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Authors: Sue Townsend
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Piggeries, The Bottom Field, Lower Lane, Mangold Parva, Leicestershire.
I said, ‘Aren’t you being a little premature?’
She said, ‘No, we bought the pigsties at an auction yesterday afternoon.’
Nobody ever tells me anything in this house. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.
I rang Nigel at his parents’ house. He has been living in their granny annexe since putting his London flat up for sale. His sight has deteriorated even more. I asked him if he wanted to go and see
The Lord of the Rings
with me.
He said, ‘No, it all takes place in Middle Earth in half-darkness, and anyway elves and gnomes are seriously naff.’
I asked Nigel if his hearing had improved since he had gone blind.
He said, ‘Yes, I can now hear a page being turned in Hay-on-fucking-Wye, aren’t I a lucky boy?’
Monday November 11th
Moon’s Last Quarter
Mr Carlton-Hayes and I seemed to be the only people in the High Street who observed the one-minute silence at 11 o’clock, apart from a few pensioners and a black bus driver who got out of his cab and stood with his head bowed.
*
Rang Barwell. Angela said the papers were ready for signing. To make conversation, I asked her what floor covering Mr Barwell would be having on his office floor next.
She said that Barwell had an appointment at 4 p.m. to talk to his allergy consultant.
I asked Mr Carlton-Hayes if I could nip out for an hour. He told me to take as long as I needed.
It should have been a happy occasion, but as I signed the documents which committed me to paying £723.48 a month, I could not help remembering Parvez’s warning, ‘Citizens’ Advice Bureau, debt counselling, bankruptcy, homelessness and misery’.
Barwell was wheezing and coughing throughout the little paperwork ceremony. I suggested that the air in his office was rather stale and offered to open the window.
He wheezed, ‘The window doesn’t open. I have to keep the pollen out.’
I pointed out to him that his windows were made of ultraviolet polyvinyl chloride and advised him to replace them with a traditional wooden frame. I told him in detail about the Radio Four documentary I had heard the night before about Sick Building Syndrome. He appeared interested at first, but then seemed to lose concentration and kept looking at his watch.
I pick the keys up for Rat Wharf on Friday.
Tuesday November 12th
Last night at the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group meeting, Ken Blunt asked me if I had fixed a speaker for our Christmas dinner on December 23rd and if I had found a suitable venue. I told him that neither Mrs Blair nor Ruth Rendell had replied as yet.
Gary Milksop said that he had applied for the position of Creative Writing for Disadvantaged Adults Facilitator at the Life-Long Learning Centre.
I said, ‘But, Gary, you are not qualified to teach creative writing.’
He said that he had a BA in Education and had almost finished writing his novel.
He said it was a part-time position and was worth £10,000 a year. He showed me the advertisement. It said at the bottom, ‘Preference will be given to a published writer.’
I pointed out to Milksop as kindly as I could that he had not yet earned a single penny from his writing and reminded him that he had decorated the chimney breast of his bed-sitting room with publishers’ rejection letters.
Gladys read us her latest cat poem:
‘Poor Blackie’s up in heaven,
God took her life away,
He said, you’ll go to Devon,
And have a holiday.
Once there, you’ll find your pussy friends,
Their ghosts do walk the prom,
Here are Ginger, Ming and Fluff,
Marmalade and Tom.’
She told us that Blackie had been run over by a lorry last Thursday.
Ken Blunt said that Gladys’s poem was a failure because it was not truthful. He said that she had obviously chosen Devon because it rhymed with heaven, and that the idea that dead cats prowled the promenades of Devon was totally absurd.
‘This poem is untruthful
This poem is absurd,
This
I said, ‘Aren’t you being a little premature?’
She said, ‘No, we bought the pigsties at an auction yesterday afternoon.’
Nobody ever tells me anything in this house. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.
I rang Nigel at his parents’ house. He has been living in their granny annexe since putting his London flat up for sale. His sight has deteriorated even more. I asked him if he wanted to go and see
The Lord of the Rings
with me.
He said, ‘No, it all takes place in Middle Earth in half-darkness, and anyway elves and gnomes are seriously naff.’
I asked Nigel if his hearing had improved since he had gone blind.
He said, ‘Yes, I can now hear a page being turned in Hay-on-fucking-Wye, aren’t I a lucky boy?’
Monday November 11th
Moon’s Last Quarter
Mr Carlton-Hayes and I seemed to be the only people in the High Street who observed the one-minute silence at 11 o’clock, apart from a few pensioners and a black bus driver who got out of his cab and stood with his head bowed.
*
Rang Barwell. Angela said the papers were ready for signing. To make conversation, I asked her what floor covering Mr Barwell would be having on his office floor next.
She said that Barwell had an appointment at 4 p.m. to talk to his allergy consultant.
I asked Mr Carlton-Hayes if I could nip out for an hour. He told me to take as long as I needed.
It should have been a happy occasion, but as I signed the documents which committed me to paying £723.48 a month, I could not help remembering Parvez’s warning, ‘Citizens’ Advice Bureau, debt counselling, bankruptcy, homelessness and misery’.
Barwell was wheezing and coughing throughout the little paperwork ceremony. I suggested that the air in his office was rather stale and offered to open the window.
He wheezed, ‘The window doesn’t open. I have to keep the pollen out.’
I pointed out to him that his windows were made of ultraviolet polyvinyl chloride and advised him to replace them with a traditional wooden frame. I told him in detail about the Radio Four documentary I had heard the night before about Sick Building Syndrome. He appeared interested at first, but then seemed to lose concentration and kept looking at his watch.
I pick the keys up for Rat Wharf on Friday.
Tuesday November 12th
Last night at the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group meeting, Ken Blunt asked me if I had fixed a speaker for our Christmas dinner on December 23rd and if I had found a suitable venue. I told him that neither Mrs Blair nor Ruth Rendell had replied as yet.
Gary Milksop said that he had applied for the position of Creative Writing for Disadvantaged Adults Facilitator at the Life-Long Learning Centre.
I said, ‘But, Gary, you are not qualified to teach creative writing.’
He said that he had a BA in Education and had almost finished writing his novel.
He said it was a part-time position and was worth £10,000 a year. He showed me the advertisement. It said at the bottom, ‘Preference will be given to a published writer.’
I pointed out to Milksop as kindly as I could that he had not yet earned a single penny from his writing and reminded him that he had decorated the chimney breast of his bed-sitting room with publishers’ rejection letters.
Gladys read us her latest cat poem:
‘Poor Blackie’s up in heaven,
God took her life away,
He said, you’ll go to Devon,
And have a holiday.
Once there, you’ll find your pussy friends,
Their ghosts do walk the prom,
Here are Ginger, Ming and Fluff,
Marmalade and Tom.’
She told us that Blackie had been run over by a lorry last Thursday.
Ken Blunt said that Gladys’s poem was a failure because it was not truthful. He said that she had obviously chosen Devon because it rhymed with heaven, and that the idea that dead cats prowled the promenades of Devon was totally absurd.
‘This poem is untruthful
This poem is absurd,
This
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