Sue Townsend - Adrian Mole - Diary of a Provincial Man

Sunday

A boarding house has been booked: The Utopia. Bed, breakfast and evening meal will cost Ivan £13.50 per adult per night — half-price for William. Rosie has refused to go: she said she has got to attend Mad Dog Jackson's graduation ceremony. He is now an MA, and his dissertation, “Socialism, Necrophilia and Other Taboos”, has provoked interest from The Spectator .

Monday, The Utopia

Talk about a major infringement of the Trades Description Act! The Dystopia would be a more accurate title for this Draylon hell-hole. I share a draughty attic room with William and Glenn. There is no space in which to swing a dead vole, let alone a cat.

The view from the skylight is of mournful-looking seagulls with morsels of chips in their beaks. The owners, Barry and Yvonne Windermere, are ex-variety performers. I shall go mad if Barry tells me another «joke». Ivan and my mother think this raddled old duo are "fabulous characters". Personally, whenever I hear the fabulous characters phrase, I want to run — into the sea, until the cold waves close over my head.

Wednesday, wind shelter, Skegness

Glenn is sulking in the attic, he has already spent all his pocket money on the slot machines in the arcade where we were forced to take shelter from the cruel wind that blows unchecked from the Urals across the North Sea.

Ivan and my mother struggled to construct a windbreak, and William, dressed in an anorak, sheltered behind it and tried to make a sandcastle, but his fingers turned blue and I had to take him into a cafe to thaw out. The place was full of shivering families eating terrible food.

Ivan went on saying to my mother, "This is an authentic working-class experience, isn't it, Pauline?" His eyes were shining with excitement. He is turned on by vulgarity. It is why he fell in love and married my mother.

My mother drew heavily on her St Moritz menthol fag with the gold-rimmed filter and said, "Ivan, I'm no longer working class. I read the Guardian and buy coffee beans now, or hadn't you noticed?"

Thursday

The sun came out today. Ivan bought a kiss-me-quick-and-shag-me-slow sunhat. I saw my mother wince when he put it on, but she kept her mouth shut and feigned interest in a stick of rock shaped like a penis.

Friday, Queen Mother's birthday

Barry and Yvonne have decorated the dining room with Union Jack bunting. The little table where the condiments are normally kept has been turned into a shrine to the Queen Mother. Two candles burn either side of a lurid photograph of the aged one.

Barry met her once, back-stage at the Palladium. "What did she say to you? I asked. "She asked me how long I'd been waiting," he said, his slobbery lips trembling with emotion. "And what did you reply?" I asked. "Not long, ma'am," he said, and almost broke down.

Unfortunately, Glen knocked over one of the candles at dinner time and set fire to the Queen Mother's photograph. I threw a cup of tea over it, but the damage was considerable. We have been asked to leave. Proof, perhaps, that there is a God.

Saturday, August 12, 2000, Utopia Boarding House, Skegness

I've finished packing. Barry Windermere has just wheezed up to the attic to demand compensation for the damage Glenn did (inadvertently) to the Queen Mother's photograph. I refused to give him any more, and told him that the use of unguarded candles is a contravention of the 1981 Hotels & Boarding House Act. He believed this ridiculous lie, and scuttled back down the dark stairs with the stained carpet.

The rest of the family have voted to continue the holiday elsewhere. I was the only one who voted to return home. I feel like a contestant on Big Brother . (Incidentally, that Nicholas is a great bloke, I hope he wins.)

Sunday, Plot 8, Sunny Sands Caravan Site, Hunstanton

There are seven of us squeezed into a six-berth caravan. Rosie and Mad Dog Jackson arrived last night on his Harley-Davidson. I refuse to call him Mad Dog as he requested; it is bad enough having to be seen in his greasy, denimed company. My mother told me proudly that "he's very high up in the Hell's Angels hierarchy". She astounds me. If Rosie was my daughter, I would lock her away in a tall tower until she had woken up from the spell that Jackson has cast over her.

My whole family are in love with him. William and Glenn hang on to his every word. It is now Glenn's ambition to be inducted into the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Chapter of the Hell's Angels. Apparently, there are six of them living in a maisonette in Rosebud Drive. The induction ceremony involves eating raw tripe while being hung upside down from a tree. I said to Glenn that I had other plans for him. That he is to study the history of art at a decent university. Glenn muttered under his breath "Art fart", but I let it go. My nerves are in shreds. I couldn't face another acrimonious confrontation.

The caravan is too confined. I can hear everything through the plywood walls. I overheard my mother saying to Ivan Braithwaite tonight, "Ivan, why are we all cramped up in a caravan in Hunstanton when we can easily afford to stay in a decent Aparthotel with free watersports somewhere abroad?" He chuckled in that maddening way that makes me want to rip his smarmy head off his hairy shoulders and said, "Pauline, you're in denial about your working-class heritage. I'm doing this for you. I want you to rediscover your roots".

My mother snapped that she had spent most of her adult life trying to better herself and hoped to be lower-middle class by the time she was 55, and middle-middle class at death. "The Co-Op won't be doing my funeral," she hissed. I heard her move along their bed in the kitchen (it doubles as a work-top and ironing board during the day). I was glad that their ardour was cooling. I was sick of having to listen to their pathetic attempts at love-making every night. Ivan is having trouble with his prostate. Fortunately, Mad Dog and Rosie are sleeping outside under the awning extension on a double Therm-A-Rest.

Monday

Jackson has gone into Norwich to have a drink with Professor Malcolm Bradbury. He is hoping to get some lecturing work out of him. Is Professor Bradbury being terrorised into giving Jackson work? Has the notoriously gentle academic been threatened and intimidated? It would explain why that monosyllabic thicko, Jackson, has two degrees.

Thursday

I took the boys to Wells-next-the-Sea today. As we strolled up the crowded main street, I saw Glenn looking with interest at a tray of tripe in a butcher's shop window. "It don't look too bad, Dad," he said. "I could get that down my neck."

Friday

The Hog Roast-On-The-Beach has been cancelled due to the unreliability of English pigs.

Friday, August 18, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

I have been brutally betrayed! I feel humiliated and sick! How could he have told such terrible lies to me over the past five weeks?

I admired him so much. He was the type of man I would have liked to have been myself. He was a man who could cope with adversity (the death of his young wife in a car crash). A man who led other men (an officer in the Territorial Army). He was also a healer (like Jesus), and a reiki master to boot.

I would have followed him into the jungle with hardly a qualm. So confident was I that he would win the £70,000 that I withdrew £50 from my long-term diamond deposit savings account (incurring loss of interest) and placed a personal bet with my father. It was with glee that my father phoned me at 4.45pm today from his hospital bed, where he is still languishing with several NHS-bred infections, to tell me that my hero was about to be evicted from the House.