Sunday 17 September (Trinity 15)

No Antony at church this morning. Gwen preached about Upmarket Church (organs and choirs and Henry Persil) and Downmarket Church (guitars and pimples and Graham Kendrick) and suffering little children (probably a swipe at Antony’s solo singing). We are definitely Upmarket in my Church, which is no doubt why Ken had to move on.

There is a great sense of relief that the threat of legal action has been removed, and Gwen says she intends to have the old choirstalls reinstated, for plywood choirstalls with chromium fittings are naff and only appropriate in Downmarket Churches (said Gwen.) I only hope they haven’t rotted while in the boilerhouse and being used for target practice by the Vicarage cat.

Gwen has also offered to help with the choir (which at present numbers one, when he remembers to turn up). Apparently she has had some experience with choirs. She says that if we are to be a proper Upmarket Church we must launch an immediate recruiting campaign now that the schools are back.

I had only been home a few minutes when there was a loud banging on the door. I heard Mum shriek from upstairs: “Don’t open it – it’s the Swat Team, and they’re after your poor Mummy.” “No it isn’t”, said an exasperated voice through the letterbox. “It’s me, Tarquin – Antony’s dad. Have you got my handcuffs?” My mind raced, as James Bond’s must have done at moments of great danger. Tarquin! I filed the information away for possible future use.

“Oh come on, Barry”, he hissed (hissed?) “Just stick them through the letter box and we’ll forget about your mum assaulting a police officer in the execration of his duty. And Barry, I hope you didn’t eat any of that blancmange. Forensics thought it was Semtex and blew up my uniform in a controlled explosion.”

Mum was still shrieking and I thought at any minute she’d start throwing things about again, so I dug the handcuffs up from my unfragrant satchel and popped them through the letterbox. “Ar thanks lad”, said the police officer otherwise known as Tarquin. “You’ve probably saved my life. The Super gets really shirty when us bobs mislay our darbies. Any time you need a dependable professional witness, lad, you can count on me. We coppers are trained never to allow the facts to get in the way of a few whopping great porkies up there in the witness box, ho-ho.” A fiver fluttered through the letterbox and, with catlike tread, he was gone . I opened the door but there was no sign of him. My hero 007 would have been proud of me. Then I remembered mum and shouted upstairs: “He’s gone, and I don't think he'll be coming back.”

Mum came down and made lunch, and it was edible. She said she was proud of me, and if I wanted to I could practise the Raindrop Prelude all afternoon.

So what with one thing and another, and all in all, not a bad day, considering.

Saturday 16 September

Mum has locked herself in her room again. She is wailing and throwing things about. I though Antony’s father was very polite when he appeared in full uniform and asked Mum if he could see her CRB clearance, which mum is supposed to have now that she is on the PCC, the PCC being stacked with vulnerable adults, and I don’t think it was very wise of mum to throw the blancmange all over him, for mum’s blancmanges are often a bit lumpy. When I had helped him get up and wiped his uniform down and pushed back the dents in his helmet he said he was very sorry, but he now had no choice but to arrest mum. It was at that moment that Mrs Ramsbotham phoned. I explained that there was a bit of a problem with a policeman, and that mum had just gone up to her room to throw things about, but she just sighed and said: “Barry. This is official PCC business. Put the ruddy rozzer on.”

The policeman wasn’t like mum, who always repeats everything Mrs Ramsbotham says, so I always hear both sides of a conversation. After warning Mrs R that anything she said might be taken down, he didn’t say very much at all, as people tend not to when Mrs R is in full swing. But I could hear Mrs Ramsbotham crackling away at him, and when he gave me the phone back he looked a bit pale, and said it might be a good idea if he came back tomorrow, if I thought I would be safe in the house. “Jolly good, then”, he said, before I’d even had time to answer. He must have a had a lot of serious crimes to solve before bedtime, for he was off like a shot, so rapidly that he left his handcuffs behind.

The phone started whistling at me, so I picked it up. “Barry – is that you?” said Mrs R. I confessed that it was. “Has that bluebottle gone?” “Yes”, I said, “but he’ll be back – he’s forgotten his handcuffs.”

“Oh poo”, shrieked Mrs R (well, she didn’t exactly say ‘poo’). “Listen, Barry. On no account let your mum find those handcuffs. Barry – promise me you will hide them? It was handcuffs and hormones that caused all that trouble in 1993.*”

I promised Mrs Ramsbotham I would hide them, just to get her off the phone, and I put them in my satchel, which even after two nights in the shed still pongs a bit of the sort of cheap aftershave which some teenage boys splash liberally about their persons rather than a) employ it for its proper purpose, viz. and to wit, descaling lavatories, or b) wash.

After the events of today I shall need a period of calm and reflection so that I am able to fulfil my obligations at church tomorrow. I shall therefore go to bed now and read a little more Dostoevsky. I have nearly finished p8.

*No, she didn’t go into details. I wondered, too.

Friday 15 September

Dear Antony,

I have to say that you did a marvellous job of sorting out the piles of ancient music in the choir vestry. You are one of my oldest friends, and I knew that you, with your background in Advanced Cathedral Worship, were the only person who could be entrusted with such a really really important task, which of course I would have willingly performed myself had I not been burdened with my silly organ-playing duties. That you so graciously undertook this dusty labour for me, your young and unworthy Choirmaster, says much for the strength of our long-standing friendship and the esteem in which you are held by me, and by my dear Mother, who by the way wishes to ask if you would please call her Angela in future and not that rather frosty and impersonal Mrs Acne (please?)

Yours with gratitude and admiration,

x......................................x

Barry Acne (Organist and Choirmaster)

Mum said if I don’t sign it I could move my bed and all my belongings into the shed. It would be blindingly obvious even to a woodlouse with an IQ of –273 that I didn’t write it (I mean, can you imagine a literate and well-educated professional male person such as I myself ever using the expression ‘really really’?), but Antony is vain and thrives on flattery and is probably even at this moment being patted on the head by a horde of admiring Flower Ladies.

I’m not sure I did the right thing, but I do have my own dignity to consider, and there are times when a man must stand up for what is right, even against his own mother. The prospect of another night on the floor of that shed was not pleasant of course, and I confess that I struggled greatly with my conscience, before I signed the wretched thing. Mum uttered a self-satisfied smirk and said she’d pop it in the postbox straight away.

There was no school today. It seems that 98.1% of the pupils, I mean students, have come out on strike because they have no confidence in their teachers, and most of the teachers have come out on strike because they didn’t like having to go back to work. Apparently the only teachers in the staff room today were Simon and Miss Smith and Mr Grudge. Garnham was standing outside the gates when I arrived, and he says he peeped through the staff room window at 8:54am and saw Mr Grudge drinking whisky and reading Shakespearean sonnets to Miss Smith. Garnham also says that he saw Simon sharpening a hammer and repeating ‘grrr, grrr, grrr’ to himself in a shrill falsetto, but the consensus is that Garnham is an untrustworthy witness. He is very short-sighted and has to wear corrective spectacles, so in all likelihood it wasn’t Shakespeare at all that Mr Grudge was reading. It could have been the Beano, or the Fifth Form timetable, for all Garnham knows. But Garnham swears he heard Mr Grudge say ‘How-do. Islay for you? Lumme! Can’t thou ease? ’, and then Simon picked Mr Grudge up by his collar and shook him about a bit before gathering Miss Smith unto himself in a protective manner and leading her forth, no doubt to some bosky dell designed by Nature for canoedling, or, if there was a sudden world shortage of bosky dells, the groundsman’s hut on the school cricket field.

But as I say Garnham has proved himself to be a most unreliable person in the past, as I know to my cost. He still has that James Bond book that he acquired from me by false pretences and now I do not believe a word he says.

Thursday 14 September - off the hook!

Thursday 14 September 7:00pm

Mum says that there is no longer any likelihood of the Civic Society’s pursuing any form of legal action against us, for lurking forgotten and unseen in a dusty pile of Novello anthems (Price 3d) was a document that has brought the church wardens and the faint-hearts of the PCC all back to the fold, tearing up their letters of resignation. The ‘ancient’ choirstalls were fakes! They were installed in 1896 at a cost of £73.1.11 (including polishing.) Mrs Ramsbotham is to send a photocopy and a snooty letter to the Civic Society, and is already rolling up her sleeves in joyous anticipation.

Thursday 14 September 2:30pm

A major upheaval at school today, and we were sent home at lunchtime so that the staff could hold their start-of-term meeting in the Red Lion to sort it all out. It seems that everybody in the Fifth Form but me has opted to take Psychology, Media Studies and Sociology at A-Level and the teachers have protested at the size of their potential classes. There are 237 for Media Studies alone! When Miss Darling (Media Studies) saw the list she fainted and Mr Grudge (English Lang & Lit) had to hold a burning feather under her nose until she revived, the school medicine cabinet being locked and Matron, who has the only key, still recovering in that home for victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the 3^rd Form girls locked her in the biology lab overnight with a lot of white mice on St David’s Day the year before last.

The whole Fifth Form has to assemble in Main Hall at 9:15 tomorrow morning to be addressed by the Headmaster, whom until today I had always assumed to be a figment of the Education Authority’s imagination, for nobody has ever been seen entering or exiting the luxurious penthouse suite on the top floor of our exclusive Parker-Morris-standard 1960s educational establishment.

It is all very exciting. Much, I imagine, as a PCC meeting must be.

I tried to see Simon to ask about my computer, but a sign on his door said ‘All Hope Abandon – This Means You’ so I went home and cooked myself some egg and bacon to keep me going until tea time, with a couple of sausages and a few tomatoes and some fried bread and then some healthy yoghurt (peach and raspberry) for dessert.

Do not know where mum is, so will now take opportunity to brush up on Raindrop Prelude and possibly read some Dostoevsky in preparation for tomorrow’s Assembly.

Wednesday 13 September 4:30pm

Simon issued the new timetables this morning. I asked if might have a quick word with him, because, pending the arrival of my corrected examination results, I saw that I was down for Remedial English, Remedial French and Remedial IT with the 4^th Form that I have just left. I protested that I hadn’t even taken French. Simon said he would sort it out. I am also down for General Science, which Simon says is to balance my education. Apparently Miss Smith – in her new capacity of Head of Science – has insisted that all pupils (she calls us Students) should have a nodding acquaintance with subjects which require more for scholastic advancement than an aptitude for placing ticks in little boxes and the ability to write one’s own name. “Do not underestimate Miss Smith”, Simon warned me. “She has a fine mind.” I had a really witty rejoinder on the tip of my tongue, but the dinner bell intervened.

Simon also mentioned, however, that Students in Remedial Classes are to be given priority in the distribution of refurbished laptop computers, and my name is at the top of the list!

It is good to see that my academic promise is at last being recognised.

Tuesday 12 September 10:30pm

I am writing this by the light of a torch under the bedclothes, and I must of necessity be brief because the batteries are low. Mum got home after I’d gone to bed, with Mrs Ramsbotham in tow, so I turned the light off and pretended to be asleep. Oh blow. That’sal .

Tuesday 12 September 11:00am

School resumes tomorrow, and still nothing in the post from the Examination Board. I have to make up my own lunch box this evening, because Gwen has called yet another emergency meeting of the PCC for 7:30. It seems that my saying Rabbits this month has not had the desired effect. Perhaps I said it too quietly, for on unpacking my satchel ready for the New Term I discovered adhering to dad’s Sinclair Spectrum a mouldy cream bun from the end-of-term celebrations. I washed the Spectrum thoroughly under the hot tap, though it is still a little sticky and discoloured, and I have sprayed the inside of the satchel with air freshener and put it in dad’s shed for an hour or two to recover.

Monday 11 September 1:30pm

What was it that that the famous Scottish poet Robert the Burns said about the best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men ganging aft agley? Mum could have kept it to herself, but Mrs Ramsbotham was in the library as well so it is probably now all round the village. The good news is that I didn’t have to pay any fine at all for Goldfinger. The bad news is that the reason I don’t have to pay is that I appear to be still using Junior Library tickets.

I am writing a stiff letter to the County Library Superintendent complaining about lax administrative procedures in our local branch, and asking why, if he and his councillors are so worried about moral turpitude among young people, they allow them to borrow such steamy novels as Goldfinger on junior library tickets.

I do not consider Mrs Ramsbotham to be a good influence upon my mother. She asked mum to remember her to ‘dear little Barry.’ If Raskolnikov were not a fictional character I would be inclined to write to him to inquire whether he undertakes contract jobs.

Monday 11 September 10:05am

A stroke of luck! Mum mentioned that she was popping into the library this morning, so I asked her, really casually, if she would mind taking a book back for me. She fell for it completely and put Goldfinger in her bag together with the complete works of some romantic novelist called Dale Spender. I shall no doubt have to reimburse her for the fine, but I will say that she can take it out of my Daily Mail cheque! Or should I say check – and mate, too, I believe.

Still nothing from the Examinations Board, and school resumes on Wednesday. I am sure that Simon will understand when I tell him that, much as I enjoy my sessions at the work bench with chisel and spokeshave, my stay in his class will be of very brief duration.

Sunday 10 September, 6:00pm

Service surprisingly uneventful: very few mistakes. Antony completed his tidying and sorting while I was marking up the next load of hymn sheets from Gwen’s master list, upon which it was a profound relief to me to find nothing with five flats and not a single instance of Amazing Grace. I am not entirely happy, though, about the two Bach settings for Advent – they are quite tricky for the fingers, so I will suggest to Gwen that even Antony cannot manage all four parts simultaneously, despite his Cathedral background. But I certainly approve of the Orlando Gibbons, which is in F major (only one flat) and very easy to play. And no Graham Kendrick! I didn’t manage to speak to Gwen after the service, for she was closeted in the clergy vestry with Antony. He seemed very excited that he has finished the tidying job, for he was even shriller than usual. Sometimes Antony is quite pathetic.

Sunday 10 September, 8:00am

Up with the lark and finished Goldfinger, despite Mum’s sonorous snoring. Picked up my Dostoevsky, then put it down again. Decided to have quick run-through of today’s hymns on the piano, then remembered the New Agreement, so pretended kitchen table was organ console. Removed two splinters with aid of tweezers from mum’s make-up box, or rather valise, for it is colossal. Took mum cup of tea 10 minutes ago, and now there is just time for my Sugar Puffs before I compose myself for divine service.

Saturday 9 September

It is still raining. Mum went out early to pick up Mrs Ramsbotham to do some shopping in town, and to have a ringside seat when somebody from Coronation Street switches on the Christmas lights. There is no point telling mum that we are still in the middle of Trinity (Trinity 14 next Sunday, to be precise), for the Flower Ladies are already talking excitedly about poinsettias and holly and the Flower Ladies’ Christmas Party. I am very surprised that the Flower Ladies are being allowed to have another Christmas Party after the embarrassing scenes last year when a Strippogram gorilla turned up with a seasonal cask of sweet sherry and a can of spray-on cream and the parish hall had to be closed for a week so that the ceiling could be cleaned.

But a busy day is in prospect, and I must knuckle to. The Raindrop Prelude needs a little more attention and I must race to finish Goldfinger, for another 11p rings up on the library till every 24 hours that it is in my care. Luckily the fridge is full, so I shall not starve.

Friday 8 September

A very offensive letter from the Library this morning, informing me that Goldfinger was due back on 22 August and that I now owe £1.54 in overdue charges! I wrote back immediately, pointing out a) that the loan period of three weeks is woefully inadequate if students of English literature are to give classic novels the scrupulous attention they deserve, and b) that there was a copy in Help the Aged only last week priced at 45p, and the Library would be doing council taxpayers a great service if they bought their books from charity shops in future and were thus able to reduce their punitive penalty charges. I could not find where mum has hidden the stamps, so I was forced to post the letter in the Library letter-box myself, before I had even had my breakfast.

It rained on the way back, and I got soaked.

Thursday 7 September

Still no letter from the Examination Board. At this rate I will end up in Simon’s class by default, which would not be an auspicious start to the academic year. Much as I like Simon, I am not convinced that an ability to chisel a neat mortise joint is enough to open the gates of Oxbridge, and I dread the prospect of having to settle for a B-List university such as Keele or Bolton Technical College.

Wednesday 6 September

Mum’s women’s group was cancelled last night at the last minute because someone’s baby had got the croup. Mum didn’t go to the group croup feely-in that was put on instead, despite the offer of free lessons in plumbing and bricklaying. Instead she spent the evening on the phone to Mrs Ramsbotham. Mum spends a fortune on phone calls to Mrs Ramsbotham, who only lives in the next street, whither mum could walk in two minutes and spend a happy evening of conversation without putting British Telecom to any inconvenience whatsoever. I think that mum thinks that the moment her back was turned I would fill the house with scantily clad maidens and woo them to distraction with my Raindrop Prelude, which I realise suddenly I have not practised for a fortnight.

But could not do any practice anyway because mum was still on the phone, so went to bed early on pretext of a headache, and read chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 of Goldfinger, then cheated and read chapter 18 out of sequence.

Put bookmark from Fountains Abbey in Chapter 18, not that I am likely to forget. Chapter 18 is almost as steamy as Rachel’s letter, and I hope I do not start thinking about Chapter 18 next Sunday when I am playing the organ, for such would be a most unseemly thing in Church.

Sunday 3 September

It all went off without a hitch. I played some really quiet introductory voluntaries so that I could enjoy listening to the sneezing that was going on in the vestry. I had had another brainwave in the night. Rather than tell Antony myself, I asked Priestess Gwen if she would, since I would probably be playing the organ when he arrived, and she fell for it. He was still sneezing when he slunk into his choirstall via the back corridor, rather than risk processing in in his unctuous way. He didn’t do a solo, not even his favourite Mendelssohn pigeon song, being too busy sneezing. I don’t think I played a single wrong note in any of the hymns, and my recessional voluntary was the one in E minor that starts fff and continues in much the same triumphant vein for three whole pages, and I don’t think I hit a single wrong note in that either, although it is hard to tell in such a noisy piece.

Mum is very suspicious, I can tell, but I cooked us a late breakfast, humming innocently as I did so, and the fried eggs, sausages, bacon and tinned tomatoes were perfect and absolutely delicious. Even mum admitted, albeit grudgingly, that it was quite nice.

Tra-la-la. What a jolly day.

Saturday 2 September 9:30pm

Mum has been co-opted onto the PCC, which now consists of her, Mrs Ramsbotham, the Treasurer, and our new priestess, Gwen, all other members having carried out their threat and resigned, together with the church wardens. Item 3 on the Agenda was the solicitor’s letter from the Civic Society, but nobody had brought a copy so it was not discussed.

Mum was in a bad mood when she got home, and perhaps I shouldn’t have asked her what they talked about instead, like for example knitting patterns and cake decoration, for she snapped at me: “No. We discussed the appalling state of the choir vestry. There are piles of music there with three inches of dust on them. Some of that stuff goes back to the year dot. You are Organist and Choirmaster. It is your job to get it sorted and tidied, for the Flower Ladies are complaining that they have nowhere to stack their Oasis.”

I did not know that my vestry was being used for storage of recordings of the sort of profane popular music favoured by Flower Ladies, and clearly it must be put a stop to. But I have conceived a brilliant plan, worthy of 007, even of M. Antony suffers from asthma and hay fever, and he probably expects to sing solos tomorrow. I will assert my authority and put him to work tidying the vestry! Even though Mum thinks the sun shines out of his ears she can hardly make a fuss – I will simply say that Antony’s long experience of choral music in the Cathedral Choir (before he was sacked) fits him perfectly for such an important task. It shouldn’t be hard to convince mum - I have almost convinced myself, to the extent that I am actually feeling quite noble.

Saturday 2 September 10:30am

Mrs Ramsbotham phoned mum very early this morning. There is an emergency PCC meeting tonight because the Civic Society have carried out their threat to take legal action about the choirstalls, and one of the church wardens has received a letter from their solicitor. Most of the PCC members want to resign in case it will cost them money, and Mrs Ramsbotham said that she needs mum by her side for moral support.

I have still not had an apology and my corrected grades from the Examination Board. They, like all public officials, are slipshod in their methods, being crazed with power and fat salary cheques. They evidently do not have to contend in their professional lives with hymns with five flats and Antony.

Friday 1 September 9:30pm

Rabbits! I remembered to say it when I woke up to ensure good fortune in the coming month.

Mum says I am suffering from lassitude and ennui because my life has become purposeless, and she will be jolly glad when I go back to school. Mum always thinks she knows best, but all that is wrong with me is that I am bored. It was, I now think, a mistake to immerse myself in the pessimism of Russian novelists when I could in my imagination be fighting alligators in the Everglades with my hero, James Bond. What, I wonder, is a dry martini? It is the tipple of choice for 007. Perhaps he prefers a dry drink to a wet one lest yet another assassination attempt on his person cause him to spill it down his evening jacket, or tuxedo. I suspect I will soon find out, for when I asked mum she promised me one. “I’ll give you dry martini”, she said. “For heaven’s sake, go to bed and read your silly gung-ho books while I watch some improving programmes on the television.”

Thursday 31 August 5:15pm

Saved! Mum had completely forgotten that I was cooking today and has just come home with a large consignment of fish and chips. More later. More diary, that is, not more fish and chips. But I do wish mum would not forget things so readily, such as, for example, that I was supposed to be cooking tonight.

Thursday 31 August 2:35pm

Being a church organist by profession, and therefore dwelling in lofty spheres much of the time, I was unaware that in our village most shops celebrate Early Closing Day on a Thursday. Everything is ready for tonight’s meal apart from the ingredients. Only the Co-Op was open, and they do not sell fish unless it is in a tin. The queue of people who had also forgotten that it was early closing day stretched up the street to the Methodist chapel, and by the time it was my turn to be served all that was left on the shelves was a bag of peanuts and a tin of chopped tomatoes (with herbs and garlic), and a little old lady beat me to the peanuts by viciously prodding me with her umbrella. Even the great Rick Stein does not offer any useful recipes requiring solely a tin of chopped tomatoes (with herbs and garlic), a serious oversight on his part considering how much his books cost.

Thursday 31 August 1:00pm

Spent an instructive morning with Rick Stein and a bowl of increasingly soggy cornflakes, and the list of ingredients for this evening’s meal is complete. I am really looking forward to it. Sometimes I think I am not fair to my mum, who has her own life to lead as I have mine. But I will, by means of a wonderful repast, show her by signs that I am a most devoted, and forgiving, son. And now for the shopping expedition!