rosemary and tumeric all over her cork tiles. My mother apologized on behalf of my father who was hiding in the coal shed.
I am seriously thinking of giving everything up and running away to be a tramp. I would quite enjoy the life, providing I could have a daily bath.
Miss Elf told us about her boyfriend today. He is called Winston Johnson. He is a Master of Arts and can’t get a job! So what chance do I stand?
Miss Elf said that school-leavers are despairing all over the country. She said that Mr Scruton should be ashamed to have a portrait of Mrs Thatcher over his desk.
I think I am turning radical.
This morning the whole school was ordered to go to the assembly hall. Mr Scruton got up on the stage and acted like the films of Hitler. He said in all his long years of teaching he had never come across an act ofsuch serious vandalism. Everybody went dead quiet and wondered what had happened. Scruton said that somebody had entered his office and drawn a moustache on Margaret Thatcher and written ‘Three million unemployed’ in her cleavage.
He said that defiling the greatest leader this country has ever known was a crime against humanity. It was tantamount to treason and that when the culprit was found they would be immediately expelled. Scru-ton’s eyes bulged out so far that a few of the first-years started to cry. Miss Elf led them outside to safety.
The whole school has got to have handwriting tests.
Miss Elf has resigned. I will miss her, she was responsible for my political development. I am a committed radical. I am against nearly everything.
Pandora, Nigel, Claire Neilson and myself have formed a radical group. We are the ‘Pink Brigade’. We discuss things like war (we are against it); peace (we are for it); and the ultimate destruction of capitalist society. Claire Neilson’s father is a capitalist; he owns a greengrocer’s shop. Claire is trying to get her father to give cheap food to the unwaged but he refuses. He waxes fat on their starvation!
Had an argument with my father over the
Once again I am spotty. I am also extremely sexually frustrated. I’m sure a session of passionate lovemaking would improve my skin.
Pandora says she is not going to risk being a single parent just for the sake of a few spots. So I will have to fall back on self-indulgence.
Ate nine pancakes at home, three at Pandora’s and four at Bert and Queenie’s. Grandma was very hurt when I refused her kind offer to whip me a batter, but I was full up.
It is disgusting when the Third World is living on a few grains of rice.
I feel dead guilty.
Our school dinner-ladies have got the sack! The dinners now come in hot boxes from a central kitchen. I would have staged a protest but I have got a Geography test tomorrow.
Mrs Leech was presented with a microwave oven for her thirty years of toil over the custard jug.
Got fifteen out of twenty for Geography. I lost points for saying that the Falkland Islands belonged to Argentina.
My thing is now thirteen centimetres long when it is extended. When it is contracted it is hardly worth measuring. My general physique is improving. I think the back-stretching exercises are paying off. I used to be the sort of boy who had sand kicked in his face, now I’m the sort of boy who watches somebody else have it kicked in their face.
My father hasn’t made or sold a single spice-rack all week. We are now living on Social Security and dole money.
My mother has stopped smoking. The dog is down to half a tin of Chum a day.
Had egg and chips and peas for Sunday dinner! No pudding! Not even a proper serviette. My mother says we are the
My father has stopped smoking. He is going around with a white face finding fault with everything I do.
My mother and him had their first row since she came back. The dog caused it by eating the Spam for tea. It couldn’t help it, the poor thing was half crazed with hunger. It is back on a full tin of Chum a day.
My parents are suffering severe nicotine withdrawal symptoms. It is quite amusing to a non-smoker like me.
I had to lend my father enough money for a gallon of petrol, he had an interview for a job. My mother cut his hair and gave him a shave and told him what to say and how to behave. It is pathetic to see how unemployment has reduced my father to childish dependence on others.
He is waiting to hear from Manpower Services.
He is still ill from not smoking. His temper has reached new peaks of explosion.
No news yet about the job. I spend as much time as I can out of the house. My parents are unbearable. I almost wish they would start smoking again.
He got it!!!
He starts on Monday as a Canal Bank Renovation Supervisor. He is in charge of a gang of school-leavers. To celebrate he bought my mother sixty Benson and Hedges and himself sixty Players. I got a family pack of Mars bars.
Everybody is dead happy for once. Even the dog has cheered up a bit. Grandma is knitting my father a woolly hat for work.
Pandora and I went to see the bit of canal bank that my father is now in charge of. If he worked for a thousand years he will never get it cleaned of all the old bikes and prams and weeds and Coca-Cola tins! I told my father that he was in a no-win situation, but he said, ‘On the contrary, in one year’s time it will be a beauty spot’. Yes! And I am Nancy Reagan, Dad!
My father went to see his canal bank this morning. He came home and shut himself in his bedroom. Heis still there, I can hear my mother saying encouraging words to him.
