Barry Kent denied all knowledge of menacing me and laughed when my father asked him to repay the money. My father went to see his father and had a serious argument and threatened to call the police. I think my father is dead brave. Barry Kent’s father looks like a big ape and has got more hair on the back of his hands than my father has got on his entire head.
The police have said that they can’t do anything without proof so I am going to ask Nigel to give them a sworn statement that he has seen me handing menaces money over.
Barry Kent duffed me up in the cloakroom today. He hung me on one of the coathooks. He called me a ‘coppers’ nark’ and other things too bad to write down. My grandma found out about the menacing (my father didn’t want her to know on account of her diabetes). She listened to it all then she put her hat on, thinned her lips and went out. She was gone one hour and seven minutes, she came in, took her coat off, fluffed her hair out, took PS27.18 from the ariti-mugger belt round her waist. She said; ‘He won’t bother you again, Adrian, but if he does, let me know’. Then she got the tea ready. Pilchards, tomatoes and ginger cake. I bought her a box of diabetic chocolates from the chemist’s as a token of my esteem.
It is all round the school that an old lady of seventy-six frightened Barry Kent and his dad into returning my menaces money. Barry Kent daren’t show his face. His gang are electing a new leader.
Home again, the electricity has been reconnected. All the plants are dead. Red bills on the doormat.
Rogation Sunday
I have decided to paint my room black; it is a colour I like. I can’t live a moment longer with Noddy wallpaper. At my age it is positively indecent to wake up to Big Ears and all the rest of the Toyland idiots running around the walls. My father says I can use any colour I like so long as I buy the paint and do it myself.
I have decided to be a poet. My father said that there isn’t a suitable career structure for poets and no pensions and other boring things, but I am quite decided. He tried to interest me in becoming a computer operator, but I said, ‘I need to put my soul into my work and it is well known that computers haven’t got a soul’. My father said,’ The Americans are working on it’. But I can’t wait that long.
Bought two tins of black vinyl silk-finish paint and a half-inch brush. Started painting as soon as I got home from the DIY centre. Noddy keeps showing through the black paint. Looks like it’ll need two coats. Just my luck!
Moon’s Last Quarter
Now put on two coats of black paint! Noddy still showing through! Black paw-marks over landing and stairs. Can’t get paint off hands. Hairs falling out of brush. Fed up with whole thing. Room looks dark and gloomy. Father hasn’t lifted a finger to help. Black paint everywhere.
Third coat. Slight improvement, only Noddy’s hat showing through now.
Ascension Day
Went over Noddy’s hat with kid’s paintbrush and last of black paint, but bloody hat bells are still showing through!
Went over hat bells with black felt-tip pen, did sixty-nine tonight, only a hundred and twenty-four to go.
Finished last bell at 11.25 PM. Know just how Rembrandt must have felt after painting the Sistine Chapel in Venice.
2 AM. The paint is dry but it must have been faulty because it is all streaky, and here and there you can see Gollywog’s striped trousers and Mr Plod’s nose. Thank God the bloody bells don’t show through! My father has just been in to tell me to go to sleep, he said my room reminded him of a Salvador Dali painting. He said it was a surrealist nightmare, but he is only jealous because he has got yukky roses on his bedroom walls.
Sunday after Ascension
I bought a joss stick from Mr Singh’s shop. I lit it in my room to try and get rid of the paint smell. My father came into my room and threw the joss stick out of the window, he said he ‘wouldn’t have me messing with drugs’! I tried to explain but my father was too angry to listen. I stayed in my room for a few hours but the black walls seemed to be closing in on me so I went to see Bert Baxter. Couldn’t make him hear, so I came home and watched religion on the television. Had tea, did Geography homework, went to bed. Dog won’t stay in room any more; it whimpers to be let out.
Bank Holiday in the Rep. of Ireland
My father had a letter that made his face go white: he has been made redundant from his job! He will be on the dole! How can we live on the pittance that the government will give us? The dog will have to go! It costs thirty-five pence a day for dog food, not counting Winalot. I am now a single-parent child whose father is on the dole! Social Security will be buying my shoes!
I didn’t go to school today, I rang the school secretary and told her that my father is mentally ill and needs looking after. She sounded dead worried and asked if he was violent. I said that he hadn’t shown any signs of being violent, but if he started I would call the doctor. I made my father lots of hot, sweet drinks for shock, he kept going on about electric storage heaters and saying that he would spill the beans to the media.
He rang Doreen Slater up and she came round straightaway, she had a horrible little kid called Maxwell with her. It was quite a shock to see Doreen Slater for the first time. Why my father wanted to have carnal knowledge of her I can’t imagine. She is as thin as a stick insect. She has got no bust and no bum.
She is just straight all the way up and down, including her nose and mouth and hair. She put her arms round my father as soon as she came into the house. Maxwell started to cry, the dog started to bark, so I went back to my black room and counted howmany things were now showing through the paint: a hundred and seventeen!
Doreen left at 1.30 PM to take Maxwell to playschool. She did some shopping for us then cooked a sloppy sort of meal made of spaghetti and cheese. She is a one-parent family; Maxwell was born out of wedlock. She told me about herself when we were washing up. She would be quite nice if she were a bit fatter.
New Moon
Doreen and Maxwell stayed the night. Maxwell was supposed to sleep on the sofa, but he cried so much that he ended up sleeping in the double bed between my father and Doreen, so my father was unable to extend his carnal knowledge of Doreen. He was as sick as a pig, but not as sick as Maxwell was. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Went to school today, couldn’t concentrate, kept thinking about the stick insect. She has got lovely white teeth (straight of course). She made some jam tarts for when I came home from school. She is not stingy with the jam like some women are.
My father is smoking and drinking heavily, but he has been made temporarily impotent according to Doreen. This is something I do not wish to know! Doreen talks to me as if I were another adult instead of her lover’s son aged fourteen and two months and one day.