True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole Read Online Free PDF

for tea every day. Her punk friends came to supper and I had breakfast with the family most mornings. By the end of the week Mr Braithwaite was a broken man and Mrs Braithwaite was begging him to take me behind the Iron Curtain. Eventually, after Pandora held an open air reggae concert on the back lawn, Mr Braithwaite relented.
    He came to our house at 11 o’clock one Sunday morning, so I got my parents out of bed and we had a meeting at our kitchen table. They enthusiastically agreed to me going to Russia for a week. My mother said, “Great, George, we could have a second honeymoon while Adrian’s away!” My father said, “Yeah, Mum’ll look after the baby. We can rediscover ourselves, eh, Pauline?” They slopped over each other for a bit and then turned their attention back to the proceedings for, knowing that I was a virgin traveller, Mr Braithwaite had brought a passport form with him and I filled it in carefully under his supervision. I only made one mistake. Where it said ‘sex’ I put ‘not yet’, instead of putting ‘male’.
    We turned the house upside down looking for my birth certificate before my mother remembered that it was framed and hanging on Grandma’s front room wall. My father was sent round to fetch it while Mr Braithwaite took me to have my passport photographs taken in a slot machine. On the way, in the car, I practised facial expressions. I wanted my photographs to show the real Adrian Mole. Warm and clever, yet enigmatic and with just a hint of sensuousness. In the event, the photographs were disappointing. I looked like a spotty youth with just a hint of derangement in my sticking-out eyes. After everyone, apart from me, had had a good laugh at the photographs my mother reluctantly wrote a cheque out for fifteen pounds and then the documents were checked and double-checked by Mr Braithwaite before being put into a large envelope. While he did this I examined him carefully, for he was to be my travelling companion and room mate for a week. Would I be able to stand the shame of being seen in the company of a man wearing flared trousers and a paisley patterned waistcoat? Too late! The die was cast! Fate had thrown us together!
    As he left, clutching my documentation, he said: “Adrian, during the week we are in Moscow do you promise, swear, give me your word, that you will not utter one word about the Norwegian leather industry?” Astonished I said, “Of course. If, for some reason, you find my mini-lectures on the Norwegian leather industry offensive , then of course I won’t mention it.” Mr Braithwaite said, “Oh I don’t find your constant monologues on the Norwegian leather industry offensive , just deeply, deeply boring.” Then he got into his car and went to put the documents through the door of the Passport Office.
    If this was a film, then leaves would blow across the screen and pages of diaries would riffle, trains would roar and calendars would have months torn from them by unseen hands. But as this is just me speaking then all I need to tell you is that time went by, and I got my passport and my visa by second-class post. In the days before I left England for Russia I also got advice. My grandma said, “If the Russians offer to show you the salt mines refuse and ask to be shown a shoe factory instead.” My mother advised me not to mention that at the age of fourteen she had been thrown out of the Young Communist League (Norwich Branch) for fraternizing with American soldiers. Pandora advised against buying her a light amber necklace saying she preferred the dark amber, and Mr O’Leary from over the road advised me not to go at all. He said, “The Russians are godless heathens, Adrian.” Mrs O’Leary said, “Yes, and so are you, Declan, you haven’t been to Mass for over two years.”
    The worst part of the journey to Russia was the MI motorway. Mr Braithwaite’s Volvo was almost sucked under the passing lorries several times. In fact at Watford Gap Mr