Adrian Mole: Diary of a Provincial Man

Saddington Fair

Saturday, May 6, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire

My mother rang me this morning and asked if I would give her driving lessons. I laughed for quite a long time. Eventually, she said, "Yes or no?" I said, "It would be disastrous, you can't even tell left from right." I asked her if she had requested that her new husband teach her. She said, "Ivan reckons that there are enough cars on the road already." I advised her to use public transport. She said that there was no public transport to the crėme de la crėme of boot-fairs at Saddington in the middle of the Leicestershire countryside.

"Why won't Ivan take you to Saddington?" I asked.

"Ivan gets nervous seeing so many cash transactions taking place between untrained amateurs," she said.

Ivan used to be the chief accountant at a dairy until the cold winds of change knocked the milk bottles off the steps of time and replaced them with the cardboard carton in the supermarket chill cabinet.

My mother was still blathering on: "The last time we went to a boot-fair, Ivan completely ruined my pleasure by moaning about the lack of regulations. He said that both the buyers and the sellers were anarchists, and should be made to pay tax and VAT. He has even asked Pandora to bring in an act of parliament: The Boot Fair Regulation Act.

When she mentioned that there were Abba LPs and memorabilia for sale, I offered to take her one Sunday.

Monday, May 8

My father continues to deteriorate in hospital. He has now contracted a virus (the one caused by privatised cleaning) and is in an isolation ward. His new wife, Tania, is in almost permanent attendance. She is taking advantage of his weakened state to read Great Literature at him. She is currently halfway through Moby Dick. When she went out to go to the toilet, I asked my father how he was enjoying Melville's extraordinary allegorical seafaring tales. "I am not enjoying it," he whined " I don't like fishing."

I noticed that Tania had placed a copy of Silas Marner: The Weaver Of Raveloe on the bedside trolley. It was obviously to be the next literary read-aloud treat. I wondered if I should mention to her that my father has a violent antipathy to books, films and TV dramas about children. (Something had once happened to him in a cinema during the showing of a Shirley Temple film — I don't know what but a gabardine mac was involved).

Tania would be on firmer ground if she stuck to Raymond Chandler or the earlier Dick Francis.

Friday, May 12

Pamela Pigg called round to say that she's found me a small town house overlooking a canal basin in Leicester. The present occupant, a Mrs Wormington, is an OAP. She is in hospital, but is nil by mouth, so Pamela reckons I can probably move in in a couple of weeks. I said, "Is she nil by mouth so as to free up the country's housing stock?"

Pamela said, "She is occupying a three-bedroom house and she is 97-years-old."

I said, "Pamela, I don't want Mrs Wormington killed so that I can enjoy watching the narrow boats pass by my living-room window." I asked which hospital Mrs Wormington was in. She told me that it was the same one as my father, Pankhurst Ward — which was sort of appropriate. Though Mrs Pankhurst chose to be nil by mouth.

Sunday, May 14

Mrs Wormington is nil by mouth because she has had a stroke and can't swallow properly. She has no family or friends: "They've all died off, lad," she told me. I used a cotton bud dipped in water to moisten her mouth. "I don't like to bother the nurses," she croaked.

Are pensioners to be my albatross? I can already feel her liver-spotted hand around my neck.