Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction Read Online Free Page A

can’t allow you to drive back. Your sight has deteriorated so much that I’m going to put you on the partially sighted register.”’
    I desperately searched for something positive to say, but could only come up with, ‘You’ve always enjoyed wearing dark glasses, Nigel. Now you can wear them all year round, night and day, without people thinking you’re a prat.’
    Nigel leaned against the bargain books table, dislodging a pile of unread
Finnegans Wakes
. I would have helped him to a chair had there been one in the shop.
    ‘How can I live without my car, Moley?’ Nigel said. ‘How am I going to get back to London? And how can I be a media analyst when I can’t read the fucking papers?’
    I said that if Nigel was partially sighted, it was probably a good job that he wasn’t driving down the M1 and negotiating London traffic.
    Nigel said, ‘I have been making a lot of mistakes at work lately. And it’s months since I’ve been able to read normal print without a magnifying glass.’
    I rang Computa Cabs and asked for a taxi to take Nigel to his parents’ house. The controller said that most of the taxi drivers were at the mosque, praying for peace, but that he would send one ASAP.
    While we waited, I suggested to Nigel that he learns Braille.
    He said, ‘I’ve never been good with my hands, Moley.’
    I asked Nigel if he could still see colours.
    He said, ‘I can’t see anything much.’
    I was very shocked. I had been hoping that Nigel would help me decorate my loft apartment. He used to be good with colours.
    I helped him into the cab and told the driver to takehim to 5 Bill Gates Close, The Homestead Estate, near Glenfield.
    Nigel said in a bad-tempered way, ‘I can still speak, Moley!’
    I hope he is not going to become one of those bitter blind people, like Mr Rochester in
Jane Eyre
.
Friday October 11th
    I phoned Johnny Bond at Latesun Ltd this morning and we wrangled over the £57.10.
    He said sneeringly, ‘Has your mate the Prime Minister coughed up any proof yet?’
    I replied that Mr Blair was staying with Mr Putin in his hunting lodge, trying to persuade him to join Britain and America to fight Saddam Hussein.
    Bond said, ‘He’ll never get Russia, Germany and France to back his illegal little war.’
Saturday October 12th
    Miniature Embroidery for the Georgian Doll’s House
was delivered by FedEx this morning. Mr Carlton-Hayes was very impressed.
    I said, ‘If we had a computer in the shop, Mr Carlton-Hayes, we could order books online and double our turnover.’
    ‘But Adrian, dear,’ he said, ‘we tick along very nicely,don’t we? You and I earn a living wage, we cover our expenses, and we spend our days surrounded by our blessed books. Aren’t we content just as we are?’
    It was not a rhetorical question. He genuinely wanted to know. I mumbled something about how much I liked the job, but, diary, I long to modernize this place. We haven’t even got an electric till.
    At lunchtime I walked to the marketplace. Marigold was in Country Organics, prescribing lima beans to a miserable-looking woman with low-level depression. When the woman had gone, clutching her recycled paper bag, I said to Marigold, ‘I thought I’d deliver it in person.’
    She took the book out of the FedEx envelope and shouted, ‘Mummy, it’s arrived.’
    A tall woman with a face like a pretty pig joined us at the counter. I have never seen anybody so pink. Either she has a dermatological condition or she has had a recent accident with a sun lamp.
    I said, ‘How do you do, Mrs Flowers?’ and held out my hand.
    She said, ‘I won’t shake your hand if you don’t mind.’
    Marigold looked uncomfortable and said, ‘Mummy thinks that hand-shaking is an outmoded practice.’
    Mrs Flowers took the book and leafed through it, narrowing her squinty eyes even further. Marigold watched her anxiously, as if awaiting her verdict. I began to feel a little nervous myself. I always feel uncomfortable in the presence