Free Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend

tea.
    Soon afterwards my father came up to join me. I could hear female laughter coming from the kitchen. I asked my father what the women downstairs were talking about.
    He said, ‘Just women’s silly slobber – the price of cabbage, was Princess Diana murdered, will Hans Blix find any Weapons of Mass Destruction, cats, the change of bloody life,
Sex and the City
, and how men are not needed any more.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Helen is trying to get pregnant. Sian has been doing the business with a turkey baster and a bottle of sperm that’s been donatedby their gay-boy friend.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Where did we go wrong, Adrian? We let them go to work, we let them be bloody vicars, they drive cars, there’s one who’s a captain in the navy, we bought them machines to make it easier to do their housework, but they still hate us, and they’d rather have sex with a kitchen tool than with a man.’
    My father kicked at my boxes and said, ‘You’ve not got much to show for thirty-four years of life, have you?’
    When he’d gone, I lay down on my childhood bed and wept for about one minute and thirty seconds.
Friday November 15th
    Sian and Helen moved me into Rat Wharf this morning. My address is now a prestigious one: Unit 4, The Old Battery Factory, Rat Wharf, Grand Union Canal, Leicester. It is entirely to my taste – very spare, very masculine and very hard-textured.
    While the ‘gals’ carried the heavy boxes of books upstairs, I opened my sliding door and stood on the mesh balcony, gripping the steel rail which overlooks the canal. A gang of swans immediately swam up and began hissing aggressively. The biggest one, who for some reason reminded me of Sir John Gielgud, the great classical actor, was particularly vicious. An old-fashioned tramp, with string round his trousers, was staggering past the dye works on the opposite bank, swigging from a can of Kestrel.
    From my vantage point above the water I could clearlysee several supermarket trolleys, milk crates and what must have been hundreds of Kestrel lager cans lying on the bed of the canal. The water had a curious phosphorous-looking mien to it, and a noxious smell that was certainly not there when I viewed the property in October. I would have liked to have stood on the balcony longer, but quite honestly, diary, the malevolent stare of Gielgud, the biggest swan, drove me inside.
    I asked Sian what she thought of my loft apartment.
    She said, ‘It’ll be nice when you’ve got some colour on the walls and a few bits and pieces to make it cosy.’
    I said that I didn’t do cosy and explained that I intended to live an uncluttered life, a bit like Mahatma Gandhi.
    Helen pointed to a box that contained my clothes and said, ‘So what’s in there, loincloths?’
    I pointed out that it was Tarzan who wore a loincloth, Gandhi had worn a dhoti, which was quite a different thing.
    Before they left, Helen told me that when they were taking the boxes out of the van in the car park, they had seen a ‘stroppy flock of swans’. She warned me to take care, adding, ‘A swan can break a man’s arm, you know.’
    I paid them £80, money I could ill afford. I was glad to see them go. I wanted to walk around my beautiful space and listen to my footsteps on my genuine wooden floor.
    I unpacked my books and stacked them on the floor in alphabetical order while I waited for ntl to call. The swans kept up a constant racket outside. Occasionally Gielgudwould fly past my balcony window. I had forgotten that swans could fly. I had the eerie feeling that he was spying on me and mocking me because I had so few possessions.
    At 4 o’clock I telephoned ntl to ask why their engineer had failed to turn up as promised. A woman said she would ring me on my mobile when she had made contact with their ‘field operative’.
    Marigold rang to ask how I was enjoying my first afternoon in my new apartment. I told her about the swans and she said, ‘Be careful, Adrian. A swan