Adrian Mole unemployed; they have separated, divorced and remarried several times, often in the wake of extramarital affairs. In a reversal of a typical teenager-mother relationship, Pauline berates Adrian for keeping his room "like a bloody shrine". They move from Leicester to Ashby-de-la-Zouch with their dog (only ever referred to as "the dog", who is eventually replaced by "the new dog"). Adrian's paternal grandmother Edna May Mole is also prominent in the early diaries until her death in "The Wilderness Years". Pauline first leaves George for their neighbour, Mr. Lucas, an insurance man. George fathers a second son, Brett, by a lover,
Adrian Mole he keeps out of trouble. Throughout all this Adrian sees himself as an "intellectual" and a thwarted "Great Writer". Ironically Adrian actually "is" a good writer, as the quality of his diaries attests, but he feels he must adopt a "high" or avant-garde literary style to be taken seriously. His novel "Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland" is unsurprisingly never published: the few passages included in the diaries are painful to read (though Adrian himself regards them as "magnificent"), and the first few drafts were even written without vowels. Over several books he develops a script for a white