Read Online True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole by Sue Townsend - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sue Townsend
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a library and Sharon Botts, a provincial dullard, working in a laundry are having a relationship. The answer is, sex. I have grown to be rather keen on it and find it difficult to stop doing it now I’ve started.
Sharon and I were both virgins when we met which is a piece of good fortune too rare to overlook. What with AIDS and herpes rampaging round the world. But sex is where our relationship begins and ends. Sharon is as bored by my conversation as I am by hers, so we go elsewhere for that. She goes to see her mother and five sisters, and I go to see Pandora Braithwaite, who is the true love of my life.
I’ve loved Pandora since 1980. Two years ago we went our separate ways, Pandora to Oxford to study Russian, Chinese and Serbo-Croat, and me to stamp books in the library in the town where I was born. I chose library work because I wanted to immerse myself in literature. Ha! The library I work in could easily double as the headquarters of the local Philistines Society. I have never had a literary conversation at work, never. Neither with the staff nor the borrowers of the books.
My days are spent taking books off shelves and putting books back on the shelves. Occasionally I am interrupted by members of the public asking mad questions: “Is Jackie Collins here?” To this I reply, after first glancing round the library in an exaggerated fashion. “Highly unlikely, madam. I believe she lives in Hollywood.”
Sometimes my mother visits me at work, although I have given her strict instructions not to do so. My mother cannot modulate her voice. Her laugh could pickle cabbage. Her appearance is striking and now, in her forty-third year, merging on the eccentric. She has no colour sense. She wears espadrilles. Summer and winter. She disobeys the No Smoking signs and enters doors labelled, Private Staff Only.
My father never visits the library. He claims that the sight of so many books makes him ill.
Unfortunately, I am still living at home with my parents (and my five-year-old sister Rosie). This ménage à quatre co-exists in a sullen atmosphere. Half the time I feel like somebody in a Chekhov play. We’ve even got a cherry tree in the front garden.
I’ve tramped the streets looking for my own cheap apartment. I put an advertisement in the local paper.
Writer requires a room, preferably garret.
Non-smoker, respectable.
Clean habits. References supplied.
Rent no more than £10 a week.
I received three replies: the first from an old lady who offered me rent-free accommodation in return for helping her to feed her thirty-seven cats and nine dogs. The second from an anonymous person who wished to ‘thoroughly irrigate my colon’. The third from a Mr QZ Diablo.
I went to inspect the room offered by Mr Diablo. As soon as he opened the front door I knew I would not enjoy living in close proximity to him. Beards irritate me at the best of times and Mr Diablo’s cascaded down from his chin and came to a straggling end somewhere near to his navel. However, I allowed him to lead the way up the swaying staircase. The room was at the top of the house. It was part-furnished, with a bed and a structure resembling an altar. Purple cloaks hung from hooks in the walls. Mr QZ Diablo said, “Of course I shall need this room on Thursday evenings for our meetings. We finish just after midnight, would that be too inconvenient?”
“I’m afraid it would,” I said. “I’d prefer to sort of have the place to myself.”
“You could join us,” he suggested, helpfully. “We’re a jolly crowd, though cursed with a diabolical public image.”
I stared down at a red stain. It was on a multi-coloured carpet that only a mad man or mad woman could have designed, possibly in a workshop within the high walls of an institution.
“Only animal blood,” said QZ, reassuringly poking the stain with his bare big toe. “We don’t go in for human sacrifice,” he said comfortingly.
I said the words of the timid and cowardly: “I’ll
Sharon and I were both virgins when we met which is a piece of good fortune too rare to overlook. What with AIDS and herpes rampaging round the world. But sex is where our relationship begins and ends. Sharon is as bored by my conversation as I am by hers, so we go elsewhere for that. She goes to see her mother and five sisters, and I go to see Pandora Braithwaite, who is the true love of my life.
I’ve loved Pandora since 1980. Two years ago we went our separate ways, Pandora to Oxford to study Russian, Chinese and Serbo-Croat, and me to stamp books in the library in the town where I was born. I chose library work because I wanted to immerse myself in literature. Ha! The library I work in could easily double as the headquarters of the local Philistines Society. I have never had a literary conversation at work, never. Neither with the staff nor the borrowers of the books.
My days are spent taking books off shelves and putting books back on the shelves. Occasionally I am interrupted by members of the public asking mad questions: “Is Jackie Collins here?” To this I reply, after first glancing round the library in an exaggerated fashion. “Highly unlikely, madam. I believe she lives in Hollywood.”
Sometimes my mother visits me at work, although I have given her strict instructions not to do so. My mother cannot modulate her voice. Her laugh could pickle cabbage. Her appearance is striking and now, in her forty-third year, merging on the eccentric. She has no colour sense. She wears espadrilles. Summer and winter. She disobeys the No Smoking signs and enters doors labelled, Private Staff Only.
My father never visits the library. He claims that the sight of so many books makes him ill.
Unfortunately, I am still living at home with my parents (and my five-year-old sister Rosie). This ménage à quatre co-exists in a sullen atmosphere. Half the time I feel like somebody in a Chekhov play. We’ve even got a cherry tree in the front garden.
I’ve tramped the streets looking for my own cheap apartment. I put an advertisement in the local paper.
Writer requires a room, preferably garret.
Non-smoker, respectable.
Clean habits. References supplied.
Rent no more than £10 a week.
I received three replies: the first from an old lady who offered me rent-free accommodation in return for helping her to feed her thirty-seven cats and nine dogs. The second from an anonymous person who wished to ‘thoroughly irrigate my colon’. The third from a Mr QZ Diablo.
I went to inspect the room offered by Mr Diablo. As soon as he opened the front door I knew I would not enjoy living in close proximity to him. Beards irritate me at the best of times and Mr Diablo’s cascaded down from his chin and came to a straggling end somewhere near to his navel. However, I allowed him to lead the way up the swaying staircase. The room was at the top of the house. It was part-furnished, with a bed and a structure resembling an altar. Purple cloaks hung from hooks in the walls. Mr QZ Diablo said, “Of course I shall need this room on Thursday evenings for our meetings. We finish just after midnight, would that be too inconvenient?”
“I’m afraid it would,” I said. “I’d prefer to sort of have the place to myself.”
“You could join us,” he suggested, helpfully. “We’re a jolly crowd, though cursed with a diabolical public image.”
I stared down at a red stain. It was on a multi-coloured carpet that only a mad man or mad woman could have designed, possibly in a workshop within the high walls of an institution.
“Only animal blood,” said QZ, reassuringly poking the stain with his bare big toe. “We don’t go in for human sacrifice,” he said comfortingly.
I said the words of the timid and cowardly: “I’ll
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