Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years Part 19

Tuesday March 17th Glenn has now been here at Rampart Terrace for over four weeks. I asked him last night where he wants to live and who he wants to live with. He said, 'Here, with you, Dad.'

It wasn't especially what I wanted to hear. I'm fond of the boy but...

I phoned Sharon this morning and asked her if I could come round and talk to her about Glenn's future. It was a difficult conversation: Caister was crying in a distant room and Bradford and Kent were quarrelling somewhere very near to the telephone. Not surprisingly, Sharon sounded distracted. When I first mentioned Glenn's name, she said, 'Who?' We agreed I'd go round on Thursday night.

Wednesday March 18th A police patrol car pulled up outside the house at three o'clock this afternoon. A policeman came to the door and said, 'Did you know, sir, that there's a black man on your roof?'

I said, 'Yes, I do know, I'm paying him PS20 an hour to be there.'

Glenn v. unhappy. Man U out of European Cup after drawing 1-1 with Monaco. I said to him, 'Glenn, football is like life, you must have a goal. But sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.'

He said, 'But why couldn't Man U get another goal and win, Dad?'

He doesn't know about metaphors.

Thursday March 19th My father rang me today, which is an unusual occurrence. His voice was lowered, so I knew that Tania was in the vicinity. He said, 'Have you seen the papers, Adrian?'

I said that, no, I hadn't, I had been too busy sc.r.a.ping burned stuff from the hotplate of the steam iron to go out for a paper.

He said, 'They've gone too bleeding far now. They've gone and put a woman in charge of a wars.h.i.+p. HMS Express. Think of the carnage that woman could cause.'

I heard Tania call from the garden, 'Darling, come and hear the blackbird.'

My father muttered, 'Got to go.'

My mother once steered a ca.n.a.l boat into the wall of a deep lock, causing my father to nearly fall overboard. This incident was watched by drinkers in the garden of the Lock-keeper and Camel public house. I will never forget their jeers.

1 a.m. Sharon was so tired she fell asleep twice while I was talking to her about Glenn's future. Caister is the type of baby who prefers to be fed every three-quarters of an hour. Unfortunately Sharon is breastfeeding. This may be beneficial to the baby but it did me no good whatsoever. I once enjoyed gazing at her eighteen-year-old b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but now she is aged thirty they are vast, intimidating, blue-veined edifices. Sharon Bott is a walking dairy. Her nipples look like Liquorice Allsorts.* She looks more like fifty than thirty.

[?] I meant, of course, liquorice torpedoes.

I asked her how she would feel if Glenn came to live with me permanently. She said, 'I know he'd have a better life with you. I can't give him nothing.'

I said that, on the contrary, she had given him a lot. I told her that she had done a good job of bringing him up and that I was very fond of the boy.

She looked relieved, and said, 'He could come to me for the weekends sometimes, couldn't he?'

I said that I would be glad to have the occasional weekend free.

I looked around her living room. There were no books, or magazines, or even newspapers. I looked forward to the day when I could introduce my eldest son to the world of literature. When I got home we celebrated by sending out for a Chinese takeaway. They forgot William's prawn crackers, but he didn't have his usual tantrum. He was happy because Glenn is going to be living with us for ever.

When I went upstairs to carry William to bed, I saw that there was a notice pinned on Glenn's bedroom door. It said, 'Glenn Bott privet'.

Friday March 20th Left Bill Broadway pointing up the chimney-stack and drove into Leicester. I miss big-city life. Bought William some Power Ranger underpants from the Everything's a Pound shop. Was disturbed to see that somebody has opened an Everything for sop! shop. Things are going downhill fast. This is a sure sign that city-centre shopping is in its death throes.

I was examining some Baywatch eggcups, with a view to purchase, when a man in a green-knitted bobble hat approached me and said he had seen me on the telly. He asked me for my autograph, saying it was for Phyllis, his mentally ill sister, who was my 'biggest fan'. On the back of his gas bill I wrote: 'To Phyllis, It was Offally nice to meet your brother. Best wishes to you, From Adrian Mole.'

The man looked at the back of the bill and said, 'She won't like this.'

I asked why. Apparently the cause of Phyllis's mental problems centred around her being the first-born and having her 'nose put out of joint' when he, her brother, was born. 'She never recovered,' he said. 'You writing, 'It was nice to meet your brother,' could tip her over the edge.'

He gave me his bus ticket and on the back I wrote: 'To Phyllis, Best wishes from A. Mole.'

He looked at it for a minute, then said, 'She might think that A Mole meant one of them little burrowing animals. She's got a thing about small mammals.' He handed me a dry-cleaning ticket and I wrote on the back, 'h.e.l.lo Phyllis, This is Adrian Mole, the TV chef. Get well soon!'

He shook his head. 'No, you can't write, 'Get well soon',' he said. 'She doesn't know she's ill.'

I s.n.a.t.c.hed at the Bhs receipt he held out and scribbled, 'Best wishes, Adrian Mole', on the back. He said a grudging thank-you, adjusted his bobble hat and sloped out of the shop. I was too flummoxed to be able to concentrate on the Baywatch eggcups, and I left the shop without buying anything.

To calm down I had a cappuccino at a pavement cafe in the high street. This place, the Bra.s.serie, has only been open a week, and has been viewed with suspicion by some sections of Leicester society. An OAP pa.s.sed my table, saying to her companion, 'It's obstructing the pavement, in't it? What about blind folk and them in wheelchairs?'

In the afternoon I went to see my father and Tania, to inform them that Glenn was living with me permanently. They had just been to the s.e.xual dysfunction unit at the hospital. Unfortunately they felt the need to tell me, in minute detail, about their joint consultation. Tania held my father's hand and said to me, 'I've tried to rea.s.sure him that penetrative s.e.x is not the be all and end all.'

When she got up and went to the kitchen to make some herbal tea, my father's gaze followed her ample hips out of the room as he said, 'Penetrative s.e.x is the be all and end all with me. I can't be doing with all that bleddy tongue-wagging stuff--I even failed the oral when I took my driving test.'

I changed the subject by informing him that learner drivers now had to take a written test, but he returned like a homing pigeon to the topic of his private parts by telling me that Tania was treating his piles with aromatherapy. He s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably on his chair. I suggested that a rubber ring or an operation might give more effective relief than a whiff of lavender oil. He glanced at her fearfully as she re-entered the room and said loudly, 'I've got great faith in aromatherapy. You shouldn't mock it, Adrian.' Tania smiled down at him as though he were a well-behaved toddler.

Eleanor mobiled me to say she can't come tonight, she had 'an emergency appointment' to see her therapist.

On the way home I did some shopping at the BP garage and bought Glenn a World Cup fixtures chart for his bedroom.

Sat.u.r.day March 21st Glenn said today, 'Shall we do the lottery, Dad?' I almost gave him my standard anti-lottery lecture. Then I heard myself saying, 'Why not, son?' Our numbers are 3, William's age, 13, Glenn's age, 31, soon to be my age, 16, Rosie's age, 30, Sharon's age, and 5, the New Dog's age.

Sunday March 22nd A weekend of non-stop toil. The was.h.i.+ng, ironing, folding, putting away of clothes! The was.h.i.+ng, drying and putting away of crockery! The sucking up of dirt from the floors! The endless wiping of surfaces! The constant preparation of food! I should have a woman to do all this for me. A woman I don't have to pay. A wife.

After the housework there was the mind-numbing boredom of reading aloud to Glenn from his World Cup wall chart. He is determined to have memorized the fixtures by June.

Tuesday March 24th Over dinner we discussed what we would do if we won the lottery. Glenn said, 'What does a million pounds look like, Dad?' I wrote out a cheque for a million pounds and made it payable to 'Glenn Bott Esquire'. He was dead chuffed and put it in the breast pocket of his school s.h.i.+rt.

Wednesday March 25th Roger Patience rang me at 11.30 this morning. He asked me to go into school immediately, there was a serious problem. I was so alarmed I drove well over the speed limit (39 mph). I was escorted to his office by the duty pupil of the day, a charming girl called Nell Barlow-Moore.

Patience was sitting behind his mock mahogany desk staring at a computer screen.

'Ah, Mr Mole,' he said, rising from his back-sufferer's chair. 'Sorry to call you in, but there's been an incident.'

Incident. The word hung in the air, pregnant with menace.

'Glenn brought a cheque for a million pounds to school today,' he said. 'There is a strict rule that anything over a monetary value of PS10 has to be given to the school secretary for safe-keeping. However, when Miss Trellis, his maths teacher, tried to take the cheque from Glenn he became abusive and called her a drongo. I won't have my female staff abused and intimidated, Mr Mole. I have suspended Glenn for a week.'

I said, 'The cheque was for a million pounds, Mr Patience. What did you think it was? His pocket money?'

Patience said, 'He was waving it around in the playground. Some of the first-years were sick with excitement.'

I threatened to take Glenn away from the school.

Patience said, 'You won't get him into another school round here. Bott is known to staff rooms up and down the county. He is infamous.'

Glenn was sitting on a scratched-up wooden bench outside the office. He stood up as I came out and said, 'Sorry, Dad.'

Sat.u.r.day March 28th William and Glenn asked me what we were going to 'do' over the weekend. I said that when I was a boy I didn't do anything. I just hung about the house until it was time to go back to bed.

Monday March 30th My mother rang and asked me what I would like for my birthday on Thursday. I said, 'I would like a lilac lavatory brush and holder from the Innovations catalogue.'

She said, 'Don't be ridiculous!'

I said, 'I'm perfectly serious. Archie's brush has lost all of its bristles.'

She said, 'I'll get you a book token as usual.'

She asked how William was. I said, 'He's extremely well,' then pointedly, 'as is my other son, Glenn.'

She said, 'I'm trying very hard with Glenn, Adrian, but I have to admit that...' There was silence, then she burst out with, 'I can't bear the way he breathes through his mouth, and I can't stand to watch him with a knife and fork.'

I said that I couldn't bear the way that Ivan's eyebrows met in the middle, or the way he knotted his tie or the way he pushed himself up against her when she was at the sink. But I replaced the receiver with a heavy heart. We had both gone too far. Dishonesty is obviously the best policy.

Tuesday March 31st A panic attack at 3.17 a.m. What had I done with my life?

I am an unsuccessful husband.

I am a disappointing son.

I am a failed writer.

I have failed to master the Psion Organizer.

I prayed fervently that I wouldn't fail with my sons.

Spring Wednesday April 1st April Fools' Day Oh, joy! Oh, precious rapture! A letter has arrived from the BBC!'

Dear Adrian Mole, I will cut to the chase. I have just finished reading The White Van (never mind how it got into my hand, suffice it to say that it has a large cult following here at the BBC). I am bowled over by this magnificent piece of work, and I would like to make a TV series out of it. I envisage 20 hour-long episodes.

The casting, of course, is crucial, but early thoughts include Robbie Coltrane, Dawn French, Pauline Quirke, Richard Griffiths.

I am away today on a Stress Awareness Course (mobile phones are banned). I will be back in my office tomorrow. Please telephone me then.

Yours sincerely, John Birt Director General Then, handwritten, PS. I can't tell you how excited I am by this.

I immediately telephoned Brick Eagleburger and left a message on his voicemail asking him to ring me back. Then, after supplying the boys with food and clean clothes and conducting the now almost obligatory search for shoes, I drove round to my mother's and photocopied the letter.

I have faxed copies to George 'n' Tania, Brick Eagleburger, Pandora, Barry Kent, Peter Savage and the Leicester Mercury. I then posted copies to the faxless: Nigel, Grandma and Grandad Sugden, Auntie Susan and her wife.

Dear Diary, I will sleep well tonight. John Birt has given me a wonderful thirty-first birthday present.

Thursday April 2nd I was woken by William throwing himself on to my bed and poking the sharp corner of a birthday card into my neck. He had made the card at nursery school under the supervision of Mrs Parvez. There was a crude approximation of me on the front: a stick man with huge teeth and wild hair. Seven fingers on each hand, and wearing high-heeled shoes. Inside, Mrs Parvez had made William copy 'To Daddy, best wishes from William'. 'Best wishes!' It speaks volumes about Mrs Parvez's relations.h.i.+p with her own father.

Glenn hung about in the bedroom doorway, glowering and smiling in turn. His hair has grown considerably, but he still looks like a thug. I will be glad when he has outgrown his thug clothes and I can introduce him to the Next range of junior menswear.

Eventually he came forward and thrust a shop-bought card into my hand. I took it out of its lurid red envelope. The ill.u.s.tration on the front was of a pipe-smoking, jutting-jawed fly fisherman who was up to his waders in a river. Jut-jaw's vintage car was parked on the bank. The boot of the car was open, showing that Jut-jaw had already caught five large fish, and placed them in a wicker basket. There was a black Labrador gazing up at its master. On the front of the card it said, 'To A Special Father On Your Birthday'. Inside there was a verse printed in Gothic script: Father, it's your Special Day, Time for fun and pleasures gay.

The sporting life it is for you, tramping through the morning dew, with dog and rod and fis.h.i.+ng-line, then home to bathe and sup and dine.

It could hardly have been more inappropriate. I loathe the great outdoors, and the thought of encouraging a harmless fish to impale itself on a sharp hook fills me with horror. However, when I saw that the boy had written 'Love from Glenn' in not too bad handwriting, and had scrawled thirty-one kisses on a blank interior page, I was touched.

Glenn also handed me a snake ashtray he'd made in Pottery at school. It consisted of a long thin coil of baked clay, ending in a snake's face. He said, 'In case you want to start smokin', Dad.' The post brought cards from Pandora (Happy Birthday, Const.i.tuent), Nigel (a card that said, 'Come out of the closet, you know you're gay,' with a drawing of a man stuck in a wardrobe), the Sugdens (a jut-jaw was.h.i.+ng a sports car).

When I was in the shower somebody came round and pushed the Mole family's cards through the front door. My mother's card was tactless in the extreme: a cartoon balding man (who looked uncommonly like me, actually) had a bubble coming out of his mouth saying, 'I'm over thirty, can you direct me to the Hill?' My father's card was of a village green cricketing scene, and several black Labradors were watching the match from various vantage-points. A woman was coming down the pavilion steps with a tray of sandwiches. The women spectators were wearing pretty frocks, hats and high-heeled shoes. My father had written: 'Those were the days! Happy Birthday, Adrian, from Dad and Tania.'

I rang John Birt but his secretary said he was in a meeting. I was surprised to find that she didn't know about The White Van! I rang at various intervals throughout the day, but Mr Birt seemed to go from meeting to meeting. There was a small birthday celebration at my mother's at 4 p.m.: a Spice Girls cake and a Marks & Spencer's party-food pack, which my mother hadn't properly defrosted. A toast was drunk to me in sparkling wine. Rosie gave me a boot-fair find, a leatherbound copy of Chekhov's short stories.

She said, 'It smells f--mouldy, but it might clean up.'

I thanked her from the bottom of my heart. She is obviously the only member of my family who understands me. My mother started whimpering when Glenn levered a mini-pizza into his mouth with the flat of his knife, so I took him and William home.

At 11 a.m. an extraordinary thing: there was a knock on the door. I laid aside my copy of Lee Salk's What Every Child Would Like His Parents to Know and went downstairs. On the doorstep was a box. I took it inside and opened the lid. A balloon floated out and hovered near the ceiling. A card inside the box said, 'I burn for you, I yearn for you.' Who can this be from, dear Diary?

Friday April 3rd 6.30 a.m. John Birt is now out of the office, again, on a 'Visions and Values' course. His secretary was unable to give me an account of his movements. I rang Brick, but he had heard nothing either. I asked to speak to Boston. Brick said, 'She don't work here no longer, Aidy. She kinda flipped and I had to let her go. She's back on the East Coast.'

Ms Eleanor Flood arrived at her usual hour; she admired the balloon and said, 'I didn't know it was your birthday.'

I was quite relieved.

Tuesday April 7th Apparently the sales figures for Offally Good!--The Book! are disappointingly low. The publishers are talking about remaindering some and pulping others. Apparently W.H. Smith have got a machine somewhere that turns books into fertilizer. My father, the book-phobic, would no doubt enjoy seeing this literature-crus.h.i.+ng machine in operation.

Pie Crust rang and asked me to go on the Late Night with Derek and June show on Thursday. Dev Singh had to cancel due to stress. He has booked into the Priory for a week. Derek and June is filmed at studios in Soho at midnight. I said I would require a hotel room, as I was reluctant to drive both up and down the Mi on the same night due to the danger of falling asleep at the wheel.

Rosie is going to babysit.

Nothing from the BBC. A bloke called Richard Brookes, from the Observer, rang me and asked for details about the BBC deal. He told me that he had first read the treatment for The White Van three weeks ago. When I asked him how he had got his hands on it, he said that it had been pa.s.sed around in the Groucho Club. I don't know whether to be flattered or outraged.

I prayed throughout my interview that n.o.body of my acquaintance would watch Late Night with Derek and June tonight. First I had to go along with the lie that I was sitting at their own kitchen table, whereas in fact we were in a c.r.a.ppy little 'studio' in the red-light district. Then, to my astonishment, Derek said to me, live on camera, 'We've been friends for years, haven't we, Adrian?'

He appeared to be doing an impression of Mr Bean. He took a copy of Offally Good!--The Book!, turned to the recipe for chicken giblets in parsnip coulis, and began to read aloud.

June's fat shoulders shook throughout. The whole interview was risibly amateurish. Derek and June made personal remarks about my appearance, then appeared to ignore me and chatted between themselves about their caravan holiday at Ingoldmells. The studio crew seemed to find their every ba.n.a.l utterance hysterically funny. When they turned their attention back to me it became obvious to me that Derek and June were having fun at my expense. They were, in fact, totally uninterested in offal. I felt angry and humiliated. I left the studio as soon as the filming was finished.

A spotty girl in denim shorts and thigh boots was leaning against my car smoking a cigarette. 'Hand job?' she said.

'No, it's fully automatic,' I replied, got in and drove to the Temple Hotel in Haven Hill Gardens, W2.

Temple Hotel 2 a.m. This place is a minimalist nightmare of j.a.panese design. My room is white and cream, and is decorated with old j.a.panese petrol cans. I can't find a way to open the wardrobes, or discover how to flush the lavatory. I will have to sleep with the lights on as don't know how to switch them off. When I finally managed to turn the shower on it was so powerful that it hurled me out of the cubicle, then flooded the floor and gushed into the sleeping pit, where it was soaked up by the futon.

I should have paid more attention when the hall porter showed me around the room but, to be honest, I was too intimidated by his severe black uniform and French accent to concentrate.

8 a.m. I found it hard to sleep for worrying about the flood from the shower. Would they charge me for water damage to the futon? Then there were the contents of the lavatory bowl: how would I dispose of them? I made another search for the flus.h.i.+ng mechanism, but failed to find anything remotely like a handle, a k.n.o.b, a switch or a floor pump. I took a tumbler and used it to pour water into the lavatory. It took twenty minutes before the contents finally disappeared.

Sat.u.r.day April 11th Glenn told me that it's his birthday next Sat.u.r.day. 'I'm becomin' a teenager, Dad.' He is very excited. I didn't like to tell him that my own teenage years were utterly desolate and miserable. However, he has one advantage over me: he can in no way be described as an intellectual. Glenn does not lie awake pondering on the nature of existence. He lies awake wondering who Hoddle will field in the World Cup.

Monday April 13th A postcard from Cape Cod, America! I know no one in those parts! Blank, apart from my address on one side, and on the other 'April Fool, Nebbis.h.!.+' A mystery.