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

Today I saw Salvador Dali’s painting of the Crucifixion!!! The realone! Not a reproduction!

They have hung it at the end of a corridor so that it changes as you get nearer to it. When you are finally standing up close to it you feel like a midget. It is absolutely fantastic!

Huge! With dead good colours and Jesus looks like a real bloke. I bought six postcards of it from the museum but of course it is not the same as the real thing.

One day I will take Pandora to see it. Perhaps on our honeymoon.

Oban today. Bumped into Mr and Mrs Swallow who live in the next street to me. Everyone kept saying, ‘It’s a small world isn’t it?’ Mrs Swallow asked creep Lucas how his wife was. Lucas told her that his wife had left him for another woman. Then everyone blushed and said what a small world it was and parted company. My mother went mad at Lucas. She said ‘Do you have to tell everyone?’ and ‘How do you think I feel living with a lesbian’s estranged husband?’ Lucas whined onfor a bit but then my mother started looking like my grandma. So he kept quiet.

Fort William today. Ben Nevis was another disappointment. I couldn’t tell where it began or stopped. The other mountains and hills clutter it up. Lucas fell in the burn (Scottish for ‘little river’) but unfortunately it was too shallow to drown in.

Full Moon

Went for a walk around the loch with Hamish Mancini. He told me that he thinks his mother is heading for her fourth divorce. He is going home tonight; he has got an appointment with his analyst in New York on Monday morning.

I have finished my packing and I am waiting for my mother and creep Lucas to come back from their furtive love-making somewhere in the pine forest.

We leave at dawn.

Eleventh after Trinity

I made Lucas stop for souvenirs at Gretna Green. I bought Pandora a pebble shaped like an otter, Bert a tam-o’—shanter, the dog a tartan bow for its neck, grandma a box of tartan fudge, Stick Insect tartan biscuits, Maxwell a tartan sweet dummy. I bought my father a tartan tea towel.

I bought myself a tartan scribbling pad. I am determined to become a writer.

Here is an extract from ‘My thoughts on Scotland’ written on the M6 at 120 mph:

The hallowed mist rolls away leaving Scotland’s majestic peaks revealed in all their majesty. A shape in the translucent sky reveals itself to be an eagle, that majestic bird of prey. Talons clawing, it lands on a loch, rippling the quiet majesty of the turbulent waters. The eagle pauses only to dip its majestic beak into the aqua before spreading its majestic wings and flying away to its magisterial nest high in the barren, arid, grassless hills.

The Highland cattle. Majestic horned beast of the glens lowers its brown eyed shaggy haired majestic head as it ruminates on the mysteries of Glencoe.

There are a couple too many ‘majesties’. But I think it reads rather well. I will send it to the BBC when it’s finished. Got home at 6 PM. Too tired to write more.

Bank Holiday in UK (except Scotland )

Everyone is broke. The banks are closed and my father can’t remember the secret code on his plastic money-card. He had the nerve to borrow five pounds from Bert Baxter. Fancy asking an old age pensioner for money! It lacks dignity.

Pandora and I are now insanely in love! The separation only served to fuel our passion. Our hormones are stirred every time we meet. Pandora slept with the otter pebble in her hand last night. How I wish the otter pebble could have been me.

Mr Singh has had to return to India to look after his aged parents, so Bert has been told that he will have to move back into his dirty old house! Mr Singh says that he cannot trust his womenfolk to be alone in the house with Bert. How stupid can you get? Bert doesn’t mind too much; he said that it is ‘quite a compliment’. Pandora and I are going to clean Bert’s house and help him move back. He owes the council two hundred and ninety-four pounds in rent arrears. He has got to pay the arrears off at fifty pence a week, so it is a certainty that Bert will die in debt.

Pandora and I went to look at Bert’s house today. It is a truly awesome sight. If Bert took all his empty beer bottles back to the off-licence he might get enough money on the empties to pay off his rent arrears.

My father helped us to move all of the furniture out of the ground floor of Bert’s house, the woodworms came out to sunbathe. When we lifted the carpets we discovered that Bert had been walking about on a layer of dirt, old newspapers, hairpins, marbles and decomposed mice for years. We hung the carpets on the washing line and beat them all afternoon, but the dust billowed out non-stop. Pandora got excited at about 5 PM, she claimed she could see a pattern emerging on one carpet, but closer examination showed it to be squashed fairy cake. We are going back tomorrow with Pandora’s mother’s carpet-shampooer. Pandora said it has been tested by Which? , but I bet it has never had to clean a filthy hovel like Bert Baxter’s before.

I have just witnessed a miracle! This morning Bert’s carpets were dark grey in colour. Now one is a red Axminster and the other is a blue Wilton. The carpets are hanging on the clothes line to dry. We have scraped all the floors clean and washed the furniture down with a fungicide disinfectant. Pandora took the curtains down but they fell to pieces before she could get them to the sink. Bert has been sitting in a deckchair criticizing and complaining. He can’t see what’s wrong with living in a dirty house.

What is wrong with living in a dirty house?

My father took Bert’s bottles to the off-licence this morning. The boot, back seat and floor of the car were filled with them. The car stank of brown ale. He ran out of petrol on the way and called the AA. The AA man was most uncivil, he said it wasn’t the Automobile Association my father needed, it was Alcoholics Anonymous!

Twelfth after Trinity. Moon’s First Quarter

Bert’s house looks great. Everything is dead clean and shiny. We have moved his bed into the lounge so that he can watch television in bed. Pandora’s mother has done very artistic arrangements with flowers, and Pandora’s father has made an alsatian flap in the back door so that Bert doesn’t keep having to get up to answer the door to Sabre.

Bert is moving back tomorrow.

Labor Day, USA and Canada

An airmail letter from Hamish Mancini.

Hi Aid!

Howya doin’? I hope the situation Pandora-wise is ongoing! She sounds kinda zappy! Scotland blew my mind! It was so far out as to be nuked! You’re a great human being, Aid. I guess I was kinda traumatized when we rapped but Dr Eagelburger (my shrink) is doing great things with my libido. Mom’s really wiped out right now, turns out number four is a TV and has a better collection of Calvin Kleins than she do! Don’t you think the fall is a drag? Son-of-a-bitch leaves everywhere!

I showed it to Pandora, my father and Bert but nobody understands it. Bert doesn’t like Americans because it took them too long to come into the war or something.

Bert now in his clean house. He hasn’t said thank-you, but he seems happy.