True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole by Sue Townsend Read Free Book Online

fellow Britons, I live with a party wall between me and another family’s intimate secrets. I will never understand why it is called a ‘party’ wall because when our next door neighbours throw a party every celebratory sound is heard. Tonic bottles unscrewed, cherries dropping into cocktails, women making brittle conversation, men being sick. So, if the purpose of a party wall is to prevent party noise from spilling into the house adjoining then I have this to say to the builders of Britain, “You have failed, Sirs.” Now I will take you through one of my typical days.
    The dog usually wakes me up at 7 o’clock or thereabouts. It is dead old now and has a weak bladder. I get out of bed, and in my underpants and vest I open the back door and let it out to cock its leg on our next door neighbour’s lawn. I make myself a cup of coffee and take it back to bed with me while I read an edifying work of literature. At the moment I am reading Wittgenstein Primer written by T. Lowes MA. Trin. Dub. Sometimes for amusement I may turn to something less intellectually straining; Wings On My Suitcase: personal adventures of an air hostess , introduced and edited by Gerald Tikell, is a good example. Then again, even reminiscences of air hostesses may prove to be too demanding at such an early hour. So for even lighter relief I will turn to my old Beano annuals.
    I have a baby sister now and she usually climbs out of her cot at 7.30 dragging her wet nappy with her. She barges into my room and gabbles some childish gibberish to which I respond curtly, “Go and wake Mummy and Daddy up, Rosemary.” I refuse to bastardize her name and call her ‘Rosie’. She staggers out on her wobbly legs and beats her tiny fists on my parents’ door. Muffled curses tell me that my parents are awake, so I quickly get out of bed and run into the bathroom before anyone else. I lie in my bath and ignore rattlings on the door and demands for entry. I insist on a period of quiet before I start my day. Anyway it’s not my fault that the only lavatory is placed in the bathroom, is it? I’ve lost track of the times I’ve told my father to install a downstairs lavatory. After completing a meticulous toilette, topped off with liberal lashings of my father’s after-shave mixed with my mother’s Yardley water, I emerge from the bathroom, have á row with my parents, who are standing cross-legged outside the door, and go down to breakfast. I warm myself a frozen croissant and make a cup of Earl Grey tea sans milk and sit down to study the world news. We take the Guardian and the Sun so I am quite an expert on the latest developments concerning ‘whale conservation’ and also the mammary development of Miss Samantha Fox. My parents are victims of Thatcherism so neither of them is working, which means they are able to hang about and linger over their breakfasts. Rosemary is a disgusting eater. I always leave the table before she starts on her porridge.
    I go to my room, collect my books and study aids and go to college. I ignore most of my fellow students, who are usually thronging the corridors laughing about the previous night’s drunken debauch. Instead I make my way to a classroom and quietly study before the lessons begin. For, while I am an intellectual (indeed almost a genius), at the same time I am not very clever and so need to study harder than anyone else.
    I spend each break with Pandora. We usually talk about world events. Pandora only wears black clothes as she is in mourning for the world. This has led to her being called ‘Barmy Braithwaite’ by unthinking morons amongst the student body and also, I regret to report, some of the academic staff. We usually walk home together and on the way call in to see Bert Baxter who is now the oldest man on the electoral roll. Pandora takes Sabre the Alsatian for an angry prowl around the recreation ground, while I clean Bert up and listen to his incoherent ramblings about Lenin and the ‘needs of the