A letter from my ex wife, Jo-Jo.
Dear Adrian,
Your mother has written to tell me that William is living in 'morally dubious circumstances'. She writes that he mixes with criminals 'on a daily basis'. Can this be true? I have looked at Arthur Askey Way using the world wide web satellite and was disturbed to see a burned-out car in front of your house. I also saw that your front garden was extremely squalid. Is that the mattress we used to sleep on?
Please do not forget, Adrian, that William is part Nigerian and is the grandson of a chief. It is essential that he is brought up extremely carefully. My circumstances are such that I cannot send for him at present, so I beg you to move William away from the Gaitskell Estate before his character and personality are irrevocably damaged.
I have tried to reach you on the telephone, but a recorded voice tells me 'it has not been possible to connect your call'. I looked you up on the net and was alarmed to see that you are considered a bad credit risk and that you owe £75.31 to your newsagent, £43.89 to your milkman and to BT £254.08. A further search revealed that you are overdrawn at the bank by £947.16. I scrolled on further and found that you withdrew all monies from your savings account with the Market Harborough Building Society on December 19, 1999. This money was put aside to pay for William's piano lessons. Is he having them?
I am very concerned about your mental health. A search of your medical records revealed to me that you visited your doctor's surgery three times last month, complaining that you were being spied upon. Your doctor has written on your notes 'could be mildly paranoiac'. Please contact me at jojomole.comataol.com.
So, 1984 is here in the year 2000. It is the end of privacy. I may as well walk naked through the streets shouting out the small details of my life.
I went to see my mother and charged her with gross disloyalty. She was unrepentant. She said, "William spends too much time playing round at the Ludlow's house." She said, "Vince Ludlow is a career criminal, for Christ's sake!" I have to admit, Diary, that William's frame of reference has widened lately. Last night I overheard him saying to Glenn, "Mad Frankie Fraser was well harder than Charlie Kray."
Saturday, April 29
I ask Pamela Pigg about that maisonette she promised me. She said (with relish, I thought), "I've let it to a family of asylum seekers." I asked her to arrange a swap. She said, "They're not that desperate."
Underneath The Archers
Monday, May 1, Arthur Askey Way
I was driving my mother to the hospital today to visit her ex-husband, and my father (the same man). We were sharing a jumbo-sized Mars Bar in a companionable sort of way — taking alternate bites — when I was pulled over by a police car.
I was not drunk or drugged, and I had been keeping to the speed limit. I asked my mother if she had made a rude gesture to them via the rear-view mirror. She denied it. I was, therefore, baffled as to why I'd been stopped. Two policemen got out of the car. Policeman One said: "Would you step out of your vehicle please, Sir." I did as he asked. Policeman Two said: "You like a bit of chocolate, do you, Sir?" in a sneering kind of way.
"I am a bit of a chocoholic, actually," I joked.
"Like to munch on the cocoa solids in your vehicle, do you, Sir?" said Number One. I was slightly baffled, but answered, "Yes, I usually buy some chocolate when I fill up with petrol."
My mother had been listening to our conversation with ill-concealed irritation. "It's not against the law to eat in your own car, is it?" she snapped.
Policeman Number One slowly walked around to the front passenger window. My mother wound it down. "It is against the law to drive without due care and attention, Madam," he said. "And that jumbo Mars Bar was being passed between you and the driver of the car like a parcel at a kiddies' tea party."
"The policemen in The Bill are always driving and stuffing their faces," she said.
I saw a nerve twitch just above his temple, and he ordered my mother out of the car while he and his colleague examined the interior. (Looking for what: Twix, Smarties, Aeros?)
We were late getting to the hospital. My father's catheter had become detached. While we waited for two sheets to be found from somewhere in the hospital, I watched Beryl, the privatised cleaner, push a filthy, ragged mop around the ward floor. I shuddered to think of the viruses swarming on the end of that mop. I hoped that they hadn't encamped into my father's bed sores.
Wednesday, May 3
What has happened to The Archers? It was once possible to listen to it in the company of the young and impressionable. Now, I have to switch off if Glenn or William are in the kitchen.
The love scenes between Sid Perks and Jolene are audible pornography. It is like overhearing two warthogs mating. Will somebody please put Cathy Perks in the picture. And will the person in charge of accents at the BBC teach that sexual-harassment bloke, Simon, how to speak Canadian?
Judging by the present storyline, I predict that a socially-concerned villager will soon suggest that Ambridge needs a youth club. Suggested script:
Jill Archer (with warm concern): Have you seen the graffiti on uncle Tom's gravestone, "Sid Perks is tooling Jolene"?
Socially-Concerned Villager (with liberal concern): Yes, and I deplore the damage done to the statue of Walter Gabriel on the village green.
Jill Archer: Yes, it was cruel to stuff an organic turnip up his. .
Socially-Concerned Villager (interrupting): It's the set-aside generation, Jill. They've nowhere to go and nothing to do. What they need is a youth club.
Jill Archer: Do you think so? Do you really think so?
Dum De Dum De Dum De Dum Dum De Dum De Dum Dum, etc.
Friday, May 5
Pandora is busy absolving herself from any blame for Mr Dobson's abysmal result in the mayoral election. "I begged him to shave off that bloody beard, lose weight, buy a new suit, dye his hair, get his teeth straightened and whitened. He's only got himself to blame."
Saddington Fair
Saturday, May 6, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire
My mother rang me this morning and asked if I would give her driving lessons. I laughed for quite a long time. Eventually, she said, "Yes or no?" I said, "It would be disastrous, you can't even tell left from right." I asked her if she had requested that her new husband teach her. She said, "Ivan reckons that there are enough cars on the road already." I advised her to use public transport. She said that there was no public transport to the crėme de la crėme of boot-fairs at Saddington in the middle of the Leicestershire countryside.
"Why won't Ivan take you to Saddington?" I asked.
"Ivan gets nervous seeing so many cash transactions taking place between untrained amateurs," she said.
Ivan used to be the chief accountant at a dairy until the cold winds of change knocked the milk bottles off the steps of time and replaced them with the cardboard carton in the supermarket chill cabinet.
My mother was still blathering on: "The last time we went to a boot-fair, Ivan completely ruined my pleasure by moaning about the lack of regulations. He said that both the buyers and the sellers were anarchists, and should be made to pay tax and VAT. He has even asked Pandora to bring in an act of parliament: The Boot Fair Regulation Act.
When she mentioned that there were Abba LPs and memorabilia for sale, I offered to take her one Sunday.
Monday, May 8
My father continues to deteriorate in hospital. He has now contracted a virus (the one caused by privatised cleaning) and is in an isolation ward. His new wife, Tania, is in almost permanent attendance. She is taking advantage of his weakened state to read Great Literature at him. She is currently halfway through Moby Dick. When she went out to go to the toilet, I asked my father how he was enjoying Melville's extraordinary allegorical seafaring tales. "I am not enjoying it," he whined " I don't like fishing."