La belle France
Saturday, January 27, Ashby-de-la-Zouch
It is Glenn's birthday on Friday. Yes, the lad will be 14. Mohammed, whose brother works for Midland Main-line, gave me two Eurostar vouchers to Paris last week saying, "You use 'em, Aidy. I daren't leave the country. I'm frit that immigration won't let me back in."
I said, "Mohammed, you were born in the Leicester Royal Infirmary maternity unit, you have a strong Leicester accent, you cried when Martin O'Neill left Leicester City Football Club. Nobody could possibly question your English nationality."
Oh, yeh," said Mohammed cynically. "And who was the only kid to be stopped at Dover when we come back from that school trip to France?"
I cast my mind back to that heady day when I became a European. I will never forget my first sight of la belle France. As the ferry prepared to dock, Miss Elf gathered her class of 30 around her on the vomit-stained deck and said, "Mes petits enfants, regardez vous la belle France, la crème de la crème, de la Continent". (Or words to that effect, diary. My French is a little rusty, as I rarely have occasion to use it.)
We lost precious time in France because Barry Kent tried to leap from the ferry on to the harbour wall before the docking procedure was quite finished. He wasn't in the water long, but by the time the gendarmes had finished their paperwork, a couple of hours had been lost.
On the coach, Miss Elf announced that, due to Barry Kent's foolhardy leap, there would now be no time for the planned visit to the war graves cemetery (we were doing a class project on first world war poetry). A few of the more sentimental girls wept, I recall, though Pandora was not among them. "Instead," she said, "we will sample French bread and French coffee, and we will visit a market and observe the care with which the French choose their fruit and vegetables."
When I returned home late that night, my mother was waiting for me in the car park of Neil Armstrong comprehensive. As I stepped off the coach, I said to her, "Maman, I have seen and tasted paradise. You must throw away your Maxwell House and your Mothers Pride thin-sliced and embrace the baguette and café au lait." I can't recall her exact words of reply, but they were said with a snarl.
Anyway, diary, what I said to Mohammed was, "It was your own fault you got stopped by immigration at Dover — you were openly smoking a Disque Bleu fag and you were only 12 years old."
Sunday, January 28
My plan is to take Glenn to Paris for his birthday. It is to be a surprise, so my preparations must be made behind his back. Tonight, I washed and ironed his least gangsterish-looking clothes and hid them in my wardrobe. There is nothing I can do about his hair or the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tattoo he's now got on his wrist, but with luck it will be cold and he'll have to roll down his sleeves. I'm looking forward to showing him the Louvre — he's a very lucky boy; I was 26 before I saw that the Mona Lisa wasn't worth the wait in the queue.
Tuesday, January 30
I was checking and re-checking my travel necessities list tonight. Two Eurostar tickets, travellers' cheques, Nurofen, map of Paris, French/English dictionary, passports, umbrella. There was something missing. Then the realisation hit me like an orange thrown by a toddler in a supermarket trolley: GLENN DOES NOT HAVE A PASSPORT!
Wednesday, January 31
Pandora has refused to help fast-track a passport for Glenn. I phoned Keith Vaz MP, but there was nobody available to take my call.
Self-obsession
Friday, February 2, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire
I was sitting in the kitchen with a chicken noodle Cuppa-Soup this evening, waiting for The Archers to begin, when to my astonishment I heard my name mentioned on Radio 4. I turned up the volume and listened in growing horror to a «trail» of a television programme featuring a man called Adrian Mole, a former offal chef whose family home is in Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
This TV Mole has a mother called Pauline and a father called George. This cannot be mere coincidence — somebody has published my life and is exploiting it for commercial reasons. I immediately rang my agent's solicitor, Peter Elf, and left a message. The BBC must be prevented from broadcasting this series. Surely I have intellectual copyright on my own life?
I was unable to concentrate on The Archers, and thus missed a strand of an important storyline: will Kate go back to South Africa with her black lover and take her first-born child?
Saturday, February 3
Several people, including Pandora, have rung up to enquire about the Mole TV series. Pandora was outraged, though I could tell that she is rather flattered that she is being played by Helen Baxendale.
Monday, February 5
I rang Greg Dyke's office at 7am this morning, but the slug-a-bed was not at his bed. Do we licence-payers award a full-time salary to a man who apparently works part-time? It would appear so.
Mr Elf warned me against taking out an injunction against the BBC. He said, "It would be a David and Goliath situation." I pointed out to him that little David was in fact the victor against the giant Goliath. Elf replied, "In my opinion, David struck lucky with that stone. Goliath obviously had a very thin skull."
Tania Braithwaite brought last week's Radio Times around this morning. Inside, was a "film-set diary" purported to have been written by a bloke calling himself Adrian Mole. This Mole bloke was also upset that his life was being exploited.
A friend of Tania's in publishing had told her that an old hack called Sue Townsend had been trying for years to publish the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole, claiming that they were fiction. She showed me a piece of the manuscript. I read in increasing astonishment as details of my private life were revealed. How does this woman know so much about me? Is she tapping my phone? Has she bugged my house? Tania said that Townsend grew bitter after going on an Arvon poetry course led by Adrian Henri and Roger McGough, where Henri told her that she was not a poet and never would be after she handed in a poem called A Contemplation Regarding Earwig Defecation:
How to measure earwig poo?
How to know how much they do?
Are there scales to measure it
Those tiny piles of earwig shit?
Townsend then made a hysterical denunciation of modern poetry and ran out of the class and down to the river. She threatened to throw herself in unless Adrian Henri sent her earwig poem to Bloodaxe with a recommendation that they commission a thick volume of her verse. Adrian Henri came to the opposite bank and shouted across the river, "Throw yourself in and give us all a break."
Townsend has hated all men called Adrian since that day. AA Gill is another of her obsessions. Is she the reason my own literary endeavours have come to nought?
Tuesday, February 6
Leicester-born painter Adrian Hemming has fled the country after hearing that Townsend is an admirer of his work. "I heard that she was planning to buy one of my 'wave' pictures and hang it in her bathroom," he said from his hiding place. "I must protect my name."