Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction Read Free

fool is deceiving himself. He will always look like a retired storage-heater salesman.
    He is forced to wear a baseball cap at all times now because he has lost most of the hair on top of his head, causing a youthful folly to be revealed: on his stag night, after he had drunk ten pints of Everards Bitter, he agreed to have his head shaved and ‘I am a nutter’ tattooed in green ink on his scalp.
    Fortunately the stag night was held a week before the wedding, but it explains why, in my parents’ only wedding photograph, my father looks like the convict Abel Magwitch from
Great Expectations
.
    My father has had his other tattoos removed on the NHS, but they will not fund the green ink one. For that he would have to go to Harley Street for laser treatment and pay over £1,000. My mother has been urging him to take out a bank loan, but my father says that it’s easier and cheaper to wear a cap. My mother says thatshe can’t bear reading ‘I am a nutter’ when my father has his back turned to her in bed, which is most of the time apparently.
    11 p.m.
    Had a bath using my mother’s quince and apricot aromatherapy oil. The stuff floated on top of the water, looking like the oil slick that killed most of the wildlife in Nova Scotia. It took a quarter of an hour under the shower before I was able to wash the gunk off my body.
    Used two mirrors to measure bald spot. It is now the size of a Trebor Extra Strong Mint.
    Checked emails. There was one from my sister, Rosie, telling me that she is thinking of leaving Hull University; she is disenchanted with nano-biology. She said that Simon, her boyfriend, needed her full-time help to overcome his crack habit. She asked me not to tell our parents of her dilemma as they were both totally ‘prejudiced’ about crack addicts.
    There were the usual spam deals from firms offering to stretch my penis.
Sunday October 6th
    New Moon
    My mother moped around the house in her dressing gown all day. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon I asked her if she was going to brush her hair and get dressed. She said, ‘Why should I? Your dad wouldn’t notice if I walked around naked with a rose between my teeth.’
    My father sat all day next to the stereo, playing and replaying his Roy Orbison records.
    Their marriage is obviously a dead parrot. It is like living in a Bergman film. Perhaps I should tell them that their precious daughter is unlikely to win a Nobel Prize as she is shunning the laboratory and embracing drug rehabilitation. That would liven them up a bit and get them talking to each other. Ha ha ha.
    Spent the afternoon writing letters. As I was about to leave the house to walk to the post box, my mother said, ‘You are the only person I know who uses snail mail.’
    I replied, ‘You are the only person I know who still believes that smoking is good for your lungs.’
    She said, ‘Who are you writing to?’
    I didn’t want to tell her that I was writing to Jordan and David Beckham, so I hurried out of the house before she could see the names and addresses on the envelopes.
    Jordan
    Wisteria Walk
    c/o
Daily Star
    Ashby de la Zouch
    Express Newspaper Group
    Leicestershire
    10 Lower Thames Street
    London EC3
    October 6th 2002
    Dear Jordan
    I am writing a book about celebrity and how it ruins people’s lives. I know what I am talking about. I was a celebrity in the 1990s and had my own show on cable TV called
Offally Good!
Then the fame machine spat me out, as it will spit you out one day.
    I would like to arrange an interview on a mutually convenient date. You would have to come here to Leicester because I work full-time. Sunday afternoons are good for me.
    By the way, I was talking with my father about your breasts recently. We both agreed that they are very intimidating. My father said a man could fall into that cleavage and not be found for days.
    My friend Parvez described them as being like Weapons of Mass Destruction, and my chiropractor predicted that you would suffer from lower-back