words.
I had my first wet dream! So my mother was right about
My mother has bought some of those overalls that painters and decorators wear. You can see her knickers through them. I hope she doesn’t wear them in the street.
She is having her ears pierced tomorrow. I think she is turning into a spendthrift. Nigel’s mother is a spendthrift. They are always getting letters about having their electricity cut off and all because Nigel’s mother buys a pair of high heels every week.
I would like to know where the Family Allowance goes, by rights it should be mine. I will ask my mother tomorrow.
It is lousy having a working mother. She rushes in with big bags of shopping, cooks the tea then rushes around tarting herself up. But she is still not doing any tidying up before comforting Mr Lucas. There has been a slice of bacon between the cooker and the fridge for three days to my knowledge!
I asked her about my Family Allowance today, she laughed and said she used it for buying gin and cigarettes. If the Social Services hear about it she will get done!
My mother and father have been shouting at each other non-stop for hours. It started because of the bacon down the side of the fridge and carried on into how much my father’s car is costing to repair. I went up to my room and put my Abba records on. My father had the nerve to crash my door open and ask me to turn the volume down. I did. When he got downstairs I turned it up again.
Nobody cooked any dinner so I went to the Chinese chip shop and bought a carton of chips and a sachet of soy sauce. I sat in the bus shelter and ate them, then walked about feeling sad. Came home. Fed dog. Read a bit
My father came into my bedroom this morning, he said he wanted a chat. He looked at my Kevin Keegan scrapbook, screwed the knob of my wardrobe door back on with his Swiss army knife, and asked me about school. Then he said he was sorry about yesterday and the shouting, he said my mother and him are ‘going through a bad patch’. He asked me if I had anything to say. I said he owed me thirty-two pence for the Chinese chips and soy sauce. He gave me a pound. So I made a profit of sixty-eight pence.
There was a removal lorry outside Mr Lucas’s house this morning. Mrs Lucas and some other women were carrying furniture from the house and stacking it on the pavement. Mr Lucas was looking out from his bedroom window. He looked a bit frightened. Mrs Lucas was laughing and pointing up to Mr Lucas and all the other women started laughing and singing ‘Why was he born so beautiful?’
My mother phoned Mr Lucas up and asked him if he was all right. Mr Lucas said he wasn’t going to work today because he had to guard the stereo and records from his wife. My father helped Mrs Lucas put the gas stove in the removal van, then he and my mother walked to the bus stop together. I walked behind them because my mother was wearing long dangly earrings and my father’s trouser turn-ups had come down. They started to quarrel about something so I crossed over the road and went to school the long way round.
Bert Baxter was OK today. He told me about the First World War. He said his life was saved by a Bible he always carried in his breast pocket. He showed me the Bible, it was printed in 1956.1 think Bert is going a bit senile.
Pandora! The memory of you is a constant torment!
Mr Lucas is staying with us until he gets some new furniture.
My father has gone to Matlock to try to sell electric storage heaters to a big hotel.
Our gas boiler has packed in. It is freezing cold.
My father rang up from Matlock to say he has lost his Barclaycard and can’t get home tonight, so Mr Lucas and my mother were up all night trying to mend the boiler. I went down at ten o’clock to see if I could help but the kitchen door was jammed. Mr Lucas said he couldn’t open it just at that moment because he was at a crucial stage with the boiler and my mother was helping him and she had her hands full.
I found my mother dyeing her hair in the bathroom tonight. This has come as a complete shock to me. For thirteen and three-quarter years I have thought I had a mother with red hair, now I find out that it is really light brown. My mother asked me not to tell my father.
What a state their marriage must be in! I wonder if my father knows that she wears a padded bra? She doesn’t hang them on the line to dry, but I have seen them shoved down the side of the airing cupboard. I wonder what other secrets my mother has got?
It was an unlucky day for me all right!
Pandora doesn’t sit next to me in Geography any more. Barry Kent does. He kept copying my work and blowing bubblegum in my ears. I told Miss Elf but she is scared of Barry Kent as well, so she didn’t say anything to him.
Pandora looked luscious today, she was wearing a split skirt which showed her legs. She has got a scab on one of her knees. She was wearing Nigel’s football scarf round her wrist, but Miss Elf saw it and told her to take it off. Miss Elf is not scared of Pandora. I have sent her a Valentine’s Day card (Pandora, not Miss Elf).
I only got one Valentine’s Day card. It was in my mother’s handwriting so it doesn’t count. My mother had a massive card delivered, it was so big that a GPO-van had to bring it to the door. She went all red when she opened the envelope and saw the card. It was dead good. There was a big satin elephant holding a bunch of plastic flowers in its trunk and a bubble coming out of its mouth saying ‘Hi, Honey Bun! I ain’t never gonna forget you!’ There was no name written inside, just drawings of hearts with ‘Pauline’ written inside them. My father’s card was very small and had a bunch of purple flowers on the front. My father had written on the inside ‘Let’s try again’.
Here is the poem I wrote inside Pandora’s card.
I wrote it left-handed so that she wouldn’t know it was from me.
Mr Lucas moved back to his empty house last night. I expect he got fed up with all the rowing over the elephant Valentine’s Day card. I told my father that my mother can’t help it if a man secretly admires her. My father gave a nasty laugh and said ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, son’.
I cleared off to my grandma’s at dinner-time. Shecooked me a proper Sunday dinner with gravy and individual
