Tuesday, April 18
Tania rang at 10.30 this morning to tell me that my father had fallen off a ladder while trying to construct a pagoda in their garden and had injured his back. He was waiting for an ambulance, she said. I could hear my father groaning in the background and the sound of splashing and birdsong.
I left William and Glenn next door with the Ludlows and hurried off to The Lawns. My father was lying half in, half out of the Koi carp pool and appeared to be in agony. Tania was squatting by his side, instructing him to "breathe the pain away, George". The ambulance took another hour to arrive, having been misdirected by the computer to The Lawns Lunatic Asylum in Rutland. The ambulancemen, Derek and Craig, were remorselessly cheerful. It was their fifth gardening incident in two days. They blamed Alan Titchmarsh for the recent alarming rise in accident and emergency admissions. Tania stayed behind to calm the carp and pack a bag, and I went in the ambulance with my father. To take his mind off his pain, I tried to engage him in conversation about Charlie Dimmock, but he wasn't interested.
At 2 o'clock in the afternoon he was diagnosed as having two cracked vertebrae, a fractured shoulder and a deep cut in his left thigh caused by the Homebase Spend & Save card in his trouser pocket. At 8.30pm he was finally taken up to Bevan Ward and put into a bed. Without his teeth, and with his grey hair sticking up around his head, he looked every one of his 56 years. He is lying flat on his back and is unable to do the slightest thing to help himself. "So, not much change there, then," said my mother, his ex-wife, when I rang to give her a progress report.
Query: Where can I buy two Pokémon Easter eggs?
Wednesday, April 19
When I visited my father today I found him in considerable distress. The hospital has lost his teeth. "Not that it bloody well matters," he gummed, "I couldn't reach my bleedin' food anyway." Apparently, his breakfast tray had been placed 6in out of reach of his good arm, 2in nearer than the emergency call button. He is worried about Tania's reaction when she sees him for the first time without his teeth. Apparently, she is under the impression that his teeth are his own.
Pamela Pigg rang to tell me that she wants to renew our relationship. She has bought the boys two Pokémon Easter eggs. I said yes.
Sunday, April 23, Easter Day, St George's Day
I didn't know which trousers to put on today, or what to have for breakfast. Am I suffering from the modern illness Choice Overload Syndrome? I just can't decide. Somebody has written N F R O T H in red pen on my father's notes. I asked a junior doctor what it stood for. "Not for resuscitation, over the hill," she said and hurried away. I hope this was a joke. When I wished Pamela a happy St George's Day this morning, she accused me of "celebrating fascism". We are doomed. Doomed.
Ex wife is watching you
Tuesday, April 25, 2000, Arthur Askey Way, Gaitskell Estate
My father begged me to help him escape from the hospital this afternoon. He said he is losing the will to live due to lack of sleep and the pain from his bedsores. His false teeth have not turned up, despite a top-level internal inquiry. He is living on soup and porridge — when somebody remembers to feed him. He is almost entirely helpless.
Personally, I blame Tania, his new wife, for his accident. My father is too old to be up a ladder trying to construct a Japanese-style pagoda under her exacting instructions. I have suggested to the rest of the family that we arrange a rota so that one of us is always in attendance at hospital meal times.
I rang Pandora at her Westminster office and asked her to visit the hospital incognito. I said that she should see the third-world conditions for herself. She said she would "drop in if she could", but she was "terribly busy" with Dobbo's campaign. I laughed a hollow laugh and said: "Did she realise it was Anzac Day; the anniversary of a similarly doomed campaign."
Thursday, April 27, Bevan Ward
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.