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

Three hundred and sixty-nine pounds! When my parents get out of bed and discover the lack of dialling tone, I will be done for!

My father tried to phone up after a job today! He has gone berserk.

My mother cleaned my bedroom, she turned up my mattress and found the Big and Bouncys and the blue phone bill.

I sat on the kitchen stool while they interrogated me and shouted abuse. My father wanted to give me a ‘to-within-an-inch-of-his-life thrashing’, but my mother stopped him. She said, ‘It would be more of a punishment to make the tight-fisted sod cough up some of his building-society savings’. So that is what I’m being forced to do.

Now I will never be an owner-occupier.

Drew out two hundred pounds from my building-society account. I don’t mind admitting that there were tears in my eyes. It will take another fourteen years before I can replace it.

Moon’s First Quarter

I am suffering from severe depression. It is all Pandora’s father’s fault. He should have had a holiday in England.

Had a letter from grandma to ask why I hadn’t sent her a Christmas card yet.

Second in Advent

I am still being treated like a criminal. My mother and father are not speaking to me, and I’m not allowed out. I might just as well turn to delinquency.

Stole a Kevin Keegan key ring from Mr Cherry’s shop. It will do for Nigel’s Christmas present.

I am dead worried about the key ring; we did Morals and Ethics at school today.

Can’t sleep for worrying about the key ring. The papers are full of stories about old ladies getting done for shoplifting. I tried to overpay Mr Cherry for my Mars bar, but he called me back and gave me my change.

Had a dream about a jailer locking me in a prison cell. The big iron key was attached to the Kevin Keegan key ring.

The lousy, stinking, sodding phone is reconnected!

Full Moon

Phoned the Samaritans and confessed my crime. The man said, ‘Put it back then, lad’. I will do it tomorrow.

Mr Cherry caught me in the act of replacing the key ring. He has written a letter to my parents. I might as well do myself in.

Third in Advent

Thank God there is no post on Sundays.

My mother and father had a festive time decorating the Christmas tree. I watched them hanging the baubles with a heavy heart.

I am reading Crime and Punishment . It is the most true book I have ever read.

Got up at 5 AM to intercept the postman. Took the dog for a walk in the drizzle. (It wanted to stay asleep, but I wouldn’t let it.) The dog moaned and complained all the way round the block so in the end I let it climb back into its cardboard box. I wish I was a dog; they haven’t got any ethics or morals.

The postman delivered the letters at seven-thirty when I was sitting on the toilet. This is just my luck!

My father collected the letters and put them behind the clock. I had a quick look through them while he was coughing on his first cigarette of the day. Sure enough there was one addressed to my parents in Mr Cherry’s uneducated handwriting!

My mother and father slopped over each other for a few minutes and then opened the letters whilst their Rice Krispies were going soggy. There were seven lousy Christmas cards, which they put up on a string overthe fireplace. My eyes were focused on Mr Cherry’s letter. My mother opened it, read it and said, ‘George, that old git Cherry’s sent his bloody paper bill in’. Then they ate their Rice Krispies and that was that. I wasted a lot of adrenalin worrying. I won’t have enough left if I’m not careful.

My mother has told me why she left creep Lucas and returned to my father. She said, ‘Bimbo treated me like a sex object, Adrian, and he expected his evening meal cooked for him, and he cut his toe-nails in the living room, and besides I’m very fond of your father’. She didn’t mention me.

I am in an experimental Nativity play at school. It is called Manger to Star . I am playing Joseph. Pandora is playing Mary. Jesus is played by the smallest first-year. He is called Peter Brown. He is on drugs to make him taller.

Another letter from the BBC!

Dear Adrian Mole,

Thank you for submitting your latest poem. I understood it perfectly well once it had been typed. However, Adrian, understanding is not all. Our Poetry Department is inundated with autumnal poems. The smell of bonfires and the crackling of leaves pervade the very corridors. Good try, but try again, eh?

‘Try again’! He is almost giving me a commission. I have written back to him:

Dear Mr Tydeman,

How much will I get if you broadcast one of my poems on the radio? When do you want me to send it? What do you want it to be about? Can I read it out myself? Will you pay my train fare in advance? What time will it go out on the airways? I have to be in bed by ten.

Yours faithfully,

A. Mole

P.S. I hope you have a dead good Christmas.

Moon’s Last Quarter

Today’s rehearsal of Manger to Star was a fiasco. Peter Brown has grown too big for the crib, so Mr Animba, the Woodwork teacher, has got to make another one.

Mr Scruton sat at the back of the gym and watched rehearsals. He had a face like the north face of the Eiger by the time we’d got to the bit where the three wise men were reviled as capitalist pigs.

He took Miss Elf into the showers and had a ‘Quiet Word’. We all heard every word he shouted. He said he wanted to see a traditional Nativity play, with a Tiny Tears doll playing Jesus and three wise men dressed in dressing gowns and tea towels. He threatened to cancel the play if Mary, alias Pandora, continued to go into simulated labour in the manger. This is typical of Scruton, he is nothing but a small-minded, provincial, sexually-inhibited fascist pig. How he rose to become a headmaster I do not know. He has been wearing the same hairy green suit for three years. How can we change it all now? The play is being performed on Tuesday afternoon.

My mother has had a Christmas card from creep Lucas! Inside he had written, ‘Paulie, Have you got the dry-cleaning ticket for my best white suit? Sketch-ley’s are being very difficult’. My mother was very upset. My father rang Sheffield and ordered Lucas to cease communications, or risk getting a bit of Sheffield steel in between his porky shoulder blades. My father looked dead good on the telephone. He had a cigarette stuck between his lips. My mother was leaning on the corner of the fridge. She had a cigarette in her hand. They looked a bit like the Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall postcard on my wall. I wish I was a real gangster’s son, at least you would see a bit of life.

I’ve got no money for Christmas presents. But I have made my Christmas list in case I find ten pounds in the street.

• Pandora—Big bottle of Chanel Ndeg5 (PS1.50)