Sue Townsend - Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (Adrian Mole Diaries)

Adrian Mole

and the Weapons of

Mass Destruction

Sue Townsend

This book is dedicated to the memory of

John James Alan Ball,

Maureen Pamela Broadway

and Giles Gordon.

And to the Lovely Girls,

Finley Townsend,

Issabelle Carter,

Jessica Stafford

and Mala Townsend,

with all my love.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my husband, Colin Broadway, for the practical and loving support he gave me throughout the writing of this book.

2002

Dear Mr Blair

You may remember me we met at a Norwegian Leather Industry reception at the House of Commons in 1999. Pandora Braithwaite, now the Junior Minister for Brownfield Regeneration, introduced us, and we had a brief conversation about the BBC during which I opined that the Corporations attitude towards provincial scriptwriters was disgraceful. Unfortunately, you were called away to attend to some urgent matter on the far side of the room.

I am writing to thank you for warning me about the imminent threat to Cyprus posed by Saddam Husseins Weapons of Mass Destruction.

I had booked a weeks holiday at the Athena Apartments, Paphos, Cyprus, for the first week of November for me and my eldest son at a total cost of 571 plus airport tax. My personal travel adviser, Johnny Bond, of Latesun Ltd, demanded a deposit of 57.10, which I paid to him on September 23rd. Imagine my alarm when I turned on the television the next day and heard you telling the House of Commons that Saddam Hussein could attack Cyprus with his Weapons of Mass Destruction within forty-five minutes!

I immediately rang Johnny Bond and cancelled the holiday. (With only forty-five minutes warning, I could not risk being on the beach and out of earshot of a possible Foreign Office announcement.)

My problem is this, Mr Blair. Latesun Ltd are refusing to refund my deposit unless I furnish them with proof:

a) that Saddam Hussein has a stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction,

b) that he can deploy them within forty-five minutes, and

c) that they can reach Cyprus.

Johnny Bond, who was, according to his colleagues, away from his desk yesterday (I suspect that he was on the Stop the War march), has dared to question the truth of your statement to the House!

Would it be possible to send a handwritten note confirming the threat to Cyprus so that I can pass it on to Johnny Bond and therefore retrieve my deposit? I can ill afford to lose 57.10.

I remain, sir,

Adrian Mole

PS I wonder if you would ask your wife, Cherie, if she would agree to be the guest speaker at the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Groups Literary Dinner on December 23rd this year. Will Self has turned us down rather curtly, in fact. We dont pay a fee or expenses but I think she would find us a lively and stimulating group.

Anyway, Mr Blair, keep up the good work.

Saturday October 5th 2002

I viewed a loft apartment at the Old Battery Factory, Rat Wharf, today. Mark Bastard, the estate agent, told me that Canalside properties are being snapped up by the Buy to Let crowd. It is in a great location, five minutes walk along the towpath from the bookshop where I work. The loft has one huge room and a bathroom with glass-brick walls.

When Mark Bastard went for a pee I could see his blurry outline, so if I buy the apartment I will ask my mother to run me up some curtains.

I stepped out on to the tensile-steel and mesh balcony and looked at the view. The canal lay below me, sparkling in the autumn sunshine. A flock of swans glided past, a grey bird flew by and a narrowboat came into sight under a bridge. When it passed my balcony, a bearded man with a grey straggly ponytail waved and said, Lovely afternoon. I could see his wife in the bottom of the boat, washing up. She saw me but did not wave.

Mark Bastard had tactfully withdrawn while I soaked up the atmosphere of the place. But now he rejoined me and pointed out several original features: the genuine acid burns in the floorboards, the hooks where the blackout curtains were hung in the war.

I asked him what the scaffold-clad building next door was being turned into.

A hotel, I think, he said.

He went on to tell me that Eric Shift, the scrap-metal multi-millionaire who would own the freehold of my property, had bought up the whole of Rat Wharf and was hoping to transform it into Leicesters equivalent of the Left Bank in Paris.

I confessed to Mark that I had always wanted to dabble in watercolours.

He nodded and said, Thats nice,' but I got the impression that he didnt know what I was talking about.

Mark looked around longingly at the stark white wall space and said, This is the sort of place Id like to live in, but Ive got three kids under five and the wife wants a garden.

I commiserated with him and told him that, until very recently, I was the full-time father of two boys, but that the British Army was looking after Glenn, the seventeen-year-old, and the nine-year-old, William, had gone to live with his mother in Nigeria.

Bastard looked at me enviously and said, Youre young to have your kids off your hands.

I told him I was thirty-four and a half and that it was time I put myself first for a change.

After Bastard pointed out the integral granite cheese-board in the kitchen worktop, I agreed to buy the apartment.

Before we left I went out on the balcony for one last look. The sun was setting behind the distant multi-storey car park. A fox walked along the opposite towpath with a Tescos carrier bag in its mouth. A brown creature (a water vole, I think) slipped into the canal and swam out of sight. The swans floated majestically by. The biggest swan looked me straight in the eye, as if to say, Welcome to your new home, Adrian.

10 p.m.

I went into the kitchen, turned the volume down on the radio and informed my parents that I would be moving out of their spare room and into a loft apartment in the Old Battery Factory on Rat Wharf in Leicester at the earliest opportunity.

My mother could not hide her delight at this news.

My father sneered, The Old Battery Factory? Your granddad worked there once, but he had to leave after a rat bite turned septic. We thought hed have to have his leg off.

My mother said, Rat Wharf? Isnt that where the rough sleepers hostel is opening next year?

I said, Youve been misinformed. The whole area is being transformed into Leicesters cultural quarter.

When I asked my mother if she would run me up some curtains for the glass-brick lavatory, she said sarcastically, Sorry, but I think youre confusing me with somebody who keeps a needle and thread in the house.

At 7 oclock my father turned the sound up on the radio and we listened to the news. Britains military chiefs were demanding to know what their role would be if Britain goes to war with Iraq. Share prices had fallen again.

My father banged his head on the table and said, Ill kill that bastard financial adviser who talked me into putting my pension into Equitable Life.

When the Archers theme tune played, my parents reached for their cigarettes, lit up and sat listening to the agricultural soap opera with their mouths slightly open.

They are doing things together in yet another attempt to save their marriage.

My mother and father are elderly baby-boomers of fifty-nine and sixty-two respectively. I keep waiting for them to give in to old age and take up the uniform that other old people adopt. I would like to see them wearing beige car coats, polyester slacks and, in my mothers case, a grey cauliflower perm, but neither of them will give in. They are still squeezing themselves into stonewashed jeans and black leather fitted jackets.