True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole Read Free Page A

flat Indian bread!
Rouge: you can call it blusher if you like. I call it rouge .
Alsatian: yes, also called German Shepherd, terrifying whatever they’re called.
Rasta: a member of the Rastafarian religion. Members are usually black. Wear their hair in dreadlocks (plaits) and smoke illegal substances. They have complicated handshakes.
Look Hamish, I’m at the end of my patience now. If there is anything else you cannot understand please refer to the reference books. Ask your mother or any passing Anglophile. And please!…please!…send my diaries back. I would hate them to fall into unfriendly, possibly commercial hands. I am afraid of blackmail; as you know my diaries are full of sex and scandal. Please for the sake of our continuing friendship…send my diaries back!
I remain, Hamish,
Your trusting, humble and obedient servant and friend,
A. Mole

∨ The True Confessions ∧
A Letter to the BBC
    Leicester
    February 14 th
    Dear Mr Tydeman,
    I am sending you, as requested, my latest poem. Please write back by return of post if you wish to broadcast the said poem. Our telephone has been disconnected (again).
    I remain, Sir, your most humble and obedient servant,
    A. Mole
Throbbing
Pandora,
I am but young
I am but small
(with cratered skin)
Yet! Hear my call.
Oh, rapturous girl
With skin sublime
Whose favourite programme’s ‘Question Time’
Look over here
To where I stand
A throbbing
Like a swollen gland.
A. Mole

∨ The True Confessions ∧
Adrian Mole on ‘Pirate Radio Four’
Art, Culture and Politics
August 1985
    I would like to thank the BBC for inviting me to talk to you on Radio Four. It’s about time they had a bit of culture on in the morning. Before I begin properly I’d just like to take this opportunity to reassure my parents that I got here safely.
    Hello, Mum. Hello, Dad. The train was OK. Second Class was full so I went into First Class and sat down and pretended to be a lunatic. Fortunately the ticket inspector has got a lunatic in his family so he was quite sympathetic and took me to sit on a stool in the guard’s van. As you know I am normally an introvert, so pretending to be a lunatic extrovert for an hour and twenty minutes wore me out, and I was glad when the train steamed into the cavernous monolith that is St Pancras station. Well to be quite honest the train didn’t steam in because as you, Dad, will know, steam has been phased out and is now but an erotic memory in a train spotter’s head.
    Anyway I got a taxi like you told me, a black one with a high roof. I got in and said, “Take me to the BBC.” The driver said, “Which BBC?” in a surly sort of tone. I nearly said, “I don’t like your tone my man”, but I bit my tongue back and explained: “I’m speaking on Radio Four this morning.” He said, “Good job you ain’t goin’ on the telly wiv your face.” He must have been referring to the bits of green toilet paper sticking to my shaving cuts. I didn’t know what to say to his cruel remark, so I kept quiet and watched the money clock like you told me to do. You won’t believe it, Mum, but it cost me two pounds forty-five pence!…I know…incredible isn’t it? Two pounds forty-five pence! I gave him two pound notes and a fifty pence piece and told him to keep the change. I can’t repeat what he said because this is Radio Four and not Radio Three but he flung his five pence tip into the gutter and drove off shouting horrible things. I grovelled in the gutter for ages, but you’ll be pleased to hear that I found the five pence.
    A bloke in a general’s uniform barred my way to the hallowed portals of Broadcasting House. He said, “And whom might you be, sunshine?” I said quite coldly (because once again I didn’t care for his tone), “I am Adrian Mole, the Diarist and Juvenile Philosopher.” He turned to another general…in fact, thinking about it, it could have been the Director General because this second general looked sort of noble yet careworn. Anyway, the