The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole Part 7

Incidentally, I hope Mel has been kicked out of Big Brother by the time you read this. Her motives are so transparent: she obviously intends to set up a chain of ma.s.sage parlours across the nation. Mark my words, Mel's Ma.s.sage Parlours will soon be appearing on every high street.

1pm Glenn has just been down and shown me his results. They are not bad, considering the boy could hardly read when he was 13. He said he would have done better if it hadn't been for the girls in his cla.s.s distracting him with their good behaviour and hard work. I sympathised: my own academic ability plummeted when Pandora Braithwaite joined my cla.s.s. I simply couldn't tear my eyes away from the slight swelling under her school blouse and put them on the blackboard where they belonged. It's her fault I got poor GCSE results. She has ruined my life.

Sat.u.r.day 26, Plot 49, Pinewood Caravan Site, Wells-Next-The-Sea Glenn's romance is over before it began. Courtney has been "long promised" to her second cousin, a lad called Eli, who works on the whelks and c.o.c.kle store on the quay. Things are certainly feudal down here. They are but simple folk - untouched by the sophisticated outside world. It is impossible to get a Leicester Mercury. William is on the beach as I write, digging a pit in which to bury me "until you're dead day". Does he harbour subconscious patricidal desires? I don't think I'll risk getting into his pit.

Sunday 27, The Caravan I have been consumed by caravan fever! My every waking thought is taken up with finding a method of buying a caravan of my own. I have long suspected that I may have Romany blood coursing through my veins. (I cannot stop my feet tapping when flamenco is played.) However, it is not a traditional barrel-shaped horse drawn caravan I l.u.s.t for.

Specifically, it is a Willerby Westmorland; a double-glazed six-berth, with microwave and private veranda in a tasteful beige. I have worked out that it would just about fit into my mother's front garden. So, for PS18,999, I could have the best of both worlds: complete independence for me and my boys together with baby-sitting services only five yards away. Why didn't I think of it before?

I have obtained the services of an independent financial adviser, a very nice man called Terry "the shark" Brighton. He is nicknamed shark because he once caught a record-breaking creature of that name while enjoying a shark fishing honeymoon in Australia with his fourth wife. I asked him to help me raise the finance for my Willerby Westmorland. Terry said no probs, but asked me to send him a cheque for PS500 as a returnable deposit for his services. I won't tell my mother about the caravan just yet. It will be a lovely surprise for her.

Sunday, September 3, Arthur Askey Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire Can you trust anybody nowadays? My financial adviser Terry "The Shark" Brighton has been arrested by the fraud squad. Apparently, he has been operating a caravan finance scam for years. So I can kiss goodbye to my PS500 deposit and my dream of owning my own Willerby Westmoreland 'van and siting it on my mother's property. True, she was hostile to my plan, saying, "I don't want trailer trash living on my doorstep", but I could have talked her round, in time.

At the risk of sounding like a Herman's Hermit song lyric, I've got to get out of this place if it's the last thing I ever do. The Ludlows next door are going through a period of marital discord. Hardly a day or night goes by without a violent argument and the sound of a human head being banged against the party wall. I feel sorry for poor Vince. Peggy is a fearsome woman when she is roused.

Monday, September 4 The autumn term has started, thank G.o.d. William complained this morning that his school uniform is too big for him. I told him it was his own fault for refusing to try it on in the shop. But I may ask my mother to turn up the trousers. They drag on the ground and make him look as though he is a double amputee.

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 s.e.xual 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 works.p.a.ce and said, "Ivan, do you want to know something?" he flipped and started smashing the place up.

Robin Cook should take warning.

Sat.u.r.day, 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sertion 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 a.s.sured 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 PS5-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."

As I pushed my car back home, I puzzled over how a man could hold a grudge for so long. A grudge so powerful that it influenced his judgment when it came to petrol distribution.

Sat.u.r.day, September 16 Pandora is thinking of buying a house in the Suffolk countryside so she can escape from her const.i.tuents. It is called Oakley Park, in Hoxne village. I looked the property up on the net, and was alarmed to discover that it was the scene of a macabre double murder in 1777, when Sir Frederick Brownlow discovered his wife Felicity in bed with Fergus Bellington, a young groom.

When I say "bed", I am using the term loosely - the lovers were actually partic.i.p.ating in a s.e.xual act behind the clock over the arched entranceway. As midnight struck, Sir Frederick, tormented by jealousy, chopped them into bite-sized pieces with his sword. ("It was manayee times sharpen-ed beinge much blunted be ye bones.") The pieces were then fed to the pigs. I warned Pandora that there was a curse on the house, and that anybody with the initials FB came to a bad end if they so much as stepped foot into the courtyard.

"For G.o.d's sake," she said, "what are you drivelling on about? My initials are PLEB." She then went into a tirade saying that idiots were clogging up the internet with uninteresting and unnecessary information.

Sunday, September 17 Battle of Britain Day: Radio 4 was dominated this morning by a dreary church service commemorating this important historical occasion. Why does the C of E allow such very terrible music to be played in its name? And why do church officials speak in such unnatural voices like aliens?

Radio 4 should have played the soundtrack of that Douglas Bader Story. It would have given joy to many.

Monday, September 18, Arthur Askey Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch Life is dull after the excitement of the petrol crisis. I have been out and about doing a little panic buying of bottled water, granulated sugar, bread mix and tinned pilchards. But nothing can compare with last week's frenzy, when, for a few moments, I truly believed that civilisation was at an end and that we would be back to driving a pony and trap.

I have been called to the Job Centre on Friday to explain why I filled in a form recently stating that I am not available for work and that I would like to continue to claim benefits. I have spent all day today preparing my case. I have written a manifesto. Its main thrust is that society should support its artists. Its concluding paragraph states: "How tragic would be the loss to the nation if a great work of mine were to remain unwritten due to the ba.n.a.l necessity of clocking on as an a.s.sistant warehouseman, eg."

Tuesday, September 19 At 1pm, I was contacted on my mobile by my mother, who screamed, "Drop whatever you're doing and start queueing for petrol now!" As I scrambled into my car, I shouted the news to the neighbours in the street. A convoy, stretching 30 cars long, soon formed behind me. By the time we got to Mohammed's garage, we were more than 100 strong and had a police escort. Mohammed's jaw dropped when he saw me leading the convoy on to the forecourt. He was just about to take his wife panic buying in Iceland - she had heard that toddler-sized disposable Pampers were in short supply.

I now feel slightly ashamed of myself for getting caught up in the hysteria, but I need my car. I'm too sensitive to be a full-time pedestrian. The non-car-owning public are unpredictable, their voices are loud and their tempers are uncertain. I feel safer in my car with my Abba tapes and Radio 4.

Friday, September 22 I presented myself at the Job Centre at the appointed time, 10.30am, and was surprised to be taken immediately through to an interview suite by a personable young woman called Jane Doxy. She was neatly turned out in a navy skirt suit and a white shirt. The outfit would, in my opinion, have benefited from high heels, but no doubt Jane enjoyed the comfort of her Gucci-copy loafers. I'd had the foresight to take a copy of the Guardian with me, to impress on Jane that I was an intelligent and literate person. Though, when I saw the Daily Mail in her bag, I wondered if I had done the right thing.

She had read my manifesto with great interest, she said. However, she (and the department) felt that my writing was "only a hobby" and that "the government was not in the game of subsidising my leisure interests". She gave me two telephone numbers to ring. The first was that of Eddie's Tea Bar. Eddie himself answered. The job was a.s.sistant caterer in Eddie's cafe, which was a trailer parked in a lay-by next to the cement works. I asked what my duties would be. Eddie growled, "You'd be doin' all sorts, fryin' burgers, changin' the Calor Gas bottle, 'n' stuff like that, for PS3.60 an hour." Under the watchful eye of Jane Doxy, I then rang the second number. A gentle pensioner called Mrs Banbury-Pryce answered, and said that she needed somebody to take her six dogs out twice a day for a walk. I start at Eddie's on Monday. I just knew that, with my soft heart, I'd end up helping Mrs Banbury-Pryce with the fastenings on her corset and cutting her toenails.

Sunday, September 24 Woke at 5pm to find that a small earthquake had shaken the East Midlands. A few dogs barked, but tragically for the local media n.o.body was killed.

Monday, October 2, Eddie's Tea Bar, Cement Works, Leicestershire I am on my break and am sitting on a white plastic chair, writing on a matching picnic table. I am surrounded by lorry drivers and motorists. It is only 11.30am, but I am already exhausted. I have been on my feet since 5am (though, to be strictly honest, and at the risk of being labelled "pedant", I did sit down in the car during the journey here).

Eddie and his third wife, Sandra, were already here and the urn was warming up, as were the deep-fat fryers and the griddle. Eddie and Sandra seem to have fat running through their bloodstreams. Their hair, skin and pores seem to be clogged with it. Eddie said to me, as he gave me a huge wrap-around ap.r.o.n, "You'll never shake off the stink of the fat, lad. It makes it 'ard to get a woman outside the trade." All Eddies wives have been in the frying business, apparently. I rea.s.sured him that I was not actively seeking a woman at the moment, and told him that I was due to start a course at the adult education centre in Leicester called Living Without A Partner. He looked at me, pityingly, and asked quietly whether I had "Somethink wrong under yer clothes".

I rea.s.sured Eddie that I was made as other men were made, but that my heart had been broken a few times recently and needed time to recover. Eddie lifted the spatula off the sizzling bacon slices and said, "I get bad headaches if I don't have a bit of sausage-hiding once a day, don't I Sandra?"

Sandra tucked a strand of oily hair behind an ear and said, "'E was on a box of Nurofen every 24 hours when I went in the General to have my veins done." Eddie shook his head and gazed into the middle distance where the lorries were parked, obviously re-living the horrors of s.e.xual deprivation.

I phoned my mother to ask how the child-care arrangements had gone this morning. She said, "Badly, I can't get up and come to your house at five every morning. I'm falling asleep at the wheel." I pointed out to her that day nurseries don't open until 7am and begged her to continue. She said bitterly, "I blame Tony Blair and Jack Straw for this. Why should grandmas have to be dragged in to look after their grandkids, eh? I've already served my sentence with you and your sister."

She made me and my sibling's upbringing sound a joyless business. I asked how her new husband, Ivan, was doing in the mental hospital. "He's developed an aversion to all things technological," she said. "A male nurse used an electronic Ronson to light a patient's birthday cake and Ivan had to be sedated." I wondered if Ivan "techno" Braithwaite would be capable ever again of coping with the modern world.

Tuesday, October 3, Ashby-de-la-Zouch DH Lawrence, my literary hero, enjoyed working with his hands and reputedly took a pride in his jam-making. I, too, have discovered the small joys of manual labour. I like to think that DH would have been proud of me as I serve up a bacon 'n' egg sandwich to our first customer, Les, who was driving an Eddie s...o...b..rt lorry full of mineral water from Liskeard to Dundee. Though I say it myself, Les's sandwich was a work of art. The bacon was succulent, the egg was cooked sensitively, so as to prevent yolk leakage, and the bread was as white and soft as a newly-hatched maggot. I was quietly pleased when Les p.r.o.nounced it to be "champion".

Friday, October 6 Couldn't sleep for wondering about the necessity of hauling mineral water from Liskeard to Dundee. Scotland is awash with the stuff.

Sat.u.r.day, October 7 Living Without A Partner has been cancelled. I was the only one to turn up.

Thursday, October 5, Eddie's Tea Bar, the Cement Works, Leicestershire Working in Eddie's has given me a unique glimpse of how capitalism works. Eddie goes to the cash-and-carry and buys catering packs of bacon, beefburgers, white sliced bread, ketchup, etc, and then uses me at PS3.60 an hour to convert the ingredients into food items that sell for 200% profit. Eddie does not have a computerised till. His is strictly a cash business. There is a notice on the trailer wall next to the peeling Samantha Fox poster: "Please do not ask for a receipt, as refusal often offends."

He keeps the coins in an old Cadbury's Luxury Biscuits tin. It offends my sense of order to see the coinage jumbled up together, but it works well enough. Banknotes are kept in Eddie's ap.r.o.n pocket. I suspect that Eddie pays little tax or VAT, though he is vociferous enough on the subject of social security cheats. "They should be took to a island somewhere in the North Sea an' left to fend for themselves," he said this morning. "Though," he added compa.s.sionately, "I'd give 'em a packet of seeds an' a spade."

Eddie's biscuit tin is the proletarian equivalent of a Cayman Islands tax shelter. All it lacks is financial advisers and accountants. Eddie's wife does his "books" while watching the omnibus edition of EastEnders. It's a weekly ritual, apparently.

The lorry drivers provide another facet of globalisation. Some truckers have travelled three days to haul Romanian fridges to Bolton, England. Others have taken gerbil food from Bury St Edmunds to Hamburg and returned with a cargo of Hamburgian carrots, which they've dropped off at a warehouse in Stowmarket, Suffolk. This is madness.

As I serve each trucker, I make a point now of enquiring as to his ultimate destination and the nature of his load. I have thus come to the conclusion that capitalism is no way to run the world's economy - it is inefficient and it exploits workers such as myself.

I put this argument to Eddie as I was sc.r.a.ping the griddle clean with a spatula. He profoundly disagreed with my a.n.a.lysis and said, "If you carry on shoutin' for revolution, Moley, you'll find yerself outta a job so far yer stupid Birkenstock shoes won't touch the bleedin' ground."

Friday, October 6 William and Glenn are both away from school because their hair is infested with head lice. I rang Eddie on his mobile and told him that I wouldn't be in today, as I would be preoccupied with banishing the nits from my boys' heads. Eddie said, "Me an' the missus was up all night scratching our soddin' bonces as if they was scratchcards. You should examine yer own 'ead, Mole."

Glenn and William sat me at my desk and aimed my anglepoise lamp on to my head. There were so many nits in my hair that Glenn said, "You could fill Wembley stadium with 'em, Dad." He is going to watch the England-Germany match tomorrow with a group from the school. They are doing a project on English historical monuments and he is hoping to bring a few blades of gra.s.s back to paste into his project folder. Though, as the headmaster said in his email to me, "Glenn's head will be examined by myself in the morning, and if evidence is found of head lice or their progeny, in the form of unhatched eggs, he will NOT be allowed to board the coach to Wembley."

I was up most of the night going through Glenn's hair with a fine-tooth comb. Eventually, at 3.30am, I cracked and shaved his head. I used five disposable razors. He looks decidedly thuggish, but at least he was allowed on to the coach.

Sat.u.r.day, October 7 Glenn returned victorious with a plastic seat, a square foot of turf and one of Kevin Keegan's chewed-up finger-nails. The boy will go far.

Sunday, October 15, Ashby-de-la-Zouch Pandora rang me today and sought my advice on whether or not she should confess to have smoked cannabis at Oxford. "Why are you asking me?" I said. "You're the voice of middle England," she snapped. "You're a perfect barometer of public opinion." I resented her impication that I was a dull provincial, but at the same time was pleased and flattered that my opinion was being sought. I advised her to keep quiet in the matter of her drug-taking, and warned that a confession would almost certainly jeopardise her ultimate ambition of becoming the next-but-one prime minister. She rang off after saying, "You are right, Aidy, I must keep the Daily Mail on my side."

Monday, October 16 The shadow of headlice infestation continues to fall across our house. What more can I do to exterminate the vile creatures? My mother went to the hairdresser's on Sat.u.r.day, and her stylist, Sebastian, fled in horror to the colour mixing room after spotting a colony of them nesting at the nape of her neck. She is furious with me, and claims she hasn't been so humiliated since the wire from her Gossard bra poked out of her wedding dress at the register office when she married Ivan Braithwaite. Even my father, who is still in an isolation cubicle at the general hospital, has nits. What is going on? I told Glenn that I suspect foul play: "It's obvious that a foreign power, possibly Iran, has introduced a virulent form of nits into this country in an attempt to demoralise the population and destabilise the pound." Glenn shook his head in a pitying way and said, "Go an' lie down, Dad, an' put a wet towel on yer 'ead."

Tuesday, October 17 I read the following article in the Independent today: "Dr Pandora Braithwaite, the junior minister for fish, admitted in a Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman last night to having smoked cannabis during her time at Oxford. To a direct question posed by Paxman, 'Have you or have you not smoked dope?' Braithwaite smiled and answered, 'Have you, Jeremy?' "Paxman snapped, 'I'm not here to answer the questions, minister, you are.' Braithwaite said, 'Okay, yes, I did, we all did. What's more, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's what got me through the work.'" I now predict terrible things for my love. Her position as a minister of the crown is surely untenable.

Wednesday, October 18 The whole country is talking about Pandora. According to a report in the Guardian, the demand for cannabis in Oxford has skyrocketed.

Thursday, October 19 I returned to work at Eddie's Tea Bar today, and couldn't help but notice that many of our trucker customers were scratching their heads. Are the nits being transported throughout Europe? How long will it be before they have taken over the world? At 7pm, Glenn phoned my mother, and told her to come round quickly. I explained my nit theory to her, and after listening for an hour and a half, she sent for Dr Wong.

Friday, October 20 I am calmer now. Dr Wong prescribed Prozac and a course of aromatherapy. He said that I was suffering from stress. I told him about my unhappy childhood, and he was very understanding. Though I heard my mother vehemently denying it: "He was a very happy little boy," she told the doctor. "Until he got older and started reading Dostoevsky and that bleddy Kafka!" Pandora has sent me a get-well message, and suggested that I recuperate by reading Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare's latest volume. She later phoned and told me the astonishing news that, far from being vilified for her drugs confession, she is being strongly tipped for promotion.

Sat.u.r.day, October 21, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

Last week Pandora was climbing the rungs of the snakes and ladders of life. This week she is sliding down a python's back (so to speak). The papers today are full of pictures of her cat, Maurice, who had to be rescued by the RSPCA on Thursday night after neighbours heard piteous miaowing coming from Pandora's flat in Pimlico. Unfortunately, she was on a fact-finding mission with Keith Allen in Ayia Napa at the time of the cat's rescue. An RSPCA spokesperson said: "Dr Pandora Braithwaite may be charged with the neglect and cruelty of an animal. Maurice had not been fed for five days and was in an emaciated condition."

I phoned Pandora's mother, Tanya, for the inside story and she told me that Maurice's computerised feed-a-pet feeding bowl had developed a fault and had refused to open up and feed the ravenous beast. Some of the headlines were harsh: "Pan's pet starved alone", "Drug MP's cat horror", and "Pan's p.u.s.s.y shock".

In my role (unpaid) as Pandora's advisor on Middle England, I rang the House of Commons to offer my help. Unfortunately, she was not able to take my call as she was in emergency talks with Alastair Campbell. I left a message with her private secretary, Nigel Hetherington, "Tell her to make a large donation to the Cat Rescue Mission." Nigel said: "How very, very original. Thank you for your extremely naff idea, Moley."

It still rankles with me that Pandora chose Nigel to be her right-hand man rather than me. Okay, so he may have three degrees - in management, business and fashion - but I feel that he lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. I am extremely experienced when it comes to dealing with the media. In 1993, for five months I was the Ashby Bugle's poetry correspondent (unpaid) until the editor was sacked for gross subordination (throwing an empty vodka bottle at the proprietor). Unfortunately, the new editor was obsessed with sport and turned my weekly column into a Spot The Ball compet.i.tion, to the detriment, in my opinion, of Ashby-de-la-Zouch's cultural landscape. William is not eating. I suspect he is seeking attention.

Sunday, October 22

Millbank released a photograph of Pandora and Maurice today together with a condemnation of computerised feeding bowls. Pandora is calling for an enquiry into their reliability. She has vowed to use a cat-sitter in future. When asked about her relationship with Keith Allen, she said: "Mr Allen and I were in Ayia Napa on a fact-finding mission. We were investigating the swamping of the British Consulate by penniless British youngsters demanding their airfare home.

Monday, October 23

The police in Nottingham are now strolling about in the city centre with guns. How long will it be before Ashby-de-la-Zouch rings to the sound of the Kalashnikov? Surely we are on a slippery slope.

Tuesday, October 24

Eddie rang today to complain that I haven't turned up for work. I explained about my childcare problems during half-term. He said: "I'm tryin' to run a bleedin' caff 'ere. I don't give a toss about yer private life, Mole." This is typical of Britain's and Eddie's att.i.tude towards children. It's no wonder that three of Eddie's offspring are currently enjoying custodial sentences and that one, Shane, is dancing with the Royal Ballet. Glenn has begged to be in charge of cooking in future. I was happy to pa.s.s on the Mole ap.r.o.n. I hadn't realised that he was interested in the culinary arts.