Monday, April 10, 2000, Arthur Askey Way

William woke up screaming in the night. He'd been having a nightmare about the exams he will be taking when he is seven. He was mostly incoherent, but I managed to glean that his nightmare included David Blunkett's guide dog and the gay Teletubbie. I didn't press him for details.

Pamela hasn't rung me since our weekend with her parents. I fear that beside the hirsute masculinity of her father I appear a poor specimen. My expert knowledge of the early poetry of Philip Larkin cannot compete with Porky Pigg's ability to roll a double kayak in white water. I could tell that my refusal to join Porky in his flimsy plastic boat sowed doubts in Pamela's mind.

Did some primeval instinct warn her that my spermatozoa and her eggs were incompatible and wouldn't add to the quality of the gene pool? Whatever — as they say on Jerry Springer — she was very quiet as we drove south and didn't offer her tongue when I kissed her goodnight. Ugh.

Tuesday, April 11

This morning, I handed William his usual carrier bag full of toilet rolls and squashed cereal packets and was amazed when he handed it straight back to me, saying, "We can't play at school any more, Dad, so don't collect 'em up."

At home time, I broke the rules and waited outside William's classroom. On looking through the glass panel in the door I saw that the children were sitting in rows being taught exam techniques by an "exam trainer". (Formerly known as a teaching assistant.) The weather chart and the nature table were nowhere to be seen. The hamster cage was empty.

There were various exhortations around the room. As I watched, the exam trainer wrote "Exams are good, play is bad" on the white board. The children dipped their pens in their inkwells and copied this slogan down. Since when has it been compulsory to write in ink? I fear that once again Mrs Parvez has misinterpreted education-department guidelines.

She won't be content until the children are wearing clogs.

Wednesday, April 12

I embarked on a new novel, Sty, today. Progress was slow. I only managed to write 104 words, including the title and my name.

Sty, by Adrian Mole.

The pig grunted in its sty. It was deeply sad. Somehow it felt different from the other pigs with which it shared a home.

"Look at them," thought the pig. "They are oblivious to the fact that they are merely part of the food chain." The pig had felt discontented since it had glimpsed Alain de Botton's TV programme, Philosophy: A Guide to Life, through a gap in the pig farmer's curtain. The wisdom of Socrates, Epicurus and Montaigne had brought home to the pigs that it was completely uneducated and knew nothing of the world beyond the sty.

Notes on new novel

1. Should the pig have a name?

2. Should the pig's thoughts be in quotes?

3. Has the story got legs? Or is the main protagonist (the pig) too restricting a character, ie, being (a) unable to communicate with the other pigs and (b) never leaving the sty?

Sunday, April 16

Pamela Pigg has just left this house after flying into a rage and accusing me of stealing her life and turning it into "fifth-rate art". She read my manuscript of Sty which I had foolishly left on the kitchen table under a copy of Men's Health. As she ran to her car, I shouted, "I'm an artist, we must forage where we can for our materials."

Pamela shouted back, "I'm a housing officer. We must cancel the artist's move to a maisonette as promised." I went inside and read page 124 of Men's Health — bed-busting sex, for my art, of course.

Monday, April 17, 2000, Arthur Askey Way

William begged me for £2.49 today. He wants to buy a booster pack of Pokémon cards. When I refused, he burst into tears and threw himself down on the kitchen floor. Glenn came in and said, "You've gotta give 'im the money, Dad, he's lost respect in the playground."

Apparently, there are 151 characters in a set and William has only collected 37 of the most common. Glenn said, "It's like, you know, wearing Marks & Spencer's trainers, Dad?" Glenn has never forgiven me for making him go to school in my M&S trainers when his own Nikes disappeared. He still wakes in the night sweating and crying out for the NSPCC.

Tuesday, April 18

Tania rang at 10.30 this morning to tell me that my father had fallen off a ladder while trying to construct a pagoda in their garden and had injured his back. He was waiting for an ambulance, she said. I could hear my father groaning in the background and the sound of splashing and birdsong.

I left William and Glenn next door with the Ludlows and hurried off to The Lawns. My father was lying half in, half out of the Koi carp pool and appeared to be in agony. Tania was squatting by his side, instructing him to "breathe the pain away, George". The ambulance took another hour to arrive, having been misdirected by the computer to The Lawns Lunatic Asylum in Rutland. The ambulancemen, Derek and Craig, were remorselessly cheerful. It was their fifth gardening incident in two days. They blamed Alan Titchmarsh for the recent alarming rise in accident and emergency admissions. Tania stayed behind to calm the carp and pack a bag, and I went in the ambulance with my father. To take his mind off his pain, I tried to engage him in conversation about Charlie Dimmock, but he wasn't interested.

At 2 o'clock in the afternoon he was diagnosed as having two cracked vertebrae, a fractured shoulder and a deep cut in his left thigh caused by the Homebase Spend & Save card in his trouser pocket. At 8.30pm he was finally taken up to Bevan Ward and put into a bed. Without his teeth, and with his grey hair sticking up around his head, he looked every one of his 56 years. He is lying flat on his back and is unable to do the slightest thing to help himself. "So, not much change there, then," said my mother, his ex-wife, when I rang to give her a progress report.

Query: Where can I buy two Pokémon Easter eggs?

Wednesday, April 19

When I visited my father today I found him in considerable distress. The hospital has lost his teeth. "Not that it bloody well matters," he gummed, "I couldn't reach my bleedin' food anyway." Apparently, his breakfast tray had been placed 6in out of reach of his good arm, 2in nearer than the emergency call button. He is worried about Tania's reaction when she sees him for the first time without his teeth. Apparently, she is under the impression that his teeth are his own.

Pamela Pigg rang to tell me that she wants to renew our relationship. She has bought the boys two Pokémon Easter eggs. I said yes.

Sunday, April 23, Easter Day, St George's Day

I didn't know which trousers to put on today, or what to have for breakfast. Am I suffering from the modern illness Choice Overload Syndrome? I just can't decide. Somebody has written N F R O T H in red pen on my father's notes. I asked a junior doctor what it stood for. "Not for resuscitation, over the hill," she said and hurried away. I hope this was a joke. When I wished Pamela a happy St George's Day this morning, she accused me of "celebrating fascism". We are doomed. Doomed.