Tuesday, April 4
The Ludlows held a welcome home from prison party for Vince tonight. I went next door at 10pm, after William and Glenn had gone to bed. I don't want my boys to associate the word «prison» with the word «party».
Vince said he had seen Jonathan Aitken in the prison chapel, and had witnessed Mr Aitken's religious fervour. Vince said, " 'e was shakin' 'is tambourine so 'ard that 'is Rolex fell off".
Vince told me to back Papillon in the Grand National. I said it was highly unlikely that another son/jockey and father/ trainer combination would win. I rang Pamela as soon as I got home. She said she was in bed with a Trollope. "Anthony or Joanna?" I asked. Pamela laughed, as though I'd made a joke.
Thursday, April 6
The Piggs' don't like children, so my mother is babysitting William for the weekend and Glenn is going to his mother's. Pamela warned me tonight not to tell her father that I am an unpublished poet and novelist. I pointed out that I have published two cookery books: Offaly Good and Offaly Good Again. She told me that her father was a militant vegetarian and a former RAF kayak instructor. I dread meeting Mr Pigg.
Friday, April 7, The Olde Forge, Stockport
He is even worse than I feared. "Call me Porky!" he boomed. He was wearing a sort of fleecy Babygro garment and rubber socks. He had just returned from a training session on an artificial slalom course on the River Tees. He has offered to take me down the rapids in his double kayak on Sunday. Mrs Pigg was loading her van in preparation for a country fayre, at which she sells the hedgehog boot scrapers she makes out of pine cones and plastic bristles.
As Mrs Pigg was showing me to my single bed, she asked me to call her Snouty. When I enquired what her real Christian name was, she glared and said, "Why are you presuming that my parents were Christians?" I told her I'd seen the photograph on the mantelpiece of her parents' wedding, which had been taken outside a church and been attended by a vicar holding a copy of the Old Testament. She said that I "mustn't bother" Pamela in the night, as Mr Pigg did not approve of sex before long-term commitment.
Saturday, April 8
The Piggs took me to a Beefeater restaurant for dinner tonight. A cardboard cut-out of the TV chef Brian Turner welcomed us in. The conversation ground to a halt over pre-dinner drinks, when Porky discovered that I am a single father living in a council house. The tension was palpable. Pamela developed a most unflattering tic in her left eye.
But all was not lost because Porky and I chose the lightly breaded deep-fried mushrooms at £2.95 (with a choice of two dips). Porky and I now have something in common: we will talk about our Beefeater experience for many years to come. Thank you, Mr Turner.
Ex-ham time
Monday, April 10, 2000, Arthur Askey Way
William woke up screaming in the night. He'd been having a nightmare about the exams he will be taking when he is seven. He was mostly incoherent, but I managed to glean that his nightmare included David Blunkett's guide dog and the gay Teletubbie. I didn't press him for details.
Pamela hasn't rung me since our weekend with her parents. I fear that beside the hirsute masculinity of her father I appear a poor specimen. My expert knowledge of the early poetry of Philip Larkin cannot compete with Porky Pigg's ability to roll a double kayak in white water. I could tell that my refusal to join Porky in his flimsy plastic boat sowed doubts in Pamela's mind.
Did some primeval instinct warn her that my spermatozoa and her eggs were incompatible and wouldn't add to the quality of the gene pool? Whatever — as they say on Jerry Springer — she was very quiet as we drove south and didn't offer her tongue when I kissed her goodnight. Ugh.
Tuesday, April 11
This morning, I handed William his usual carrier bag full of toilet rolls and squashed cereal packets and was amazed when he handed it straight back to me, saying, "We can't play at school any more, Dad, so don't collect 'em up."
At home time, I broke the rules and waited outside William's classroom. On looking through the glass panel in the door I saw that the children were sitting in rows being taught exam techniques by an "exam trainer". (Formerly known as a teaching assistant.) The weather chart and the nature table were nowhere to be seen. The hamster cage was empty.
There were various exhortations around the room. As I watched, the exam trainer wrote "Exams are good, play is bad" on the white board. The children dipped their pens in their inkwells and copied this slogan down. Since when has it been compulsory to write in ink? I fear that once again Mrs Parvez has misinterpreted education-department guidelines.
She won't be content until the children are wearing clogs.
Wednesday, April 12
I embarked on a new novel, Sty, today. Progress was slow. I only managed to write 104 words, including the title and my name.
Sty, by Adrian Mole.
The pig grunted in its sty. It was deeply sad. Somehow it felt different from the other pigs with which it shared a home.
"Look at them," thought the pig. "They are oblivious to the fact that they are merely part of the food chain." The pig had felt discontented since it had glimpsed Alain de Botton's TV programme, Philosophy: A Guide to Life, through a gap in the pig farmer's curtain. The wisdom of Socrates, Epicurus and Montaigne had brought home to the pigs that it was completely uneducated and knew nothing of the world beyond the sty.
Notes on new novel
1. Should the pig have a name?
2. Should the pig's thoughts be in quotes?
3. Has the story got legs? Or is the main protagonist (the pig) too restricting a character, ie, being (a) unable to communicate with the other pigs and (b) never leaving the sty?
Sunday, April 16
Pamela Pigg has just left this house after flying into a rage and accusing me of stealing her life and turning it into "fifth-rate art". She read my manuscript of Sty which I had foolishly left on the kitchen table under a copy of Men's Health. As she ran to her car, I shouted, "I'm an artist, we must forage where we can for our materials."
Pamela shouted back, "I'm a housing officer. We must cancel the artist's move to a maisonette as promised." I went inside and read page 124 of Men's Health — bed-busting sex, for my art, of course.
How's your father?
Monday, April 17, 2000, Arthur Askey Way
William begged me for £2.49 today. He wants to buy a booster pack of Pokémon cards. When I refused, he burst into tears and threw himself down on the kitchen floor. Glenn came in and said, "You've gotta give 'im the money, Dad, he's lost respect in the playground."
Apparently, there are 151 characters in a set and William has only collected 37 of the most common. Glenn said, "It's like, you know, wearing Marks & Spencer's trainers, Dad?" Glenn has never forgiven me for making him go to school in my M&S trainers when his own Nikes disappeared. He still wakes in the night sweating and crying out for the NSPCC.