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

Bought two tins of black vinyl silk-finish paint and a half-inch brush. Started painting as soon as I got home from the DIY centre. Noddy keeps showing through the black paint. Looks like it’ll need two coats. Just my luck!

Moon’s Last Quarter

Now put on two coats of black paint! Noddy still showing through! Black paw-marks over landing and stairs. Can’t get paint off hands. Hairs falling out of brush. Fed up with whole thing. Room looks dark and gloomy. Father hasn’t lifted a finger to help. Black paint everywhere.

Third coat. Slight improvement, only Noddy’s hat showing through now.

Ascension Day

Went over Noddy’s hat with kid’s paintbrush and last of black paint, but bloody hat bells are still showing through!

Went over hat bells with black felt-tip pen, did sixty-nine tonight, only a hundred and twenty-four to go.

Finished last bell at 11.25 PM. Know just how Rembrandt must have felt after painting the Sistine Chapel in Venice.

2 AM . The paint is dry but it must have been faulty because it is all streaky, and here and there you can see Gollywog’s striped trousers and Mr Plod’s nose. Thank God the bloody bells don’t show through! My father has just been in to tell me to go to sleep, he said my room reminded him of a Salvador Dali painting. He said it was a surrealist nightmare, but he is only jealous because he has got yukky roses on his bedroom walls.

Sunday after Ascension

I bought a joss stick from Mr Singh’s shop. I lit it in my room to try and get rid of the paint smell. My father came into my room and threw the joss stick out of the window, he said he ‘wouldn’t have me messing with drugs’! I tried to explain but my father was too angry to listen. I stayed in my room for a few hours but the black walls seemed to be closing in on me so I went to see Bert Baxter. Couldn’t make him hear, so I came home and watched religion on the television. Had tea, did Geography homework, went to bed. Dog won’t stay in room any more; it whimpers to be let out.

Bank Holiday in the Rep. of Ireland

My father had a letter that made his face go white: he has been made redundant from his job! He will be on the dole! How can we live on the pittance that the government will give us? The dog will have to go! It costs thirty-five pence a day for dog food, not counting Winalot. I am now a single-parent child whose father is on the dole! Social Security will be buying my shoes!

I didn’t go to school today, I rang the school secretary and told her that my father is mentally ill and needs looking after. She sounded dead worried and asked if he was violent. I said that he hadn’t shown any signs of being violent, but if he started I would call the doctor. I made my father lots of hot, sweet drinks for shock, he kept going on about electric storage heaters and saying that he would spill the beans to the media.

He rang Doreen Slater up and she came round straightaway, she had a horrible little kid called Maxwell with her. It was quite a shock to see Doreen Slater for the first time. Why my father wanted to have carnal knowledge of her I can’t imagine. She is as thin as a stick insect. She has got no bust and no bum.

She is just straight all the way up and down, including her nose and mouth and hair. She put her arms round my father as soon as she came into the house. Maxwell started to cry, the dog started to bark, so I went back to my black room and counted howmany things were now showing through the paint: a hundred and seventeen!

Doreen left at 1.30 PM to take Maxwell to playschool. She did some shopping for us then cooked a sloppy sort of meal made of spaghetti and cheese. She is a one-parent family; Maxwell was born out of wedlock. She told me about herself when we were washing up. She would be quite nice if she were a bit fatter.

New Moon

Doreen and Maxwell stayed the night. Maxwell was supposed to sleep on the sofa, but he cried so much that he ended up sleeping in the double bed between my father and Doreen, so my father was unable to extend his carnal knowledge of Doreen. He was as sick as a pig, but not as sick as Maxwell was. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Went to school today, couldn’t concentrate, kept thinking about the stick insect. She has got lovely white teeth (straight of course). She made some jam tarts for when I came home from school. She is not stingy with the jam like some women are.

My father is smoking and drinking heavily, but he has been made temporarily impotent according to Doreen. This is something I do not wish to know! Doreen talks to me as if I were another adult instead of her lover’s son aged fourteen and two months and one day.

Doreen answered the phone to my mother first thing this morning. My mother asked to speak to me. She demanded to know what Doreen was doing in the house. I told her that my father was having a breakdown and that Doreen Slater was looking after him. I told her about his redundancy. I said he was drinking heavily, smoking too much and generally letting himself go. Then I went to school. I was feeling rebellious, so I wore red socks. It is strictly forbidden but I don’t care any more.

Miss Sproxton spotted my red socks in assembly! The old bag reported me to pop-eyed Scruton. He had me in his office and gave me a lecture on the dangers of being a nonconformist. Then he sent me home to change into regulation black socks. My father was in bed when I got home; he was having his impotence cured. I watched Play School with Maxwell until he came downstairs. I told him about the sock saga. He instantly turned into a raving loonie! He phone the school and dragged Scruton out of a caretakers’ strike-meeting. He kept shouting down the phone; he said, ‘My wife’s left me, I’ve been made redundant, I’m in charge of an idiot boy,’—Maxwell, I presume—’and you’re victimizing my son because of the colour of his socks!’ Scruton said if I came to school in black socks everything would be forgotten but my father said I would wear whatever colour socks I liked. Scruton said he was anxious to maintain standards. My father said that the England World Cup team in 1966 did not wear black socks, nor did Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. Scruton seemed to go quiet then. My father put the phone down. He said, ‘Round one to me’.

This could well get into the papers: ‘Black socks row at school’. My mother might read about it and come home.

Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! Pandora is organizing a sock protest! She came round to my house today! Yes! She actually stood on our front porch and told me that she admired the stand I was taking! I would have asked her in, but the house is in a squalid state so I didn’t. She is going round the school with a petition on Monday morning. She said I was a freedom fighter for the rights of the individual. She wants me to go round to her house tomorrow morning. A committee is being set up, and I am the principal speaker! Shewanted to see the red socks but I told her they were in the wash.

Doreen Slater and Maxwell went home today. My grandma is coming round tonight, so all traces of them have got to be wiped out.

Whit Sunday

Grandma found Maxwell’s dummy in my father’s bed. I lied and said that the dog must have brought it in off the street. It was a nasty moment. I am not a good liar, my face goes bright red and my grandma has got eyes like Superman’s, they seem to bore right through you. To divert her I told her about the red-sock row, but she said rules were made to be kept.