Adrian Mole: Diary of a Provincial Man

Thicker than water

Sunday, May 28, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

The resemblance between Leo Blair and William Hague is uncanny. Each is the other's doppelganger. Put Mr Hague in a romper suit, bootees and a woolly hat, and he is the living embodiment of Master Blair. Can Cherie and William account for their movements on the day of Leo's conception? I wouldn't be surprised if, even as I write, Mr Blair is angrily confronting a tearful Mrs Blair at Chequers. And Ffion must have seen Leo's photograph and questioned her husband's fidelity.

My mother shares my suspicions — we have several children in our family whose paternity remains a mystery. If I were Mr Blair, I would demand a DNA test immediately. How can he concentrate on affairs of state or face Mr Hague across the dispatch box until he knows the Truth?

Incidentally, if my long-held theory is true (that William Hague is Margaret Thatcher's love child) this would mean that young Leo has Thatcher's blood in his veins. I do not usually prescribe to conspiracy theories, but in this case I feel compelled to warn somebody — but who?

Tuesday, May 30

Pandora is in the constituency tomorrow. She is the guest of honour at the closing-down ceremony at St Barnabas' Library. The barbecue in the library car park starts at 6.30pm. I may take the boys. I will also voice my fears to Pandora about the right-wing blood alliance of Blair, Hague and Thatcher.

Wednesday, May 31

It was a painful sight to see hardbacks being used to fuel the cooking of WhoppaBurgers and Buy A Big Boy Hot Dog. The newly retired librarian, Mrs Froggatt, threw a few Barbara Cartlands on to the barbecue when the heat died down. They flared up with an eerie, pink glow. I managed to save some PG Wodehouses and William Browns from the flames, but there was nothing I could do for the others. Glenn couldn't watch. "It ain't right, Dad," he said. Underneath his rough exterior, he is quite a sensitive lad.

Pandora turned up at 7pm and made a speech saying that libraries are now redundant due to the growth of the internet.

One old man in the crowd shouted: "I can't afford to go on-line on 75p a week!"

I tried to talk to Pandora about my suspicions regarding Leo Blair, but she was in a hurry to get away, having realised that being photographed in front of a pyre of books was a potential public-relations disaster.

Thursday, June 1

Mrs Wormington is well enough to come out of hospital. Her son, Ted, turned up out of the blue and tried to persuade her to go into a nursing home. I was visiting her at the time with Glenn and William. She hadn't seen Ted for 21 years, because of a row about a clock. She was adamant that she wanted to return to her own home.

Ted said: "You're being daft, Mam. You can't live on your own at the age of 95. If you won't go into a nursing home, you'll have to come and live with me and Eunice."

A look of horror passed over her multi-wrinkled face. While Ted went to telephone Eunice, Mrs Wormington clutched at my sleeve. She said, "Don't let him take me to live with him and Eunice. I'll be dead in a week. That Eunice is a miserable bugger — she's never been known to crack her face." When Ted came back, he said that Eunice was still resentful about the clock. Glenn announced, "It's alright, she's comin' 'ome with us." I could easily have killed him.

Friday, June 2

Mrs Wormington has been slagging off the Queen Mother. "She's never done a hand's turn in her life," she said. "No wonder she's always smilin'." She moves in with us tomorrow. The adult Pampers delivery service has been alerted.

Saturday, June 3, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

Because of Mrs Wormington's advanced age (95), it is like having a living history book permanently open on the kitchen table. A mention of Dunkirk brings an anecdote about the little boat, the Betty Grable, that her younger brother Cedric sailed across the English Channel during the evacuation. "He weren't the same when he came back," she said. "He took up knitting and joined the Communist party." Apparently, both of these activities were enough to banish him from the bosom of the Wormington family. "I used to write to him in secret," she said. "And on his birthday I'd send him a knitting pattern." William and Glen have been glued to the Dunkirk coverage across television, hoping to see Cedric on the Betty Grable.

Sunday, June 4

My mother came round to stay with Mrs Wormington and the boys while I went to see my father in hospital. His original injuries are healing, but he is still ill with the infection he caught in hospital. Apparently, his body has shrugged off most of the powerful antibiotics given to him. My father has taken to boasting about this — as in "there's not an antibiotic alive that can touch George Mole".

Tania, his newish wife, has worked hard to turn him into a middle-class new man. But, I fear, to no avail. Since his garden pagoda accident, he has reverted to type: the Sun is delivered to his bed every morning by the Women's Voluntary Service, and he inevitably picks all the stodgy items on the computerised menu form. Tania has given up reading improving literature to him, since he laughed out loud at the end of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

When I arrive home, I find a heartening scene of inter-generational harmony. Mrs Wormington, my mother, Glen and William are sitting in a circle passing the nit comb from one to the other. William has introduced head lice into our house yet again.

Ivan Braithwaite came to pick up my mother. He has recently been diagnosed as suffering from over-choice syndrome. He broke down in the washing-powder aisle at Safeway. He was observed on a CCTV camera to be acting bizarrely — walking up and down the aisle for a full 20 minutes while scribbling calculations on a notepad. He then knelt by the boxes of Persil biological tablets and wept. When my mother finally turned up to collect him, he was sitting in the manager's office, hungry and thirsty. He'd been offered tea or coffee and ginger nuts or digestives, but had, of course, been unable to choose between them.

I don't like the man, but I sympathise with his affliction. My own temples start to throb when it comes to choosing between the hundreds of shampoos on offer.

Monday June 5

Worked on Sty, my pig novel. Since finishing with Pamela Pigg, I have been writing better than ever I have done before. Was P. Pigg blocking me in some way?

Tuesday, June 6

While the boys were at school and Mrs Wormington was having her feet done by a peripatetic chiropodist, I wrote 250 words of Sty. Should I give my pig-hero a name, or should the pig stand for struggling humanity? I need literary advice from an editor.

10pm. Just looked up «Editors» on the net and found the editor of the year…