The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (10 page)

Washed red socks, put them on radiator to dry ready for the morning.

Woke up, dressed, put red socks on before underpants or vest. Father stood at the door and wished me luck. Felt like a hero. Met Pandora and rest of committee at corner of our road; all of us were wearing red socks. Pandora’s were lurex. She has certainly got guts! We sang ‘We shall not be moved’ all the way to school. I felt a bit scared when we went through the gates but Pandora rallied us with shouts of encouragement.

Pop-eyed Scruton must have been tipped off because he was waiting in the fourth-year cloakroom. He was standing very still with his arms folded, staring with poached egg eyes. He didn’t speak, he just nodded upstairs. All the red socks trooped upstairs. My heart was beating dead loud. He went silently into his officeand sat at his desk and started tapping his teeth with a school pen. We just stood there.

He smiled in a horrible way then rang the bell on his desk. His secretary came in, he said, ‘Sit down and take a letter, Mrs Claricoates’. The letter was to our parents, it said:

Dear Mr and Mrs…

It is my sad duty to inform you that your son⁄daughter has deliberately flaunted one of the rules of this school. I take an extremely serious view of this contravention. I am therefore suspending your son⁄daughter for a period of one week. Young people today’often lack sufficient moral guidance in the home, therefore I feel that it is my duty to take a firm stand in my school. If you wish to discuss the matter further with me do not hesitate to ring my secretary for an appointment.

Your faithfully,

R.G. Scruton

Headmaster

Pandora started to say something about her O levels suffering but Scruton roared at her to shut up! Even Mrs Claricoates jumped. Scruton said that we could wait until the letters had been typed, duplicated and signed and then we had better ‘hot foot it out of school’. We waited outside Scruton’s office. Pandora was crying (because she was angry and frustrated, she said). I put my arm round her a bit. Mrs Claricoates gave us our letters. She smiled very kindly, it can’t be very easy working for a despot.

We went round to Pandora’s house but it was locked, so I said everyone could come round to my house. It was quite tidy for once, apart from the dog hairs. My father raged about the letter. He is supposed to be a Conservative but he is not being very conservative at the moment.

I can’t help wishing that I had worn black socks on Friday.

Moon’s First Quarter

My father saw Scruton today and told him that if he didn’t allow me back to school in whatever colour socks I like he would protest to his MR Mr Scruton asked my father who his MP was. My father didn’t know.

Pandora and I are in love! It is official! She told Claire Neilson, who told Nigel, who told me.

I told Nigel to tell Claire to tell Pandora that I return her love. I am over the moon with joy and rapture. I can overlook the fact that Pandora smokes five Benson and Hedges a day and has her own lighter. When you are in love such things cease to matter.

Spent all day with my love. Can’t write much, my hands are still trembling.

Had a message from the school to say that Bert Baxter wanted to see me urgently. Went round with Pandora (we are inseparable). Bert is ill. He looked awful, Pandora made his bed up with clean sheets (she didn’t seem to mind the smell) and I phoned the doctor. I described Bert’s symptoms. Funny breathing, white face, sweating.

We tried to clean the bedroom up a bit, Bert kept saying stupid things that didn’t make sense. Pandora said that he was delirious. She held his hand until the doctor came. Dr Patel was quite kind, he said that Bert needed oxygen. He gave me a number to ring for an ambulance, it seemed to take ages to come. I thought about how I had neglected Bert lately and I felt a real rat fink. The ambulancemen took Bert downstairs on a stretcher. They got stuck on the corner of the stairs and knocked a lot of empty beetroot jars over. Pandora and me cleared a path through the rubbish in the downstairs hall and they steered him through. He was wrapped in a big, fluffy red blanket before he went outside. Then they shut him up in the ambulance and he was sirened away. I had a big lump in mythroat and my eyes were watering. It must have been caused by the dust.

Bert’s house is very dusty.

Bert is in intensive care, he can’t have visitors. I ring up every four hours to find out how he is. I pretend to be a relative. The nurses say things like ‘He is stable’.

Sabre is staying with us. Our dog is staying at grandma’s because it is scared of alsatians.

I hope Bert doesn’t die. Apart from liking him, I have got nothing to wear to a funeral.

Still madly in love with P.

Trinity Sunday

Went to see Bert, he has got tubes all over him. I took him a jar of beetroot for when he is better. The nurse put it in his locker. I took some ‘get well’ cards, one from Pandora and me, one from my grandma, one from my father and one from Sabre. Bert was asleep so I didn’t stay long.

The Red Sock Committee has voted to give way to Scruton for the time being. We wear red socks underneath our black socks. This makes our shoes tight but we don’t mind because a principle is involved.

Bert has made a slight improvement. He is awake more. I’ll go round and see him tomorrow.

Bert has only got a few tubes left inside him now. He was awake when I went into his room. He didn’t recognize me at first because I was wearing a mask and gown. He thought I was a doctor. He said, ‘Get these bkedin’ tubes out of my private parts, I ain’t an underground system’. Then he saw it was me and asked how Sabre was. We had a long talk about Sabre’s behaviour problems, then the nurse came in and told me I had to go. Bert asked me to tell his daughters that he is on his death bed; he gave me half-a-crown for the phone calls! Two of them live in Australia! He said the numbers are written down in the back of his old army pay-book.

My father says that half-a-crown is roughly worth twelve and a half pence. I am keeping the half-a-crown. It has a nice chunky feel about it and it will no doubt be a collector’s item one day.

Full Moon

Pandora and me searched Bert’s house looking for his army pay-book. Pandora found a pile of brown and cream postcards that were very indecent. They were signed ‘
ovec tout monamour cheri, Lola
‘. I felt a bit funny after looking through them, so did Pandora. We exchanged our first really passionate kiss. I felt like doing a French kiss but I don’t know how it’s done so I had to settle for an ordinary English one. No sign of the pay-book.

Bert is now tubeless. He is being moved into an ordinary ward tomorrow. I told him about not finding the army pay-book, he said it doesn’t matter now he knows he’s not dying.

Pandora came with me tonight. She got on well with Bert; they talked about Blossom. Bert passed on a few tips about grooming ponies. Then Pandora went out to arrange the flowers she’d brought and Bert asked me if I’d had my ‘leg over’ yet. Sometimes he is just a dirty old man who doesn’t deserve visitors.

Bert is on a big ward full of men with broken legs and bandaged chests. He looks a lot better now that he has got his teeth in. Some of the men whistled at Pandora when she walked down the ward. I wish she wasn’t taller than me. Bert is in trouble with the ward sister for getting beetroot juice on the hospital sheets. He is supposed to be on a fluid diet.

I hope Bert can come home soon. My father is fed up with Sabre and my grandma is sick to death of our dog.

Bert’s consultant has told him to give up smoking but Bert says at eighty-nine years old it is hardly worth it. He has asked me to buy him twenty Woodbines and a box of matches. What shall I do?

First after Trinity. Father’s Day

Couldn’t sleep last night for worrying about the Woodbines. After much heart-searching decided not to grant Bert’s wish. Then went to the hospital to find that Bert had bought his stinking fags from the hospital trolley!

Just measured my thing. It has grown one centimetre. I might be needing it soon.

Woke up with sore throat, couldn’t swallow, tried to shout downstairs but could only manage a croak. Tried to attract my father’s attention by banging on my bedroom floor with school shoe but my father shouted, ‘Stop that bloody banging’. Eventually I sent the dog downstairs with a message tucked inside its collar. I waited for ages, then I heard the dog barking in the street. It hadn’t delivered the message! I was close to despair. I had to get up to go to the toilet but how I got there I don’t know; it is all a hazy blur. I stood at the top of the stairs and croaked as loud as I could but my father had his Alma Cogan records on so I was forced to go downstairs and tell him I was ill. My father looked in my mouth and said, ‘Christ Almighty, Adrian, your tonsils look like Polaris missiles! What are you doing down here? Get back into bed at once, you fool’. He took my temperature: it was 112° Fahrenheit. By rights I should be dead.

It is now five minutes to midnight, the doctor is coming in the morning. I just pray that I can last out until then. Should the worst happen, I hereby leave all my worldly goods to Pandora Braithwaite of 69 Elm Tree Avenue. I think I am of sound mind. It is very hard to tell when you’ve got a temperature of 112° Fahrenheit.

I have got tonsillitis. It is official. I am on antibiotics. Pandora sits by my bed reading aloud to me. I wish she wouldn’t, every word is like a rock dropping on my head.

A ‘get well’ card from my mother. Inside a five-pound note. I asked my father to spend it on five bottles of Lucozade.

Moon’s Last Quarter

I have delirious dreams about Lady Diana Spencer; I hope I am better in time for the wedding. Temperature is still 112° Fahrenheit.

My father can’t cope with Sabre, so Pandora has taken him home with her. (Sabre, not my father.)

Doctor said our thermometer is faulty. I feel slightly better.

Got up for twenty minutes today. Watched
Play School;
it was Carol Leader’s turn, she is my favourite presenter.

Pandora brought me a ‘get well’ card. She made it herself with felt-tip pens. She signed it: ‘Forever yours, Pan.’

I wanted to kiss her but my lips are still cracked.

Why hasn’t my mother been to see me?

Second after Trinity

My mother has just left to catch the train for Sheffield. I am worn out with all the emotion. I am having a relapse.

Pandora went to see Bert Baxter. She said the nurses are getting fed up with him because he won’t stay in bed or do anything he is told to do. He is being discharged on Thursday.

I long for the peace and quiet of a hospital ward. I would be a perfect patient.

Pandora’s father has put Sabre into kennels, it iscosting him three pounds a day, but Pandora’s father says that it is worth every penny.

I am entering a period of convalescence. I will have to take things very easily if I am to regain my former vigour.

Dominion Day, Canada. New Moon

The truant officer came round this afternoon; he caught me sitting in a deckchair in the front garden. He didn’t believe I was ill! He is reporting me to the school! The fact that I was sipping Lucozade whilst wearing pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers seemed to have escaped him. I offered to show him my yukky tonsils but he backed away and trod on the dog’s paw. The dog has got a low pain threshold so it went a bit berserk. My father came out and separated them but things could get nasty for us.

The doctor said I can go back to school tomorrow, depending on how I feel. You can depend that I won’t feel up to it.

A brown-skinned family are moving into Mr Lucas’s old house! I sat in my deckchair and had a good view of their furniture being carried out of the removal van. The brown-skinned ladies kept taking massive cooking pots into the house so it looks as if they are a large family. My father said that it was ‘the beginning of the end of our street’. Pandora is in the Anti-Nazi League. She said she thinks that my father is a possible racist.

I am reading
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
.

Independence Day, USA

The street is full of brown-skinned people arriving or departing in cars, vans and mini-buses. They keep trooping in and out of Mr Lucas’s old house. My father says they have probably got three families to each room.

Pandora and I are going round to welcome them to our district. We are determined to show that not all white people are racist fanatics.

Bert Baxter is still in hospital.

Third after Trinity

Stayed in bed until 6 PM. There was no point in getting up. Pandora has gone to a gymkhana.

Mrs O’Leary is trying to organize a street party for the Royal Wedding. The only people to put their names down so far are the Singh family.