Should auld utopian visions be forgot?
Monday, January 1, 2001, 1.30am
I saw the new year in alone. Glenn has gone to a fancy-dress party at his mother's house. Rather disturbingly, he went as Hannibal Lecter. William is spending the weekend with his mother and her new husband, who are on honeymoon in London.
I hope my ex-wife and her new spouse can forget their sexual passion for long enough to pay proper attention to William. The lad has had two major disappointments in his life lately:
a) Santa's broken promise to bring him a Sony PlayStation 2;
b) Santa's broken promise to bring him a Barbie Plane.
As midnight struck, I reopened the bottle of sparkling chardonnay I failed to finish on Christmas Day, but the sparkle had gone out of it. So I poured it down the sink.
As I wrote the numbers 2001, I was transported back to a classroom at the Neil Armstrong comprehensive, and a lesson on "the future" given by Miss Elf, the humanities teacher. By 2001, according to Miss Elf, the world would be one, big, happy, cappuccino-coloured family. I remember her drawing this frontier-less world. How the chalk dust flew!
Miss Elf was a passionate and committed teacher. In fact, not long after I left school she was committed to the High Towers mental hospital, following a doomed staff-room romance with Podgy Perkins, the games master. He was married with seven children, all boys. (Interestingly, all the boys' names began with G.) Strange what the memory throws up.
Anyway, Miss Elf envisaged that, by 2001, there would be no hunger in the world and that everybody would have access to clean water and a flushing toilet. She drew a typical 2001 world family on the board, using a fresh box of coloured chalks. They all had brown skin and wore white, shiny, body-suits with pointy shoulders. Attached to their ankles were tiny jet engines. These devices enabled the 2001 family to fly like the birds. Though, as she pointed out, intercontinental travel would necessitate many refuelling stops.
Perhaps it is a good thing that Miss Elf is gibbering behind the high walls of an institution. She would be heartbroken to know that her utopian vision is as far away as ever, and that Israel and Palestine are still arguing the toss.
New Year Resolutions
1. I will try and secure the services of Dame Helena Kennedy in a bid to get my mother out of prison.
2. I will persist in trying to get my serial killer comedy, The White Van, made by the BBC.
3. I will try to be less judgmental. Perhaps Jeffrey Archer is innocent. Perhaps the Dome was worth a billion pounds.
4. I will look into the Buddhist religion with a view to becoming a cohort. I have always had a horror of treading on insects. Ants in particular.
5. I will attempt to fall in love with a suitable woman this year. One that doesn't cry a lot or use too much blue eye shadow.
6. I'll teach my son's the proper use of the apostrophe.
Tuesday, January 2
Pandora is back from Israel where she claimed to be on a fact-finding mission about Jerusalem. I remarked on her tan. She said, "Yeah, I managed to get a few days off in Eilat, swimming with the dolphins." How I envy Pandora's physical prowess! I would find it difficult to swim with goldfish.
I asked her if she was any nearer to achieving her medium-term goal, that of becoming foreign secretary. She tossed her treacle-coloured hair back and said, "It's acknowledged by those that count — Ian Hislop, Auberon Waugh and Andrew Rawnsley — that Robin's got to go. The man is now totally incomprehensible. How poor bloody foreigners understand his mad gabble, God only knows."
Over-protected
Monday, January 8, 2001, Ashby-de-la-Zouch
I woke at 7.32am with a headache. Thankfully, the boys were still asleep, so I was able to dress and attend to my toilette in peace for once. I did not wash my hair in the shower. The friction caused by the massaging of the shampoo into the scalp is putting a strain on my follicles and causing hair loss. I was pleased to use one of those shower caps, which I have collected from hotel bathrooms over the years.
The reason for my tension headache must be linked to the fact that Pamela Pigg stayed last night. Or, at least, most of the night — she left my bed at 4.30 after sobbing for an hour and a half, incidentally smearing one of my finest pillow slips in blue eye-shadow.
Our date went well considering that Pamela had a heavy cold and kept asking the waiter for more paper serviettes in which to blow her nose. We talked about our on/off relationship, and Pamela blamed our sexual incompatibility for the fact that it was mostly off. She said she was willing to try again, and told me she had forced herself to read The Joy of Sex, and then been astonished at the range of things on offer. She made it sound like the Argos catalogue.
After a protracted argument with the waiter about the bill (I refused to pay £3.50 for the extra services), we left the restaurant arm in arm. In the car on the way home, she placed her right hand over my left. It was difficult changing gear, but I didn't complain.
When we got home, Glenn was still up, doing his humanities homework. He was stuck on one question: "Name three members of the shadow cabinet, apart from William Hague."
Unfortunately, neither me nor Pamela could help him out. When Pamela went to the lavatory, Glenn glanced at her and whispered, "You must be desperate, Dad." In the lull before Pamela's return, I remembered Ann Widdecombe. When Pamela returned, smelling of Poison, and with newly applied pink lipstick, Glenn tactfully withdrew and went to bed.
I put on a Beethoven CD, the 1812, and tried to dim the lights, but the dimmer switch refused to work, so we sat under the glare of 500-watt spotlights. After a little conversation about my mother in prison, we went upstairs. Pamela apologised for her sports bra and utility-type knickers, saying that her best underwear was in the wash. I said it didn't matter, but, in truth, I was very hurt. She had known about our date for over a week. Surely that was enough time in which to hand-wash a few delicate scraps of lace and satin, and dry them on the radiator?
She commented on the fact that the spots on my back had almost cleared up, then turned the bedside light out and lovemaking commenced. The problems began when she requested that, for safety's sake, I wear two condoms, one on top of the other. God knows, I tried, Diary, but by the time I'd got the first fitted, the second had got lost in the bed.
The second problem was that Glenn shouted through the party wall, "For God's sake Dad, 'urry up an' get it over wiv." Which made Pamela roll over to her side of the bed, where she lay with rigid limbs and a set jaw. I tried to relax her by talking about my father's treatment for his hospital-borne infection, but she started to cry. And nothing I said would stop her.
An hour later
Glenn has just come into the kitchen angrily flourishing the used shower cap and shouting, "Tell that Pamela Pigg, to take 'er female condom 'ome wiv 'er in future." The lad obviously knows nothing about the female anatomy.
For fax sake
Saturday, January 13, Ashby-de-la-Zouch