Adrian Mole: by Adrian Mole the Cappuccino Years

Author:Adrian Mole the Cappuccino Years
Language: eng
Format: epub

join me. She had her arms wrapped round herself in the way women do when they venture outside. She watched the hosing operation for a while and said, 'I've decided not to have it.'

I turned off the hose and the New Dog shook itself dry before escaping through a hole in the fence. I said, 'I think we'd better tell Mum, then.'

We both looked down the garden to the kitchen window where my mother was to be seen washing up. Ivan was standing behind her with a tea towel and they were both laughing. Only that morning they had received official permission from the Mongolian government to cycle across part of the Gobi desert.

Rosie said, 'No, don't let's.'

She has been told by the NHS that she can have the operation on Wednesday 15th. The day before the cyclists are due to start their world tour.

Monday October 13th

I couldn't bear to mention it before today, dear Diary, but Barry Kent's fifth novel, Blind, has been

lominated for the 1997 Bookworm Prize. I pray with every fibre, every molecule, every strand of DNA in my body that Blind does not win. I forced myself to read Ivan's copy last night. It's about a working-class

boy, Ron Angel, who is blinded in the trenches of the First World War, and goes on to have a sexual

romance with his eye-surgeon, Cedric Palmer-Tomkinson.

Blind is the favourite at Ladbrokes. Melvyn Bragg called it 'haunting', Hanif Kureishi said it was 'cool', Kathy Lette that it was a 'hoot'. I quote Dr E. E. G. Head, writing in the Literary Review: 'Kent's book is a sustained metaphorical tour deforce.' I faxed Arthur Stoat a recipe for my book. I hope it will pacify him.

Tuesday October 14th

The living-room floor is littered with lightweight camping equipment. Ivan has repacked his panniers five times. He has been ruthless with my mother and has forbidden her to take her hair-dryer or travelling

iron.

I asked Ivan how they were getting to Dover.

He said, 'We're cycling, of course.'

My mother said, 'Couldn't we put the bikes in the guard's van and go by train?'

Ivan threw the tent poles on to the carpet and said, 'If you're having second thoughts, Pauline, now is the time to express them.'

My mother ran up to him and put her arms around his chest. She was wearing Lycra cycling shorts; her bum looked like two balloons fighting in a black bin-bag.

I left them to it and went to find Rosie. She was upstairs in her room. Ashby was dressed in a pair of William's old Baby Gap dungarees, and Rosie was cleaning the doll's ears with a cotton bud. I said, 'Rosie, I've got to send Ashby back today - the hire time is up.'

She put Ashby into the box herself and watched while I Sellotaped it shut. Then she asked me to reopen the box so that she could say goodbye properly. When the postmistress, Mrs Porlock, put the parcel on the scales at the post office, Ashby's mechanism started to cry. It was very disconcerting.

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