The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3⁄4

Winter 1982

Bank Holiday in UK, Rep. of Ireland, USA and Canada

These are my New Year’s resolutions:

1. I will be true to Pandora.

2. I will bring my bike in at night.

3. I will not read unworthy books.

4. I will study hard for my O levels, and get Grade ‘A’s.

5. I will try to be more kind to the dog.

6. I will try to find it in my heart to forgive Barry Kent his multiple sins.

7. I will clean the bath after use.

8. I will stop worrying about the size of my thing.

9. I will do my back-stretching exercises every nightwithout fail.

10. I will learn a new word and use it every day.

Bank Holiday in Scotland (a day may be given in lieu)

How interesting it is that Aabec should be an Australian bark used for making sweat.

Second after Christmas. Moon’s First Quarter

I wouldn’t mind going to Africa and hunting an Aardvark.

Whilst in Africa I would go south and look out for an Aardwolf.

And I would avoid tangling with an Aasvogel.

Epiphany

I keep having nightmares about the bomb. I hope it isn’t dropped before I get my GCE results in August 1983.1 wouldn’t like to die an unqualified virgin.

Nigel came round to look at my racing bike. He said that it was mass produced, unlike his bike that was ‘made by a craftsman in Nottingham’. I have gone off Nigel, and I have also gone off my bike a bit.

Got a wedding invitation from Bert and Queenie, they are getting married on January 16th at Pocklington Street Register Office.

In my opinion it is a waste of time. Bert is nearly ninety and Queenie is nearly eighty. I will leave it until the last minute before I buy a wedding present.

It has started snowing again. I asked my mother to buy me some green Wellingtons like the Queen’s but she came back with dead common black ones. I only need them to walk Pandora to our gate. I am staying in until the snow melts. Unlike most youths of my age, I dislike frolicking in the snow.

Full Moon

Nigel said the end of the world is coming tonight. He said the moon is having a total collapse. (Nigel should read Reader’s Digest and increase his word power.) True enough it did go dark, I held my breath and feared the worst but then the moon recovered and life went on as usual, except in York where fate has flooded the town centre.

First after Epiphany

I can’t understand why my father looks so old at forty-one compared to President Reagan at seventy. My father has got no work or worries yet he looks dead haggard. Poor President Reagan has to carry the world’s safety on his shoulders yet he is always smiling and looking cheerful. It doesn’t make sense.

I’ve been looking through last year’s diary and have been reminded that Malcolm Muggeridge never did reply to my letter about what to do if you are an intellectual. That is a first-class stamp wasted! I should have written to the British Museum, that’s where all the intellectuals hang out.

Pandora and I went to the youth club tonight. It was quite good. Rick Lemon led a discussion on sex. Nobody said anything, but he showed some interesting slides of wombs cut in half.

Pandora’s parents have had a massive row. They are sleeping in separate bedrooms. Pandora’s mother has joined the SDP and Pandora’s father is staying loyal to the Labour Party.

Pandora is a Liberal, so she gets on all right with them both.

Pandora’s father has come out of the closet and admitted that he is a Bennite. Pandora is staying loyal to him, but if the Co-op Dairy find out he will be finished.

Thank God the snow is melting! At last I can walk the streets in safety, secure in the knowledge that no one is going to ram a snowball down the back of my anorak.

Moon’s Last Quarter

Bert got married today.

The Alderman Cooper Sunshine Home hired a coach and took the old ladies to form a guard of honour with their walking-frames.

Bert looked dead good. He cashed his life insurance in and spent the money on a new suit. Queenie was wearing a hat made of flowers and fruit. She had a lot of orange make-up on her face to try and cover the wrinkles. Even Sabre had a red bow round his neck. I think it was kind of the RSPCA to let Sabre out for his master’s wedding. My father and Pandora’s father carried Bert’s wheelchair up the steps with Bert a single man and then down again with Bert a married man. The old ladies threw rice and confetti and my mother and Pandora’s mother gave Queenie a kiss and a lucky horseshoe.

A newspaper reporter and photographer made everyone pose for photographs. I was asked my name, but I said I didn’t want publicity for my acts of charity to Bert.

The reception took place back at the home. Matron made a cake with ‘B’ and ‘Q’ written in Jellytots.

Bert and Queenie are moving into a bungalow on Monday, after they have had their honeymoon in the home.

Honeymoon! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Second after Epiphany

Last night I dreamed about a boy like me collecting pebbles in the rain. It was a dead strange dream.

I am reading The Black Prince, by Iris Murdoch. I can only understand one word in ten. It is now my ambition to actually enjoy one of her books. Then I will know I am above the common herd.

School. First day of term. Loads of GCE homework. I will never cope. I am an intellectual but at the same time I am not very clever.

Brought four hundred and eighty-three copies of The Voice of Youth home in my satchel and Adidas bag. Mr Jones needs the games cupboard.

Two-and-a-half hours of homework! I will crack under the strain.

My brain is hurting. I have just had two pages of Macbeth to translate into English.

I am destined to become a manual worker. I can’t keep working under this pressure. Miss Elf said my work is perfectly satisfactory, but that isn’t good enough when Pandora keeps getting ‘Excellent’ in red pen on everything she does.

Stayed in bed until five-thirty to make sure I missed Salisbury’s. Listened to Radio Four play about domestic unhappiness. Phoned Pandora. Did Geography homework. Teased dog. Went to sleep. Woke up. Worried for ten minutes. Got up. Made cocoa. I am a nervous wreck.

Third after Epiphany

My mother blames my bad nerves on Iris Murdoch.

She says painful adolescence shouldn’t be read about when one is studying for O levels.

New Moon

Couldn’t do my Maths homework. Phoned the Samaritans. The nice man on the end of the phone told me the answer was nine-eighths. He was dead kind to someone in despair.

The stupid Samaritan got the answer wrong! It’s only seven-fifths. I only got six out of twenty. Pandora got them all right. In fact she got a hundred per cent.

My mother is holding her women’s rights meetings in our lounge. I can’t concentrate on my homework properly with women laughing and shouting and stamping up the stairs. They are not a bit ladylike.

Got fifteen out of twenty for History. Pandora got twenty-one out of twenty. She got an extra mark for knowing Hitler’s father’s name.

Came home from school early with a severe migraine (missed the Comparative Religion test). Found my father watching Play School and pretending to be an acorn growing into an oak. Went to bed too shocked to speak.

Migraine. Too ill to write.

Fourth after Epiphany

Pandora came round. I copied her homework. Feel better.

Moon’s First Quarter

My mother has given my father an ultimatum: either he finds a job, or starts doing housework, or leaves. He is looking for a job.

Candlemas (Scottish Quarter-Day)

Grandma Mole came to tell me that the end of the world was announced at her Spiritualist church last week. She said it should have all ended yesterday.

She would have come round sooner only she was washing her curtains.

My father has had his credit cards taken off him! Barclays, Nat West and American Express have got fed up with his reckless spending. Time is running out for us. He has only got a few quid’s redundancy money left in his sock drawer.

My mother is looking for a job.

I have got a sense of deja vu.

Went round to see Bert and Queenie. Their bungalow is so full of knick-knacks that there is hardly room for a person to move. Sabre knocks at least ten things over every time he wags his tail. They both seem happy enough, though their sex life can’t be up to much.

I’ve got to write an essay on the causes of the Second World War. What a waste of time! Everyone knows the causes. You can’t go anywhere without seeing Hitler’s photo.

Finished essay; copied it out of Pear’s Encyclopedia.

My mother has gone to a women’s workshop on self-defence. So if my father moans at her for burning the toast she will be able to karate-chop him in the windpipe.

Septuagesima

Bored stiff all day. My parents never do anything on Sundays but read the Sunday papers. Other families go out to safari parks, etc. But we never do.

When I am a parent I will fill my children with stimulation at weekends.

Full Moon

My mother has found a job. She collects money from Space Invader machines. She started today in response to an urgent phone call from the job agency that she is registered with.

She said that the fullest machines are those in unre-spectable cafes and university common rooms.

I think my mother is betraying her principles. She is pandering to an obsession of weak minds.

My mother has given up her job. She said she is sexually harassed during her work and she is also allergic to ten-pence pieces.

My father is going to start his own business making spice-racks. He has spent the last of his redundancy money on buying pine and glue. Our spare bedroom has been turned into a workshop. Sawdust is all over the house.

I am very proud of my father. He is now a company director, and I am a company director’s son!

Delivered Mrs Singh’s massive spice-rack after school. It took two of us to carry it round and install it on her kitchen wall. We had a cup of sickly Indian tea and Mrs Singh paid my father and then started to fill up her shelves with exotic Indian spices. They looked a lot more interesting than my mother’s boring parsley and thyme.

My father bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate his first sale! He has got no respect for capital investment.

Pandora has gone to London with her father to hear Tony Benn speak. Pandora’s mother has gone to a SDP rally in Loughborough. It is a sad day when families are split by politics.

I’m not sure how I will vote. Sometimes I think Mrs Thatcher is a nice kind sort of woman. Then the next day I see her on television and she frightens me rigid. She has got eyes like a psychotic killer, but a voice like a gentle person. It is a bit confusing.

Pandora has got a crush on Tony Benn, just like the one she had on Adam Ant. She says that older men are exciting.

I am trying to grow my moustache. Valentine’s Day tomorrow. A big card came today, it had a Sheffield postmark.

Sexagesima. St Valentine’s Day

At last I have had a valentine from somebody who is not a blood relation! Pandora’s card was charming, she had written a simple message of love:

I gave Pandora a false Victorian card, inside I wrote:

It doesn’t scan very well, but I was in a hurry. Pandora didn’t get the literary reference to Roy Rogers, so I have lent her my father’s old Roy Rogers annuals.

My father threw the Sheffield card in the waste-bin. My mother took it out when my father had gone to the pub. Inside it said:

My mother smiled and ripped it up.

Washington’s Birthday, USA. Moon’s Last Quarter

Came home from school to hear my mother talking to creep Lucas on the phone. She was using a yukky voice and saying things like: ‘Don’t ask me to do it, Bimbo’, and ‘It’s all over between us now, darling. We must try to forget’.

I can’t stand much more emotional stress. I am up to my ears in it already what with studying hard and vying with Tony Benn for Pandora’s attention.

Pandora’s mother came round last night to complain about her spice-rack. It fell off the wall and spilt rosemary and tumeric all over her cork tiles. My mother apologized on behalf of my father who was hiding in the coal shed.

I am seriously thinking of giving everything up and running away to be a tramp. I would quite enjoy the life, providing I could have a daily bath.

Miss Elf told us about her boyfriend today. He is called Winston Johnson. He is a Master of Arts and can’t get a job! So what chance do I stand?

Miss Elf said that school-leavers are despairing all over the country. She said that Mr Scruton should be ashamed to have a portrait of Mrs Thatcher over his desk.

I think I am turning radical.

This morning the whole school was ordered to go to the assembly hall. Mr Scruton got up on the stage and acted like the films of Hitler. He said in all his long years of teaching he had never come across an act ofsuch serious vandalism. Everybody went dead quiet and wondered what had happened. Scruton said that somebody had entered his office and drawn a moustache on Margaret Thatcher and written ‘Three million unemployed’ in her cleavage.

He said that defiling the greatest leader this country has ever known was a crime against humanity. It was tantamount to treason and that when the culprit was found they would be immediately expelled. Scru-ton’s eyes bulged out so far that a few of the first-years started to cry. Miss Elf led them outside to safety.

The whole school has got to have handwriting tests.

Miss Elf has resigned. I will miss her, she was responsible for my political development. I am a committed radical. I am against nearly everything.

Pandora, Nigel, Claire Neilson and myself have formed a radical group. We are the ‘Pink Brigade’. We discuss things like war (we are against it); peace (we are for it); and the ultimate destruction of capitalist society. Claire Neilson’s father is a capitalist; he owns a greengrocer’s shop. Claire is trying to get her father to give cheap food to the unwaged but he refuses. He waxes fat on their starvation!

Quinquagesima

Had an argument with my father over the Sunday Express. He can’t see that he is a willing tool of the reactionary right. He refuses to change to the Morning Star. My mother reads anything; she is prostituting her literacy.

Once again I am spotty. I am also extremely sexually frustrated. I’m sure a session of passionate lovemaking would improve my skin.

Pandora says she is not going to risk being a single parent just for the sake of a few spots. So I will have to fall back on self-indulgence.

Shrove Tuesday. New Moon

Ate nine pancakes at home, three at Pandora’s and four at Bert and Queenie’s. Grandma was very hurt when I refused her kind offer to whip me a batter, but I was full up.

It is disgusting when the Third World is living on a few grains of rice.

I feel dead guilty.

Ash Wednesday

Our school dinner-ladies have got the sack! The dinners now come in hot boxes from a central kitchen. I would have staged a protest but I have got a Geography test tomorrow.

Mrs Leech was presented with a microwave oven for her thirty years of toil over the custard jug.

Got fifteen out of twenty for Geography. I lost points for saying that the Falkland Islands belonged to Argentina.

My thing is now thirteen centimetres long when it is extended. When it is contracted it is hardly worth measuring. My general physique is improving. I think the back-stretching exercises are paying off. I used to be the sort of boy who had sand kicked in his face, now I’m the sort of boy who watches somebody else have it kicked in their face.

My father hasn’t made or sold a single spice-rack all week. We are now living on Social Security and dole money.

My mother has stopped smoking. The dog is down to half a tin of Chum a day.

Quadragesima (Firstin Lent)

Had egg and chips and peas for Sunday dinner! No pudding! Not even a proper serviette. My mother says we are the nouveau poor.

St David’s Day(Wales)

My father has stopped smoking. He is going around with a white face finding fault with everything I do.

My mother and him had their first row since she came back. The dog caused it by eating the Spam for tea. It couldn’t help it, the poor thing was half crazed with hunger. It is back on a full tin of Chum a day.

Moon’s First Quarter

My parents are suffering severe nicotine withdrawal symptoms. It is quite amusing to a non-smoker like me.

I had to lend my father enough money for a gallon of petrol, he had an interview for a job. My mother cut his hair and gave him a shave and told him what to say and how to behave. It is pathetic to see how unemployment has reduced my father to childish dependence on others.

He is waiting to hear from Manpower Services.

He is still ill from not smoking. His temper has reached new peaks of explosion.

No news yet about the job. I spend as much time as I can out of the house. My parents are unbearable. I almost wish they would start smoking again.

He got it!!!

He starts on Monday as a Canal Bank Renovation Supervisor. He is in charge of a gang of school-leavers. To celebrate he bought my mother sixty Benson and Hedges and himself sixty Players. I got a family pack of Mars bars.

Everybody is dead happy for once. Even the dog has cheered up a bit. Grandma is knitting my father a woolly hat for work.

Pandora and I went to see the bit of canal bank that my father is now in charge of. If he worked for a thousand years he will never get it cleaned of all the old bikes and prams and weeds and Coca-Cola tins! I told my father that he was in a no-win situation, but he said, ‘On the contrary, in one year’s time it will be a beauty spot’. Yes! And I am Nancy Reagan, Dad!

Second in Lent

My father went to see his canal bank this morning. He came home and shut himself in his bedroom. Heis still there, I can hear my mother saying encouraging words to him.

It is uncertain whether or not he will turn up for work tomorrow. On the whole I think not.

He went to work.

After school I walked home along the canal bank. I found him bossing a gang of skinheads and punks about. They were looking surly and unco-operative. None of them wanted to get their clothes dirty. My father seemed to be the only one doing any work. He was covered in mud. I attempted to exchange a few civilities with the lads, but they spurned my overtures. I pointed out that the lads are alienated by a cruel, uncaring society, but my father said,’ Bugger off home, Adrian. You’re talking a load of lefty crap’. He will have a mutiny on his hands soon if he’s not careful.

Full Moon

My schoolwork is plummeting down to new depths. I only got five out of twenty for spelling. I think I might be anorexic.

My father has asked me not to bring Pandora to the canal after school. He says he can’t do anything with the lads after she has gone. It’s true that she is stunningly beautiful, but the lads will just have to learn self-control. I have had to learn it. She has refused to consummate our relationship. Sometimes I wonder what she sees in me. I live in daily terror of our relationship ending.

Pandora and Pandora’s mother have joined my mother’s women’s group. No men or boys are allowed in our front room. My father had to be in charge of the creche in our dining room.

Rick Lemon’s baby daughter Herod was crawling under the table shouting: ‘Tit! Tit!’ My father kept telling Herod to shut up until I explained that Tit was Herod’s mother’s name. Herod is a very radical baby who never eats sweets and stays up until 2 AM.

My father says that women ought to be at home cooking. He said it in a whisper so that he wouldn’t be karate-chopped to death.

My father had a good day on the canal bank. He is almost through to the grass now. To celebrate he brought the skinheads and punks round to our house for a glass of home-made beer. Mrs Singh and my mother looked shocked when the lads trooped into our kitchen, but my father introduced Baz, Daz, Maz, Kev, Melv and Boz and my mother and Mrs Singh relaxed a bit.

Boz is going to help me fix the brakes on my bike, he is an expert bike-fixer. He has been stealing them since he was six.

Boz offered me a sniff of his glue today, but I declined it with thanks.

Third in Lent

All the women I know have gone to a rally to protest about a woman’s right to work. Mrs Singh has gone wearing a disguise.

Saw Rick Lemon in the park, he was pushing Herod too high on a swing. Herod was shouting: ‘Tit! Tit!’

I am loved by two women! Elizabeth Sally Broadway gave Victoria Louise Thomson a note in Science. It said: ‘Ask Adrian Mole if he wants to go out with me.’

Victoria Louise Thomson (hereafter known as V.L.T.) passed on the message. I replied to V.L.T. in the negative.

Elizabeth Sally Broadway (hereafter known as E.S.B.) looked dead sad and started to cry into her bunsen burner.

It is really wonderful to know that Pandora and Elizabeth are both in love with me.

Perhaps I am not so ugly after all.

Pandora and E.S.B. have had a fight in the playground. I am disgusted with Pandora. At the last meeting of the Pink Brigade she swore to be a pacifist all her life. Pandora won! Ha! Ha! Ha!

St Patrick’s Day. Bank Holiday(Ireland). Moon’s Last Quarter

Mr O’Leary was brought home by a police car at 10.30 PM. Mrs O’Leary came over to ask my father if he would help her to get Mr O’Leary upstairs to bed. My father is still over there. I can hear the music and singing through the double-glazing.

It is no joke when you need your sleep for school.

I am reading How Children Fail, by John Holt. It is dead good. If I fail my O levels it will be all my parents’ fault.

My creative English essay:

Pandora thinks this is the best thing I have ever written, but I know I have got a long way to go until I have learned my craft.

Vernal Equinox

My mother has had all her hair cut off. She looks like one of Auntie Susan’s inmates. She doesn’t look a bit maternal any more. I don’t know whether to get her anything for Mother’s Day or not. She was going on about it last night, saying it was a commercial racket fed by gullible fools.

Fourth in Lent. Mothering Sunday

11.30 AM. Didn’t get my mother anything so she has been in a bad mood all morning.

1 PM. My father said, ‘If I were you, lad, I’d nip round Cherry’s and get your mother a card and present’. He gave me two pounds so I got a card saying ‘Mummy I love you’ (it was the only one left, just my luck), and five boxes of liquorice all sorts (going cheap because the boxes were squashed). She cheered up and didn’t even mind when my father took a bunch of tulips round to grandma’s and came back five hours later smelling of drink.

Pandora’s mother was taken out and spoilt in a restaurant. I will do the same for my mother when I am famous.

I have catalogued my bedroom library. I have got a hundred and fifty-one books, not counting the Enid Blytons.

I will be fifteen in eleven days. So I have only got to wait one year and eleven days to get married, should I want to.

The only thing that really worries me about my appearance now is my ears. They stick out at an angle of ninety degrees. I have checked them with my geometry set so I know it is a scientific fact.

Lady Day (Quarter Day). New Moon

I have had a spiritual awakening. Two nice men representing a religious group called the Sunshine People called at the house. They talked about how they alone could bring peace to the world. It is twenty pounds to join. I will get the money somehow. Nothing is too expensive where peace is concerned.

Tried to persuade Pandora to join the Sunshine People. She was not swayed by my arguments. They are calling round tomorrow to meet my parents and sign the agreement.

The Sunshine People came at six o’clock. My father made them stand on the doorstep in the rain. Their robes got wet through. My father said they were trying to brainwash a simple child. When they left my mother watched them walk up the cul-de-sac. She said, ‘They don’t look very charismatic now, they just look bloody wet’. I wept a few tears. I think I was weeping out of relief- twenty quid is a lot of money.

Passion Sunday. British Summer Time begins

My father forgot to change the clocks last night so I was late for the Pink Brigade’s meeting in Pandora’s lounge. We voted to exclude Pandora’s father from the meeting on the grounds of his extreme left-wing views. We have decided to back Roy Hattersley in the expected fight for the leadership.

Pandora has gone off Tony Benn since she found out that he is a lapsed aristocrat.

Claire Neilson introduced a new member, her name is Barbara Boyer. She is dead good-looking and also dead intelligent. She disagreed with Pandora over NATO’s nuclear arms policy. Pandora had to concede that China was an unknown factor. Pandora asked Claire Neilson not to bring Barbara again.

I ate my school dinner sitting next to Barbara Boyer. She is a truly wonderful girl. She pointed out that Pandora has got a lot of faults. I was forced to agree with her.

I am committing non-sexual adultery with Barbara. I am at the centre of an eternal triangle. Nigel is the only one to know: he has been sworn to secrecy.

Nigel has blabbed it all over the school. Pandora spent the afternoon in matron’s office.

All Fools’ Day. Moon’s First Quarter

Barbara Boyer has ended our brief affaire. I rang her up at the pet shop where she works part time cleaning the cages out. She said she couldn’t bear to see the pain in Pandora’s eyes. I asked her if it was an April Fools’ joke, she said no and pointed out that it was after 12 AM.

I have learnt an important lesson, because of lust I am without love.

I am fifteen tomorrow.

Had a shave to cheer myself up.

I am fifteen, but legally I am still a child. There is nothing I can do today that I couldn’t do yesterday. Worse luck!

Had seven cards from relations and three from friends. My presents were the usual load of Japanese rubbish, though I did get a model aeroplane from Bert that was made in West Germany.

Pandora has ignored my birthday. I don’t blame her. I betrayed her trust.

Boz, Baz, Daz, Maz, Kev and Melv came back from the canal and gave me the bumps. Boz gave me a tube of glue for my model aeroplane.

8 AM. Britain is at war with Argentina!!! Radio Four has just announced it. I am overcome with excitement. Half of me thinks it is tragic and the other half of me thinks it is dead exciting.

10 AM. Woke my father up to tell him Argentina has invaded the Falklands. He shot out of bed because he thought the Falklands lay off the coast of Scotland. When I pointed out that they were eight thousand miles away he got back into bed and pulled the covers over his head.

4 PM. I have just had the most humiliating experience of my life. It started when I began to assemble mymodel aeroplane. I had nearly finished it when I thought I would try an experimental sniff of glue. I put my nose to the undercarriage and sniffed for five seconds, nothing spiritual happened but my nose stuck to the plane! My father took me to Casualty to have it removed, how I endured the laughing and sniggering I don’t know.

The Casualty doctor wrote ‘Glue Sniffer’ on my outpatient’s card.

I rang Pandora; she is coming round after her viola lesson. Love is the only thing that keeps me sane…