Free Bite The Wax Tadpole by Phil Sanders Page B

looking like the Ghost of Christmas When The Presents Didn’t Arrive. He couldn’t face the boiler room and its memories and made his way outside to where the sun, oblivious to his fate, still sent down its life-giving rays. (On the other hand, or more likely, according to statistics, the head or neck, it also sent down the radiation that gave you melanomas but that was of little account to Terry.) People he passed looked askance at the downward slant of the normally grinning mouth and the gouty shuffle that had replaced the jaunty stroll. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He knew the years were creeping up on him - he’d only to look at the white hairs sprouting out of his ears and ponder the blubbery belly advancing south to remind him of it – but he’d hoped to somehow slip under the retirement radar and die in harness. He couldn’t handle half a day’s notice. It was too much. Well, too little, really. What was he going to do with himself? Not bloody crazy golf, that’s for sure, sorry, luv. He could manage evenings and weekends, they were what pottering was invented for. But seven days a week! It didn’t bear thinking about. The studio was his life. It was what kept him going. And who was going to look after it now? A bunch of cowboys, that’s who. Botch Casually and the Hole in the Head Gang.
    He tossed the scrunched up leaflets into a bin and looked up at the transmitter that towered over the studio in the way that towers tend to tower over smaller, squatter buildings. Maybe that’s what he should do. Climb up to the top and jump. That’d show ‘em. That’d show ‘em they couldn’t just toss him aside like a low-rating game show. On the other hand, given his vertigo, all it would show ‘em would be a gibbering wreck clinging to the railings ten foot off the ground. Still, he’d think of something, think of some way to show ‘em. Bastards, bunch of ... er, sorry, luv.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Rob read through the latest batch of scripts with the solemnity of a bishop leafing through a collection of biblical exegesis although it’s doubtful whether the bish would have scribbled “what a load of bollocks” in red pen in the margins before re-writing a passage. He tapped the end of his biro on the desk and pondered. Why did he never write “stunning dialogue” or “brilliant scene” in the margin of a script? Or even “perfectly adequate”? To be fair, he did tell the writers when they did good stuff but being writers, of course, it meant nothing to them apart from the fact that they’d survived another round of editing and would in all likelihood get further employment. Tell a writer that his last ten scripts had been knockouts but that the thirty second scene in the pub in his last one hadn’t quite got over the point that was in the scene breakdown and they’d reach for the scotch or the valium, possibly both, and bemoan their fading career.
    A gust of wind sent several sheets of paper flying through the air as the door was thrust open and Leo stormed in. Leo was a man given to wearing denim and sported the sort of moustache that had been popularly worn over stiff upper lips in wartime British movies. “Have you seen these?”, he blustered, skimming a sheet of paper over the table in Rob’s general direction. “Have you seen these figures?” He paced the room as Rob reached for the paper.
    “And good morning to you, too, Leo. No, if these are last night’s viewing figures, then not being psychic, I have not seen them.”
    “They’re shit, absolute shit. Didn’t win in one city, not one. Again. We’re in the shit, mate, right in the shit. Up shit creek with a fresh turd for a paddle.”
    Rob scanned the sheet which gave the number of viewers per quarter of an hour per channel in all the major cities. He hated the idea of everything being driven by the viewing figures, that a work couldn’t be judged on its intrinsic merits. On the other hand he was wary of making the same mistake