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

Proletariat to rise up’. (Bert refuses to die until he sees the fall of Capitalism so it looks as though Bert will be with us for quite a while yet, unfortunately.) When Bert and Sabre have been pacified and fed and watered, Pandora and I walk home together. We part at the entrance to my cul-de-sac and she strolls off to her tree-lined avenue and her detached, book-lined house and I go to my previously described more horrible domestic living unit.
    The warm scent of home baking does not greet me as I enter the kitchen. So I create my own smell by baking scones. Here is my recipe but remember before you rush for pencil and paper that the recipe is copyright and owned by me, Adrian Mole. So, should you wish to bake scones to this recipe then you will need to send money to me.
A. MOLE’S SCONES
Ingredients
4 oz flour or metric equivalent
2 oz butter or metric equivalent
2 oz sugar or metric equivalent
1 egg (eggs are still only eggs)
Method
Beat up all the ingredients. Make a tin greasy, throw it all in. Turn oven to number 5. Wait until scones are higher than they were. Should be 12 minutes, but keep opening oven door every 30 seconds.
    So, crunching on my fresh-from-the-oven scones, I wind down from my day. At this time I may give Rosemary a few moments’ attention. Last night I built the GPO Tower from her Lego bricks, but while my back was turned Rosemary smashed it to pieces, and then had the nerve to laugh amongst the rubble. This is typical of her behaviour. I am sure she is going to grow up to be psychotic. She is already quite unmanageable. She empties drawers, switches the television knobs on and off, throws her soft toys down the lavatory pan and flies into a rage if she is restrained in any way. I have urged my parents to take her to the Child Guidance Clinic before it is too late, but my mother defends her saying, “Rosie is quite normal, Adrian, all toddlers behave like Attila the Hun. Why do you think so many mothers are on tranquillizers?” In the early evening I make a point of watching a soap opera or two. I think it is very important for us intellectuals to keep in touch with popular culture. We cannot live in ivory towers, unless of course the ivory towers have a television aerial on the roof.
    My parents are trying to save their marriage by playing badminton together on alternative Wednesdays. Otherwise, apart from this fortnightly outing, they clutter the house up in the evenings so I am forced to keep in my room or take to the streets. I honestly can’t understand how they can bear each other’s company. Their conversation consists of moaning about money and whining about wages – the wages they haven’t got.
    I make few demands on them. All I require is a jar of multi-vitamins once a week plus clean linen and courtesy. However, I wouldn’t like you to switch off thinking that I’m not fond of my parents. In my own way I’m very close to them. It’s hard not to be. We live in a small house. They do have their good points. My father is quite a wit after a couple of glasses of vodka, and my mother is known for her compassion towards other married women. In fact she is in the middle of organizing a local group of them. I read somewhere that it is important for families to have bodily contact, so I make a point of patting my parents’ shoulders as I pass by. It costs nothing and seems to please them. However, at 8 o’clock, when the lounge is full of cigarette smoke, I make my excuses and leave for the outside world.
    I sometimes meet up with Barry Kent and we chat about which of his friends is in court, and who’s in borstal. Occasionally we discuss Barry’s poetry; he was taught to read and write during his last period in a detention centre. It was a progressive place that had a poet in residence so instead of breaking rocks Barry was forced to split infinitives and then put them together again. Some of his stuff is quite good, primitive of course, but then Barry is practically a certified