was the only one concentrating properly. My father came in the front door and Mr Lucas went out of the back door. My father said he had been looking forward to the black forest cake all day. There was none left. My father said he had not had a bite to eat or a bite on his fishing line all day. My mother gave him grape-pip cheese on Ry-king for his supper. He threw it at the wall and said he wasn’t a ******* mouse he was a ******* man and my mother said it was a long time since he had done any *******! I was sent out of the room then. It is a terrible thing to hear your own mother swearing. I blame it on all those books she has been reading. She hasn’t ironed my school uniform yet, I hope she remembers.
I let the dog sleep in my room tonight, it doesn’t like quarrelling.
Got a letter from Mr Cherry the newsagent to say I can start a paper round tomorrow. Worse luck! Bert Baxter is worried about Sabre because he is offhis food and not trying to bite anybody. He asked me to take him to the PDSA for a check-up. I said I would take him tomorrow if his condition hadn’t improved.
I’m fed up with washing up for Bert. He seems to live off fried eggs, it is no joke trying to wash up in cold water without any washing-up liquid. Also there is never a dry tea towel. In fact there are never any tea towels and Sabre has ripped up all the bath towels so I don’t know how Bert can even have a wash! I think I’ll see if I can get Bert a home help.
I have got to concentrate on getting my GCEs if I want to be a vet.
Got up at six o’clock for my paper round. I have got Elm Tree Avenue. It is dead posh. All the papers they read are very heavy:
Bed early tonight because of my paper round. Delivered twenty-five
The papers got mixed up today. Elm Tree Avenue got the
I don’t know why everybody went so mad. You’d think they would enjoy reading a different paper for a change.
Early this morning I saw Pandora walking down the drive of 69 Elm Tree Avenue. She had a riding hat and jodphurs on so she couldn’t have been on her way to school. I didn’t let her see me. I don’t want her to know that I am doing a menial job.
So now I know where Pandora lives! I had a good look at the house. It is much bigger than ours. It has got rolled-up wooden blinds at all the windows, and the rooms look like jungles because of all the green plants. I looked through the letterbox and saw the big ginger cat eating something on the kitchen table. They have the
Pandora has got a little fat horse called ‘Blossom’. She feeds it and makes it jump over barrels every morning before school. I know because I hid behind her father’s Volvo and then followed her to a field next to the disused railway line. I hid behind a scrap car in the corner of the field and watched her. She looked dead good in her riding stuff, her chest was wobbling like mad. She will need to wear a bra soon. My heart was beating so loudly in my throat that I felt like a stereo loudspeaker, so I left before she heard me.
People complained because the papers were late. I had a
I took some sugar to Blossom before I did my paper round. It brought me closer to Pandora somehow.
Have strained my back because of carrying all the Sunday supplements. Took the leftover
Didn’t bother reading the papers today, I am fed up with papers. Had chow mein and beansprouts for Sunday dinner.
Mr Lucas came round when my father had gone to visit grandma. He was wearing a plastic daffodil in his sports jacket.
My spots have completely gone. It must be the early morning air.
My mother has just come into my room and said she had something awful to tell me. I sat up in bed and put a dead serious expression on my face just in case she’d got six months to live or she’d been caught shoplifting or something. She fiddled with the curtains, dropped cigarette ash all over my Concorde model and started mumbling on about ‘adult relationships’ and ‘life being complicated’ and how she must ‘find herself. She said she was fond of me. Fond!!! And would hate to hurt me. And then she said that for some women marriage was like being in prison. Then she went out.
Marriage is nothing like being in prison! Women are let out every day to go to the shops and stuff, andquite a lot go to work. I think my mother is being a bit melodramatic.
Finished
I gave Barry Kent his protection money today. I don’t see how there can be a God. If there was surely he wouldn’t let people like Barry Kent walk about menacing intellectuals? Why are bigger youths unpleasant to smaller youths? Perhaps their brains are easily worn out with all the extra work they have to do making bigger bones and stuff, or it could be that the big youths have got brain damage because of all the sport they play, or perhaps big youths just
I will have my thesis published and I will send a copy to Barry Kent. Perhaps by then he will have learnt to read.
My mother had forgotten that today was pancake day. I reminded her at 11 PM. I’m sure she burnt them deliberately. I will be fourteen in one month’s time.
Had a nasty shock this morning. Took my empty paper sack back to Mr Cherry’s newsagent’s and saw Mr Lucas looking at those magazines on the top shelf. I stood behind the Mills and Boon rack and distinctly saw him choose
My father got his car back from the garage today. He was cleaning it and gloating over it for a whole two hours. I noticed that the stick-on waving hand I bought him for Christmas was missing from the rear window. I told him he ought to complain to the garage but he said he didn’t want to make a fuss. We went to my grandma’s to test-drive the car. She gave us a cup of Bovril and a piece of yukky seedcake. She didn’t ask how my mother was,
