Adrian Mole: Diary of a Provincial Man

Should auld utopian visions be forgot?

Monday, January 1, 2001, 1.30am

I saw the new year in alone. Glenn has gone to a fancy-dress party at his mother's house. Rather disturbingly, he went as Hannibal Lecter. William is spending the weekend with his mother and her new husband, who are on honeymoon in London.

I hope my ex-wife and her new spouse can forget their sexual passion for long enough to pay proper attention to William. The lad has had two major disappointments in his life lately:

a) Santa's broken promise to bring him a Sony PlayStation 2;

b) Santa's broken promise to bring him a Barbie Plane.

As midnight struck, I reopened the bottle of sparkling chardonnay I failed to finish on Christmas Day, but the sparkle had gone out of it. So I poured it down the sink.

As I wrote the numbers 2001, I was transported back to a classroom at the Neil Armstrong comprehensive, and a lesson on "the future" given by Miss Elf, the humanities teacher. By 2001, according to Miss Elf, the world would be one, big, happy, cappuccino-coloured family. I remember her drawing this frontier-less world. How the chalk dust flew!

Miss Elf was a passionate and committed teacher. In fact, not long after I left school she was committed to the High Towers mental hospital, following a doomed staff-room romance with Podgy Perkins, the games master. He was married with seven children, all boys. (Interestingly, all the boys' names began with G.) Strange what the memory throws up.

Anyway, Miss Elf envisaged that, by 2001, there would be no hunger in the world and that everybody would have access to clean water and a flushing toilet. She drew a typical 2001 world family on the board, using a fresh box of coloured chalks. They all had brown skin and wore white, shiny, body-suits with pointy shoulders. Attached to their ankles were tiny jet engines. These devices enabled the 2001 family to fly like the birds. Though, as she pointed out, intercontinental travel would necessitate many refuelling stops.

Perhaps it is a good thing that Miss Elf is gibbering behind the high walls of an institution. She would be heartbroken to know that her utopian vision is as far away as ever, and that Israel and Palestine are still arguing the toss.

New Year Resolutions

1. I will try and secure the services of Dame Helena Kennedy in a bid to get my mother out of prison.

2. I will persist in trying to get my serial killer comedy, The White Van, made by the BBC.

3. I will try to be less judgmental. Perhaps Jeffrey Archer is innocent. Perhaps the Dome was worth a billion pounds.

4. I will look into the Buddhist religion with a view to becoming a cohort. I have always had a horror of treading on insects. Ants in particular.

5. I will attempt to fall in love with a suitable woman this year. One that doesn't cry a lot or use too much blue eye shadow.

6. I'll teach my son's the proper use of the apostrophe.

Tuesday, January 2

Pandora is back from Israel where she claimed to be on a fact-finding mission about Jerusalem. I remarked on her tan. She said, "Yeah, I managed to get a few days off in Eilat, swimming with the dolphins." How I envy Pandora's physical prowess! I would find it difficult to swim with goldfish.

I asked her if she was any nearer to achieving her medium-term goal, that of becoming foreign secretary. She tossed her treacle-coloured hair back and said, "It's acknowledged by those that count — Ian Hislop, Auberon Waugh and Andrew Rawnsley — that Robin's got to go. The man is now totally incomprehensible. How poor bloody foreigners understand his mad gabble, God only knows."