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

can break a man’s arm, you know.’
    I, rather irritably perhaps, informed her that I had known this fact since I was four years old.
    She thanked me for my letter and said with a little laugh, ‘There’s a certain ambiguity about it. Read one way it sounds like you’re giving me the brush-off, read another way it sounds the same.’ She gave another little laugh. ‘You’re not giving me the brush-off, are you, Adrian?’
    Why didn’t I tell her the truth, diary? Why didn’t I tell her that after spending time with her the world seems a darker place, one devoid of joy and hope? She is coming round tomorrow after work.
    At 5.30 my telephone rang and an ntl person informed me that the field operative had attempted to call but had been beaten back by swans in the car park, then added, ‘A swan can break a man’s arm, you know.’
    I have arranged to be in the car park to escort the ntl engineer to my apartment at 10 o’clock in the morning.
    Having no bed yet, I made a platform of books, which I lay on in a sleeping bag. But it was an uncomfortable night:
Frankenstein
dug into my breastbone and kept me awake.
Saturday November 16th
    I am still without ntl. The engineer refused to get out of his van because Gielgud and the other swans were walking around the car park, looking as though they owned the place. Before he drove away he said, ‘A swan can break a man’s arm, y’know.’
    I met the owner of Unit 2 on the stairs. He is a professor of golf course management at De Montfort University. His name is Frank Green. He said the swans were a bloody nuisance and that he was thinking of selling his apartment and moving to a land-locked location.
    I went to Debenhams and confessed to a kindly woman behind the counter in the furniture department that I had no money. She agreed with my mother that a store card would solve my problems and pointed out to me that should I activate the card today, I would get a 10 per cent discount on everything I bought. Within a quarter of an hour and after lying about my salary and showing my passport and Visa card, I was given £10,000 worth of credit.
    I should have had somebody with me, somebody sensible. Did I really need a white towelling bathrobe? Wasa white sofa with non-detachable covers a wise choice? And did I really need a home entertainment centre with a cinema screen and Dolby Surround Sound?
    I had never slept on a futon before, but I was too shy to test it in the shop. I bought it anyway. I also bought bookshelves and an aluminium bistro table and matching chairs for the balcony, a Dualit toaster and a cafetiere (the last two items are loft living must-haves).
    I phoned Sian and Helen and asked if they were free to collect these items from the store’s delivery bay. They arranged to meet me at 4 o’clock.
    In the intervening hour I bought a hexagonal-shaped black dinner service, a wine rack and a bottle of extra-extra-virgin olive oil which Debenhams import from an olive grove owned by a close friend of Gore Vidal’s.
    When Sian and Helen eventually turned up, I was sitting among my new purchases like a latter-day Howard Hughes, a victim of consumerism.
    Sian said, ‘I thought you were strapped for cash.’
    I told her about the store card and Helen asked how much interest I would be paying. When I told her 29 per cent, she said, ‘Leave the stuff here, cancel the card, get in the van and I’ll put my foot down.’
    But, diary, I couldn’t do it. What is the point of living in a loft if you can’t pad around the wooden floors in your white towelling bathrobe, sit on your white sofa while waiting for the coffee to brew in your cafetiere, then take the pot to the galvanized table on the balcony and eat a croissant from your hexagonal-shaped black plate?
    *
    Marigold managed to walk swan shit all over my gleaming floorboards. She offered to clean them with a mop and bucket, and when I irritably informed her that I had not yet bought such mundane articles, she said,