Sue Townsend - Adrian Mole - Diary of a Provincial Man

Vince came round this morning, begging for sanctuary. He told me that Peggy found him in bed last week with their daughter's best friend, Mandy Trotter.

"She bleedin' flung herself at me and got me zip undone before I could stop 'er," he whined. "What was I s'posed to do?"

Glen pointed Mandy Trotter out to me when we were in the Co-Op. She was stacking the lower shelves. She is only four feet eleven inches tall and, though obviously over the age of consent, she looks like an emaciated child. Vince couldn't have fought very hard to keep her off his zip.

Tuesday, September 5

Peggy has been round to give her side of the story. Apparently, Mandy Trotter is pregnant with Vince's child. "What's he see in that skinny slag?" she asked. Her magnificent bosom was heaving and her gloriously long fishnetted legs were crossing and uncrossing as she sat at my kitchen table dropping ash on my vinyl tiles. I was speechless with desire for her.

It's time I found a sexual partner: a non-neurotic, childless, non-smoking, beautiful woman who enjoys literature, spotting Eddie Stobart lorries and housework would be ideal. Is it too much to ask that I should be allowed a little happiness?

Wednesday, September 6

I tried to understand what Mr Robin Cook was saying on the Today programme this morning. I think he was talking about his ethical foreign policy. However, he now gabbles his words and speaks at such a rate of knots that it is impossible to understand him. This is an infringement of my human rights as a British voter. Does Gaynor understand a word he says lately, or has she long-stopped listening to her wee bearded elf of a husband?

Thursday, September 7

Ivan Braithwaite has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act! It took four policemen and a straitjacket to get him in the ambulance. His mind snapped when his laptop, his printer, his fax, his three phones, his television, his radio and his pager were all switched on at once relaying different information.

When my mother came into his workspace and said, "Ivan, do you want to know something?" he flipped and started smashing the place up.

Robin Cook should take warning.

Saturday, September 9, Arthur Askey Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

There are now two male members of our family in hospital: my father's infections keep mutating, and he is now the subject of a controlled trial. He's in an isolation unit. Quite honestly, this has come as quite a relief: visiting is strictly forbidden. It is possible to observe him through a glass panel, but what's the point of driving seven miles there and seven miles back to watch a middle-aged man puzzling over the Sun crossword.

Ivan Braithwaite has also been forbidden visitors. The psychiatric nurse in charge of him, a certain Steve Harper, said, "Ivan needs a break from the family dynamic." The family dynamic in question, my mother, is furious and spends most of the day sitting outside the locked ward telling anybody who will listen that it is "an overload of information technology that caused Ivan's breakdown". He'd processed 300 emails only half-an-hour before he cracked, she told me. I am now convinced that technology is to blame for most of society's ills.

I used to scoff at my dead grandmother Edna Mole's assertion that microwaves damage the brain, but since upgrading to a superior wattage I have noticed a diminution of brain power. It took me more than an hour to remember whether it was Shakespeare who wrote, "He that sleeps feels not the toothache", or Sir Walter Raleigh. I spoke these words at 4am to Glenn, who has got an abscess. However, he didn't sleep but kept me awake with his groans of pain. It was just our luck not to have a single painkilling tablet in the house.

Sunday, September 10

At first light, I went to the emergency chemist and asked for Paracetemol. The chemist, a child of 10, asked me if I intended to kill myself. I assured her that I didn't, and she handed over the pills. I tried to buy petrol today, but the queues were too long and there was a fight on the forecourt. Why?

Monday, September 11

Mohammed at the BP garage refused to sell me more than £5-worth of lead-free this morning. We were at school together, and our relationship has deepened in friendship over my fuel-buying years, yet he refused to help me out. How am I going to get William to school? There is no convenient public transport, and the journey is almost a mile.

Wednesday, September 13

I rang my MP, Pandora Braithwaite, to complain about the fuel crisis. She reminded me that when we were school-children together we used to walk a mile-and-a-half to Neil Armstrong Comprehensive School. I reminded her that, "This is the year 2000, where paedophiles stalk the avenues and cul-de-sacs."

She said scornfully, "You've obviously forgotten that sweetshop keeper who used to pretend his trousers had fallen down when we innocently asked for a gobstopper." I asked her why she was in such a bad mood. She said, "On the contrary, I'm in an excellent mood. I'm relieved that I'm not mentioned in Andrew Rawnsley's book, Servants of the People . I was sure he was going to use that story about me and Mo and Gordon Brown in that hotel service lift at Bournemouth."

Thursday, September 14

Glenn has come home from school with a homework project about third world poverty. I took him to the library on the estate on a search for information. Unfortunately, it was closed due to "staff shortages". I rang my mother and she brought round some statistics she'd found on the internet. I was shocked to realise that me and my boys have been living in third world poverty for the past two years.

Glenn is relieved: he was planning to do his project on Bangladesh, but now, as he says, "All I have to do is go walkin' round the streets talkin' to people, Dad."

Thursday, September 14, Arthur Askey Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

So much for a lifelong friendship! Mohammed refused to sell me any petrol today, even though I had pushed the Montego to his garage to save what little fuel I had. I reminded him that I had stuck up for him in the playground at Neil Armstrong Comprehensive when Barry Kent went on a bullying rampage after eating too many Walker's crisps. "I don't remember you stickin' up for me, Moley," Mohammed said as he directed a midwife towards a pump.

I pointed out that I had advised Barry to go on a bullying-awareness course at the Off The Streets youth club. "That didn't stop me from gettin' my fingers bent back," he said sadly.

My mother drove up on the forecourt and joined the queue of essential users. "On what grounds are you an essential user?" I asked. "Have you joined one of the emergency services since I saw you last?"

"As a matter of fact, I have, in a way," she said. "I promised to take some of my unwanted vases to Laing ward at Ivan's mental hospital. They've got nothing to put the visitors' flowers in."

I wondered how she would convince Mohammed that her need of fuel was legitimate, and was infuriated when she was allowed to go to the front of the queue and was served by Mohammed himself!

I made another attempt to procure some petrol for myself. Citing the time I directed Mohammed in the Nativity play , Jesus Christ Almighty! , and gave him the starring role. "Yeah, yeah, and I'm still in trouble with some of the community elders 15 years later," he said. "I said I'd be in trouble if I played Jesus as a heroin addict."

"You had free will, Mohammed," I pointed out.

"No, I didn't," he said. "You was going through a bad time. Your parents were splittin' up, so I dun it to help you out."