a point of keeping her Puffa jacket on throughout her visit here this afternoon. She said, after looking around, ‘Those fan heaters are a waste of space. It’s as cold as a polar bear’s bum in here.’
William said he liked wearing his anorak in bed. I wanted to smite him. She was critical of my food supplies, and said pointedly, ‘I bet that big lummox costs a fortune to feed.’
I said, ‘Are you referring to Andrew, or to Glenn?’
She claimed she was talking about the cat. I asked her why she was in such a bad mood.
She said, ‘I miss my baby,’ and pulled William to her. He struggled free and she left soon afterwards.
Glenn and William and I cleaned the kitchen in honour of Ms Flood’s visit. At 7.15 Glenn took off his baseball cap, combed his hair and sat at the kitchen table, waiting.
She arrived at exactly 7.30. She was wearing a long black leather coat and tiny black suede boots, which could have been fashioned by a fairy cobbler under a toadstool somewhere. I helped her off with her coat. She has no breasts to speak of, though her nipples were surprisingly discernible behind her dark grey sweater. The end of her nose was slightly pink from the cold outside. It was the only touch of colour about her.
I hovered about in the kitchen for a while, watching as she unpacked books and writing materials from her capacious black handbag. Then she sat down at the table next to Glenn, who said, ‘Are you goin’ or what, Dad?’
I took William upstairs to bed and told him a story about a quiet dark-haired princess who falls in love with a dinosaur. The boy completely accepted this unlikely scenario. After he’d gone to sleep, I took advantage of the peace to do a little of my own writing. I think the Archers/Royal Family idea has legs.
Pandora was grilled on the question of beef-on-the– bone by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight last night. She kept to the Party line: ‘Must protect the public, blah, blah, blah!’ Though in the last conversation I’d had with her she said, ‘It’s all quite absurd. Statistically the average Briton is more likely to die from falling off a f------ step-ladder.’
She did show the woman behind the politician once during her interview. After Mr Paxman had said, ‘Oh, come off it, Ms Braithwaite,’ she said, dropping her voice, ‘Jeremy, you’re so very forceful,’ then laughed her husky laugh and appeared to poke her tongue out at him.
It was almost the most erotic thing I’ve seen or heard since Barbara Windsor lost her bra in Carry On Camping.
The newspapers are full of it this morning. Brutus in the Express alleged that Paxman ran straight from the studio into a cold shower and stayed there for twenty minutes.
Saturday February 14th
Valentine’s Day
10 a.m. Not a single card in the first post. Not one. Is this all I’ve got to show for nearly thirty-one years on this earth? An empty mantelpiece on Valentine’s Day?
However, William and Glenn made me a card this afternoon. William used the Lakeland pencils. It was nice enough, a big heart with stick arms and legs, with a bubble coming out of its ‘mouth’ saying, ‘To Dad, your grate’.
At 9 p.m. or thereabouts a Valentine card was dropped through the letterbox. I immediately opened the door and looked up and down the street, but there was no one to be seen. The card was everything a Valentine should be: a big red padded heart. Inside there was a single letter E. I don’t know anybody whose name begins with an E. Who can it be, dear Diary?
Sunday February 15th
Les Banks, the builder I have engaged to do the work on Archie’s house, phoned today to say that he can’t start tomorrow as promised. His mother-in-law died suddenly last night.
Monday February 16th
A person called Nobby called round to ask if he could ‘leave the ladders round the back’. He claimed to work for Les Banks. I asked for some ID. He said, ‘Phone Les on his mobile.’
I did so. Les confirmed that Nobby was one of his labourers and said that the work at Rampart Terrace could start on Wednesday ‘once the funeral is out of the way’. He didn’t sound grief-stricken. In fact, he sounded as though he was outdoors somewhere, on a roof, with Radio One playing.
3 a.m. Aren’t the Banks family burying the dead woman with indecent haste?
Tuesday February 17th
Glenn said to me today, ‘Do you think Glenn will play Michael, Dad?’ I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought the boy had started to refer to himself in the third person, as Thatcher used to do. A sure sign of madness, or megalomania.
After watching the news, I now know that ‘Michael’ is Michael Owen, an eighteen-year-old footballer, and ‘Glenn’ is Glen Hoddle, the England football manager. From now on I will have to read the sport pages of the Independent. Until this day I have used them to line the waste-bin under the sink.
Eleanor Flood came again tonight. She was wearing lipstick and she smelled of ripe mangoes. It was all I could do to stop myself from stroking her delicate wrists.
I realize now that I have always been attracted to women’s joints: I am a knee, shoulders, neck, ankle and wrist man. Though I can take or leave their fingers.
Eleanor told me after Glenn’s lesson that she thinks he is ‘a very intelligent boy, though culturally impoverished’.
I said that I was trying to address the problem. We were talking in the front room, sitting either side of the fire. She glanced around the room at the books and my print of Matisse’s goldfish and said, ‘He’s very fortunate to have you as his father. My own father was an…’ She lowered her grey eyes and looked into the flames of compressed sawdust logs, unable to finish her sentence. The firelight made her black hair shine. The phrase ‘raven’s wing’ came into my mind.
I said, ‘Alcoholic?’
‘No,’ she replied, but maddeningly she wouldn’t say what he was. Then she left as she had an appointment to have her bikini line waxed. At this hour?
Glenn said, when I went in to say goodnight, ‘D’you reckon I’ll be readin’ in time for the World Cup, Dad?’
I said, ‘When is the World Cup?’
Glenn frowned and said, ‘You gotta know that, Dad, surely?’
I said the date had slipped my mind, but I could tell that he was disappointed in me.
2 a.m. I am in lust with Eleanor Flood. I can’t stop thinking about her bikini line.
Wednesday February 18th
No sign of Les Banks. Nobby called at 5 p.m. and took the ladders away. I phoned Les’s numbers but only got his message service.
Gateshead City Council has erected a sixty-foot statue called The Angel of the North next to the A1. My mother and Ivan are cycling up to see it, stopping off at bed-and-breakfast places on the way. Ivan said, ‘I’m a long-term fan of Anthony Gormley’s.’
My mother said, ‘Didn’t he used to be married to Joan Collins?’
Thursday Februa
ry 19th
Les Banks rang to say that he couldn’t start work today because he was ‘at Casualty with the wife. She’s gone and cut her fingers up on an electric carving-knife.’
Nobby brought the ladders back.
Friday February 20th
Mrs Banks’s fingers have turned septic, necessitating another visit to the hospital. Les is obviously devoted to her. He promised to start work on Monday, ‘without fail, Mr Mole’.
Saturday February 21st
My mother rang from Gateshead and said, ‘What day is my book being published?’
I said, ‘It’s my book, I think you’ll find.’ I told her it was the 24th. She said, ‘Are we celebrating?’
I replied that I would be too busy with publicity.
She said, ‘It should be my publicity.’ Is this the ‘ghost’ coming out of the woodwork? She is desperate for fame! Being in the tabloids last year has only fuelled her hunger. I asked her what The Angel of the North was like. She said, ‘It’s heartbreaking, like everything else in my life.’
3 p.m.: Stop press! Securicor delivered five copies of Offally Good! – The Book! this afternoon. Dev Singh is on the cover! I am a photographic blur next to him. My name is partially obscured by a saucepan, his is not.
Sunday February 22nd
Took my Next suit and my Boss overcoat into Safeway’s dry-cleaners this morning. I requested the express service. I stressed to the youth behind the counter, ‘Darren Lacey, Executive Dry Cleaning Manager’, how important it was that the articles be immaculately cleaned and pressed. I told him that I was intending to appear in front of the public in them. As I left the counter with my receipt I heard an old git who had been waiting beside me say to ‘Darren’, ‘Where does he usually wear his clothes then? In a cupboard?’
Monday February 23rd
Mrs Banks’ fingers have turned gangrenous. ‘She could lose ‘er ‘and.’ Meanwhile the house is freezing and the roof is leaking. Will Mr Banks’ domestic misfortunes ever allow him to start work on my house?
Tuesday February 24th
Publication Day
Today should have been a great day in my life. Offally Good! – The Book! may be 80 per cent mother-written and it is certainly not literature but, even so, it is a book and it bears my name. Yet could I enjoy this considerable achievement unfettered by domestic and child-care worries? No! I could not. Publication Day found me ransacking the house looking for Glenn’s trainers, which he claimed to have kicked under his bed but which ‘disappeared in the night, Dad’.
William’s school shoes had also disappeared. I was forced to take him to school in his red Wellingtons. For once I prayed for rain, though none came. Glenn had to wear a pair of my own Marks & Spencer’s trainers, which were three sizes too big, obliging him to wear two pairs of wool socks with them. I dropped him off at the school gates and watched as he reluctantly sloped into school. If he wasn’t exactly dragging his feet, he was certainly dragging his trainers.
Why are schoolday mornings at Rampart Terrace so fraught with domestic tension? Even Andrew twitches with nerves from 7.30 until 8.45 a.m. Never once have William, Glenn and I sat down to breakfast together with that glow on our faces that the families in advertisements are blessed with. William carries on like the Last Emperor, petulantly rejecting all the cereals offered until it’s too late and he has to eat a piece of fruit in the car. And Glenn is so slow. It infuriates me to watch him spreading butter on his toast; how he covers the four corners of the bread, then goes back to the centre and starts the whole tedious business again.
This morning in the car, Glenn said, ‘You’re doin’ a lot of shoutin’, Dad.’
I shouted, ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full. You’re dropping toast crumbs all over the upholstery.’
William was peeling a satsuma in the back seat and I noticed that his Kidsplay sweatshirt was on inside out. And how does the house get itself into such a state? I only have to turn my back and it’s littered itself with objects.
At 10.30 I was live on air, broadcasting from Zouch Radio. The presenter, Dave Wonky (surely not his real name), introduced me ‘as the latest talent to emerge from Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Who is he, listeners?’
I was puzzled by this introduction until Mr Wonky played an inane jingle.
Mystery Guest
That’s the test
Play the game
If you know the name.
Nobody rang, so Mr Wonky gave out a further clue. ‘OΚ, clue number two. He’s a celebrity chef.’
The lines remained silent. Mr Wonky played the jingle and read out the traffic news. A lorry had overturned on the Billesdon bypass, spilling its load of goldfish food. Still nobody rang. I had now been in the studio, totally silent, for ten minutes. I was forbidden to speak until my identity had been guessed at by a listener.
After Wonky had read out a list of rummage sales to be held ‘in the upcoming week’, a woman rang to ask if I was Delia Smith.
Five minutes later Wonky gave out his third clue. ‘He married into the Nigerian aristocracy.’
Even I wouldn’t have recognized myself from this description. A moronic youth, Tez, from Coalville, asked if I was Lenny Henry. Wonky got slightly irritated and said, ‘Tez, Dawn French is not a Nigerian aristocrat, is she?’
Tez said he didn’t know and Wonky cut him off quite abruptly, without saying thank you. Wonky has aspirations to be the first Midlands Shock Jock. He told me this while playing Max Bygraves’ ‘Windmill in Old Amsterdam’. When it finished he said, ‘That was for Mrs Agnes Golightly, who is eighty-nine years young today, God bless her.’
His fourth clue was that ‘My mystery guest’s family has been in the news lately. His parents have been embroiled in a love-swap tangle, involving a certain lady called Pandora.’
The lines were jammed, though nobody remembered my name properly. Was I ‘James Vole’? ‘Adrian Sole’? ‘Lance Pole’? I was hurt and humiliated, especially when Wonky told the listeners that since nobody had got my name right, he would be rolling today’s prize, a Radio Zouch T-shirt, over to tomorrow’s programme.
He allowed me to speak briefly for two minutes on Offally Good! – The Book!, but I was not at my most articulate. He then invited listeners to phone in and ask me questions. A vegetarian called Yvonne rang to ask why I was encouraging the mass genocide of animals by advocating the cooking of offal. I told her that I was an animal lover and a cat owner, and said that it was a well-known fact that vegetables and fruit screamed in agony when pulled from the ground, or cut from the bough. Yvonne then got hysterical and accused me of being a man.
Wonky said, ‘It’s not a crime to be a man yet, is it, Yvonne?’
Yvonne then broke down and confessed that her ex-husband, a womanizing carnivore, had left his goodbye note under a plate of calves’ liver in the fridge. Wonky began to counsel the woman and indicated to me that I was to leave the studio. I was glad to do so.
William came home with a note from Mrs Parvez:
Dear Mr Mole,
If you require help in purchasing school shoes for William, may I draw your attention to the enclosed Social Security leaflet, ‘Help with Footwear’.
Sincerely,
Mrs Parvez
There was a message on the answerphone to say that Glenn had not attended morning or afternoon registration. When I tackled him on this, he said, ‘I couldn’t do it, Dad. There was no way I could go walkin’ in that school in Marks & Spencer’s trainers.’ Tears sprang to his eyes. He looked surprised at this.
I took him and William to the out-of-town shopping complex The Pastures, where it is now possible to shop until 10 p.m. seven days a week. We went to Footlocker. A handsome black shop assistant said to Glenn, ‘These equal respect, man.’ He handed Glenn a pair of trainers that to my eye looked like those vehicles that pick up minerals from the surface of the moon. Glenn tried them on and I could tell he had a moment of epiphany. He said, ‘Oh, Dad, they’re top!’ They were £75.99.
I
said, ‘Almost £76 for two bits of rubber! It would kill me, Glenn.’
He handed them back to the shop assistant, who put them back in the box. Then I remembered the grey slip-ons I was made to wear to school, instead of the Doc Martens that everyone else in my year was wearing. I heard Barry Kent’s taunts in the playground and went back into the shop and bought the trainers. £75·99! It has made me ill.
Bought William some Lion King slip-ons. He wanted some Titanic zip-up boots, but I said no. We looked around the bookshop on the complex, There was no sign of Offally Good – The Book! My sons were disgusted.
I buried Barry Kent’s book, Blind, under a pile of Stephen Kings.
Thursday February 26th
Nobby came round for the ladders.
Radio Leicester interview at 12.30. Larry Graves, the interviewer, said he had tried the pig’s trotters recipe at home last night, but he had found them inedible. He’d watched the TV series and thought that Dev Singh was ‘a comic genius’. He asked me if I would get Dev to sign his copy of the book.
Friday February 27th
Eleanor very gloomy tonight after the lesson. I said that I hoped Glenn was not to blame. She told me Roger Patience was not going to renew her contract at Neil Armstrong Comprehensive. I asked why, but she was curiously evasive. She put her oversize black coat on and left in rather a hurry.
Patience is a fool: she is a brilliant teacher. Glenn’s reading age has improved by two years in as many weeks. He is now almost on a par with the average nine-year-old.