I have nearly got used to the old ladies in the home now. I call in every afternoon on my way home from school. They seem pleased to see me. One of them is knitting me a balaclava for my survival weekend. She is called Queenie.
Did thirty-six and a half press-ups tonight.
Went to the youth club to try yukky, lousy old walking boots for size. Rick Lemon has hired them from a mountaineering shop. To make mine fit I have to wear three pairs of socks. Six of us are going. Rick is leading us.
He is unqualified but experienced in surviving bad conditions. He was born and brought up in Kirby New Town. I went to Sainsbury’s and bought my survival food. We have got to carry our food and equipment in our rucksacks, so weight is an important factor. I bought:
• 1 box cornflakes
• 2 pints milk
• box tea-bags
• tin rhubarb
• 5 lb spuds
• ? lb lard
• ? lb butter
• 2 loaves bread
• 1 lb cheese
• 2 packets biscuits
• 2 lb sugar
• toilet roll
• washing-up liquid
• 2 tins tuna
• 1 tin stewed steak
• 1 tin carrots
I could hardly carry my survival food home from Salisbury’s, so how I will manage it on a march across the hills I don’t know! My father suggested leaving something out. So I have not packed the toilet roll or cornflakes.
Have decided not to take my diary to Derbyshire. I cannot guarantee that it will not be read by hostile eyes. Besides it won’t fit into my rucksack.
Must finish now, the mini-bus is outside papping its hooter.
I have lived like an ignoble savage for the past two days! Sleeping on rough ground with only a sleeping-bag between me and the elements! Trying to cook chips over a tiny primus stove! Trudging through streams in my torturous boots! Having to perform my natural functions out in the open! Wiping my bum on leaves! Not being able to have a bath or clean my teeth! No television or radio or anything! Rick Lemon wouldn’t even let us sit in the mini-bus when it started to rain! He said we ought to make a shelter out of nature’s bounty! Pandora found a plastic animal-food sack so we took it in turns sitting under it.
How I survived I don’t know. My eggs broke, my bread got saturated, my biscuits got crushed and nobody had a tin-opener. I nearly starved. Thank God cheese doesn’t leak, break, soak up water or come in a tin. I was glad when we were found and taken to the Mountain Rescue headquarters. Rick Lemon was told off for not having a map or compass. Rick said he knew the hills like the back of his hand. The chief mountain rescuer said that Rick must have been wearing gloves because we were seven miles from our mini-bus and heading in the wrong direction!
I shall now sleep in a bed for the first time in two days. No school tomorrow because of blisters.
I have got to rest my feet for two days. Doctor Gray was very unpleasant: he said that he resented being called out for a few foot blisters.
I was very surprised at his attitude. It is a well-known fact that mountaineers get gangrene of the toes.
Here I am lying in bed unable to walk because of excruciating pain and my father carries out his parental responsibilities by throwing a few bacon sandwiches at me three times a day!
If my mother doesn’t come home soon I will end up deprived and maladjusted. I am already neglected.
Hobbled to school. All the teachers were wearing their best clothes because it is Parents’ Evening tonight. My father got cleaned up and put his best suit on. He looked OK, thank God! Nobody could tell he was unemployed. My teachers all told him that I was a credit to the school.
Barry Kent’s father was looking as sick as a pig. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Limped half-way to school. Dog followed me. Limped back home. Shut dog in coal shed. Limped all the way to school. Fifteen minutes late. Mr Scruton said it was not setting a good example for the late prefect to be late. It is all right for him to talk! He can ride to schoolin a Ford Cortina and then all he has to do is be in charge of a school. I have got a lot of problems and no car.
I have had a letter from the hospital to say that I have got to have my tonsils out on Tuesday the twenty- seventh. This has come as a complete shock to me! My father says I have been on the waiting list since I was five years old! So I have had to endure an annual bout of tonsillitis for nine years just because the National Health Service is starved of finance!
Why can’t midwives remove babies’ tonsils at birth? It would save a lot of trouble, pain and money.
Went shopping for new dressing gown, slippers, pyjamas, and toiletries. My father was moaning as usual. He said he didn’t see why I couldn’t just wear my old night-clothes in hospital. I told him that I would look ridiculous in my Peter Pan dressing gown and Winnie the Pooh pyjamas. Apart from the yukky design they are too small and covered in patches. He said that when he was a lad he slept in a nightshirt made out of two coal sacks stitched together. I phoned my grandma to check this suspicious statement and myfather was forced to repeat it down the phone. My grandma said that they were not coal sacks but flour sacks, so I now know that my father is a pathological liar!
My hospital rig came to fifty-four pounds nineteen; this is before fruit, chocolates and Lucozade. Pandora said I looked like Noel Coward in my new bri-nylon dressing gown. I said, ‘Thanks, Pandora’, although to be honest I don’t know who Noel Coward is or was. I hope he’s not a mass murderer or anything.
Phoned my mother to tell her about my coming surgical ordeal. No reply. This is typical. She would sooner be out having fun with creep Lucas than comforting her only child!
Grandma rang and said that she knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who had their tonsils out and bled to death on the operating theatre table. She ended up by saying, ‘Don’t worry Adrian, I’m sure everything will be all right for you’.
Thanks a million, grandma!
