Author(s): Sue Townsend

Fiction

He's back. Mole, now an angst-ridden 38, is still coping with life in middle-England as a single parent to Glen and William, and battling his own particular weapon of mass destruction. Marigold and I quarrelled last night as to which of us has the most monstrous mother and only stopped when Marigold screamed, "You couldn't find my clitoris if you were led there by Sir Ranulph Fiennes." After she'd slammed out I consulted 'The Joy of Sex' and discovered that I'd probably been playing too much attention to relevantly unimportant bits of her genitalia whilst ignoring the clitoris, yet it had been staring me in the face for the last eighteen months. Glenn rang at 2 am from somewhere in Iraq to say that his standard issue army boots had melted in the desert heat and could I get Parcel Force to rush him some size ten Timberlands. Monday October 7th Rang my solicitor, David Barwell, on the way to work. His secretary, Angela, said, 'Mr Barwell is busy having an asthma attack due to the new carpet that has been fitted over the weekend.' I advised her to expect a correspondence from Mark B'astard regarding the lease on Unit 4, The Old Battery Factory, Rat Wharf, Grand Union Canal, Leicester. She said bitterly, 'I shan't bother telling Mr Barwell. It's me that does all the work. All he does is sit behind his desk and fiddle with his inhaler.' I had to wait ten minutes outside the shop; Mr Carlton-Hayes had trouble finding a parking space. I watched him walk up the High Street. He looked as if he was on his last legs. I don't know how much longer he can carry on with the shop. This is just my luck. He said, 'Terribly sorry to keep you waiting, my dear.' I took the keys from him and opened the door. Once inside, he leaned against the recent biographies to catch his breath. I said to him, 'If we had a few chairs and sofas in here like I suggested, you could sit down and be comfortable.' He said, 'We're not Habitat, Adrian, my dear, we're booksellers.' I said, 'Customers expect to be able to sit down in bookshops nowadays, and they also expect a cup of coffee and to be able to visit the lavatory.' He said, 'A properly brought-up person micturates and defecates and drinks a cup of coffee before they leave their house.' We had the usual quotient of mad people in during the day. A steam train enthusiast with a ginger beard and sellotaped spectacles asked me if we had a copy of the 1954 Trans-Siberian timetable in Russian. I showed him our Railway section and invited him to search through the mildewed railway ephemera that Mr Carlton-Hayes insists on keeping in stock. A woman with a crew cut and dangly earrings asked if we were interested in buying a first edition of The Female Eunuch. I wouldn't have bought it. It was in very poor condition, missing its dust jacket, and the pages were covered in annotations and exclamation marks in red ink. But Mr Carlton-Hayes intervened and offered the woman