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

Lousy stinking school on Thursday. I tried my old uniform on but I have outgrown it so badly that my father is being forced to buy me a new one tomorrow. He is going up the wall but I can’t help it if my body is in a growth period can I? I am only five centimetres shorter than Pandora now. My thing remains static at twelve centimetres.

Grandma phoned, she has found out about Doreen and Maxwell going to Skegness. She is never speaking to my father again.

Here is my shopping list:

Blazer PS29.99

2 pairs grey trousers PS23.98

2 white shirts PS11.98

2 grey pullovers PS7.98

3 pairs black socks PS2.37

1 pair PE shorts PS4.99

1 PE vest PS3.99

1 track suit PS11.99

1 pair training shoes PS7.99

1 pair football boots and studs PS11.99

1 pair football socks PS2.99

Football shorts PS4.99

Football shirt PS7.99

Adidas sports bag PS4.99

1 pair black shoes PS15.99

1 calculator PS6.99

Pen and pencil set PS3.99

Geometry set PS2.99

My father can easily spare a hundred pounds. His redundancy payment must have been huge, so why he is lying on his bed moaning I don’t know. He is just a mean skinflint! He hasn’t paid with real money anyway! He used his American Express card.

Pandora admired me in my new uniform. She says she thinks I stand a good chance of being made a prefect.

A proud start to the new term. I am a prefect! My first duty is as, late duty prefect. I have to wait by the gap in the railings and take the name of anyone sneaking late into school. Pandora is also a prefect. She is in charge of silence in the dinner queue.

My new timetable was given to me today by my new form tutor, Mr Dock. It includes my O level and CSE lessons, and it is compulsory to do Maths, English, PE and Comparative Religion. But they do give you a choice of Cultural and Creative subjects. So I have chosen Media Studies (dead easy, just reading newspapers and watching telly) and Parentcraft (just learning about sex, I hope). Mr Dock also teaches English Literature, so we are bound to get on, by now I am surely the best-read kid in the school. I will be able to help him out if he gets stuck.

Asked my father for five pounds fifty for school trip to the British Museum. He went berserk and said, ‘What happened to free education?’ I told him that I didn’t know.

Had a long talk with Mr Dock. I explained that I was a one-parent-family child with an unemployed, bad-tempered father. Mr Dock said he wouldn’t care if I was the offspring of a black, lesbian, one-legged mother and an Arab, leprous, hump-backed-dwarf father so long as my essays were lucid, intelligent and unpretentious. So much for pastoral care!

Wrote lucid, intelligent and unpretentious essay about Scottish wildlife in the morning. In afternoon did shopping in Sainsbury’s with my father. Saw Rick Lemon dithering at the fruit counter; he said selecting fruit was an ‘overtly political act’. He rejected South African apples, French golden delicious apples, Israeli oranges, Tunisian dates, and American grapefruits. In the end he selected English rhubarb, ‘Although,’ he said, ‘the shape is phallic, possibly sexist’. His girlfriend, Tit (short for Titia), was cramming the trolley with pulses and rice. She had a long skirt on but now and again I caught a glimpse of her hairy ankles. My father said he preferred a nice shaven leg any day. My father likes stockings, suspenders, mini-skirts and low necklines! He is dead old-fashioned.

Thirteenth after Trinity

Went to see Blossom. Pandora doesn’t ride her now because her feet drag on the ground. Pandora is having a proper horse delivered next week. It is called Ian Smith. The people who are selling it used to live in Africa, in Zimbabwe.

Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday. She is thirty- seven .

Full Moon

Phoned my mother before school. There was no answer. I expect she was lying in bed with that stinking rat Lucas.

School dinners are complete crap now. Gravy seems to have been phased out along with custard and hot puddings. A typical menu is: hamburger, baked beans, chips, carton of yoghurt, or a doughnut. It’s not enough to build healthy bone and sinew. I am considering making a protest to Mrs Thatcher. It won’t be our fault if we grow up apathetic and lacking in moral fibre. Perhaps Mrs Thatcher wants us to be too weak to demonstrate in years to come.

Barry Kent has been late three times in one week. So it is my unfortunate duty to report him to Mr Scruton.

Unpunctuality is the sign of a disordered brain. So he cannot go unpunished.

Our form is going to the British Museum on Friday. Pandora and I are going to sit together on the coach.

She is bringing her Guardian from home so that we can have some privacy.

Had a lecture on the British Museum from Ms Fossington-Gore. She said it was a ‘fascinating treasure house of personkind’s achievements’. Nobody listened to the lecture. Everyone was watching the way she felt her left breast whenever she got excited.

2 AM . Just got back from London. Coach driver suffered from motorway madness on the motorway. I am too shaken by the experience to be able to give a lucid or intelligent account of the day.

The school may well want a clear account by an unprejudiced observer of what happened on the way to, during and coming back from our trip to London. I am the only person qualified. Pandora, for all her qualities, does not possess my nerves of steel.

Class Four-D’s Tripto the British Museum

7 AM Boarded coach.

7.05 Ate packed lunch, drank low-calorie drink.

7.10 Coach stopped for Barry Kent to be sick.

7.20 Coach stopped for Claire Neilson to go to the Ladies.

7.30 Coach left school drive.

7.35 Coach returned to school for Ms Fossington-Gore’s handbag.

7.40 Coach driver observed to be behaving oddly.

7.45 Coach stopped for Barry Kent to be sick again.

7.55 Approached motorway.

8.00 Coach driver stopped coach and asked everyoneto stop giving ‘V signs to lorry drivers.

8.10 Coach driver loses temper, refuses to drive onmotorway until ‘bloody teachers control kids’.

8.20 Ms Fossington-Gore gets everyone sitting down.

8.25 Drive on to motorway.

8.30 Everyone singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’.

8.35 Everyone singing ‘Ten Green Snotrags’.

8.45 Coach driver stops singing by shouting veryloudly.

9.15 Coach driver pulls in at service station and is observed to drink heavily from hip-flask.

9.30 Barry Kent hands round bars of chocolate stolenfrom self-service shop at service station. Ms Fossington-Gore chooses Bounty bar. 9.40 Barry Kent sick in coach.

9.50 Two girls sitting near Barry Kent are sick.

9.51 Coach driver refuses to stop on motorway.

9.55 Ms Fossington-Gore covers sick in sand.

9.56 Ms Fossington-Gore sick as a dog.

10.30 Coach crawls along on hard shoulder, all other lanes closed for repairs.

11.30 Fight breaks out on back seat as coach approaches end of motorway.

11.45 Fight ends. Ms Fossington-Gore finds first-aid kit and sees to wounds. Barry Kent is punished by sitting next to driver.