Remembering Adrian Mole and Sue Townsend on their birthdays today

[OneBusyFinch]

oh these wonderful wonderful books, still make me laugh and I do re-read frequently!

Adrian would have been 58 today and the superb Sue Townsend would have been celebrating her 80th birthday.

How I would have loved to read Adrian Mole: The Covid Years! RIP Sue Townsend. Her books are a continuous source of joy.

Thanks for this, I will dig out one of the books today. My all time favourites. Pandora, I implore ya.....

One of my friends said she could only do a play date this week as next week she’s in Skegness. Guess what I thought

The AM books are my pure comfort reading! Have read them so many times and could relate to the teenage angst! I always thought Sue Townsend wrote so perceptibly as a middle aged woman writing as a teenage boy 💕

“The Hindu Kush? My mother complains if she has to walk to the bus stop”

this was great: Archive on 4 - Remembering Sue Townsend, Aged 68 3/4 - BBC Sounds

The Prostate Years ended with a hint that Adrian and Pandora might just end up together after all... I wish we'd got to find out for sure!

I love the Adrian Mole books. Adrian is flawed like the rest of us, but also very kind. I am very sad that we will never hear from him again, The Prostate Years was a much more serious book than the others. Do we think Adrian recovered from his illness?

I am the same age as Adrian.

My favourite lines (which demonstrate Sue Townsend’s genius in summing up the feelings of the era with just a few words) are in relation to Adrian and his family talking about the Falklands War.

” At teatime I was looking at our world map, but I couldn’t see the Falkland Islands anywhere. My mother eventually found them under a crumb of fruitcake.”

“I wished everyone over the age of fifty would commit mass suicide and give the rest of us a break, No pensions to pay out, no homes for the elderly to maintain, and at least half the disabled spaces outside Marks and Spencer reclaimed by the young and able-bodied. Once again I thank Pepys, the god of diarists, that my journal will not be read in my lifetime. I would not like to be thought of as an uncaring ageist.”

I loved the books, but I lost sympathy for Adrian in Weapons of Mass Destruction; I thought he might have matured a bit by then, but he really hadn’t. And I hated the ending of cappuccino years (fire); it was the kind of ending I remember being told not to use when writing stories at primary school.

I shall spend hours today thinking about the Norwegian leather industry in their honour 🥀

@pepayfelix I had the same thought about the COVID years. She would have done it brilliantly.
I loved these books and now have the audio ones. I’ve no idea how many times I read or listen to them they are an absolute joy.

@Kendrickspenguin -I think he would’ve had a recovery in the next book.

On a different note, I also wonder what she would’ve made of the royal family shenanigans of late.

we could write it? do some collective fan fiction? Adrian and family etc even Geilgud the swan will always live rent free in my head as they say nowadays 😋

I miss Sue Townsend and Adrian Mole so much. I would love to have known what they made of modern life.

I shall have a croissant and a cappuccino in honour.

Watery inlets 💕

Oh I loved Adrian Mole! Sue Townsend was/is such a talent, I’d forgotten she’d passed. 😢

I love AM. We quote him daily. My kids also have read his books and one is currently aged 13 3/4!

I have all the AM books, so easy to grab one for a bit of comfort reading. I had to repurchase the Diary (Adrian’s first novel) as my original paperback fell apart.

Loved his interactions with Bert Baxter and Queenie, and their Alsatian - Sabre.

I read AM as a teenager (same age as him I think!), her biography on wiki is fascinating, she witnessed a murder when she was a child!

Happy Birthday to them both. Great books x

Oops no I’m younger than Adrian by 4 years so my reading age is out! 🤣

My favourite books. I sometimes read other books and spot things that Sue Townsend loved and paid tribute to e.g. the bit about his Grandma in the butchers eyeing the scales like a hawk is from Just William (in the sweetshop). DS1 now loves them too, and quotes them all the time ❤️

Oh, I'm going to take mine off the bookcase and read them all over again. They really were excellent!

I was very late to start reading Adrian Mole books, they were recommended by a colleague when I said I wanted to read something amusing for a change.

I absolutely loved them and recently, I have tried to find them in the library to read again but couldn't find any. Next time I go in I will ask at the desk if they could order one or two in for me to pick up - that's if they are still available to order.

Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books were one of the only ones which would make me laugh out loud
She is greatly missed