Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [64]
‘Yuck. Thanks, Rose. But no Jiggery-pokery. Could you be serious for a moment?’
Rose thought it unlikely, but she put down her spoon, and made a Paxman face. ‘It seems to me, Natalie, that what you need is something that gives Tom some insight he doesn’t already have into what makes you tick. What makes you who you are? What shapes you?’
‘We’re back to alcohol, then.’
‘Hang on, hang on. I’m on to something. What do you spend probably half your life doing?’
‘Sleeping?’
‘Not that.’
‘Removing unwanted body and facial hair?’
‘No! Working. You need to find a way to do a job swap. J for Job Swap. Let him walk a mile in your shoes down at the station.’
‘Brilliant!’ Natalie stood up. ‘Brilliant, Rose. You’re a star!’ Rose bowed in her chair.
‘Boss would never go for it. Come to think of it, I don’t know if Tom would. I could do a lot of damage to his hard and his floppies in one day.’
‘Oooh, Matron.’ Rose giggled. ‘Okay. Well, then, call it Job Swap, but figure out some other way to get him in…’
*
‘Work experience? I last did that in 1984, when the careers teacher at school sent me to a biscuit factory for a week. The one with the hair-net.’
Natalie remembered the hair-net. ‘Don’t worry – the radio station doesn’t need you to wear one.’
‘What does the radio station need me to do?’
‘I’ve squared it with Mike. He thinks he’s doing the local community good – probably reckons he’ll get to open the school fair or something like that, sad bastard. You’re supposed to be coming in for the week – to add credibility. Don’t worry. After your first day I’ll tell them you’ve got glandular fever or something.’
‘Great story.’
‘Believe me, this guy doesn’t listen to two per cent of what comes out of my mouth, so it doesn’t matter. I could tell him you’ve got Lassa fever and he wouldn’t even blink.’
‘Okay. And I’ll be doing?’
‘Making tea and coffee, greeting guests, bit of research, probably. That sort of thing. Nothing too difficult, I promise.’
‘I’m still missing the point of this, Natalie. I thought this game was supposed to be fun.’
‘Yeah, like the abseiling was fun.’
‘The abseiling was fun. Admit it.’
‘The point of this,’ Natalie went on, admitting nothing, ‘is to give you an insight into what my professional life is like. To help you further understand me.’
Tom was hiding a smile behind his hand.
‘And if it works out well, I thought I could do the same thing at your work.’
‘Right. Know a lot about web design and computer graphics and program-writing, do you?’
‘About as much as you know about radio producing, I imagine.’
‘Touché, Nat. I’ll be there. Shall I bring an apple for the presenter?’
‘It’s not him you’ve got to impress.’
Mike Sweet had worked at Radio One for about three weeks in about 1982. Which didn’t stop him wanting to sell tickets to himself, as Rose put it. The man had a mullet, for God’s sake, and a taste in shirts that veered towards the Polynesian pimp. Versace by TK Maxx. He had wandering hands, and a voice so unctuous it could soften dry skin at ten paces. Natalie hated him. Everyone else hated him, too, but they worked on other programmes so their contact with him was limited. Lucky buggers.
Mike Sweet thought he had done great things for Natalie’s career. In the five years she had been working with him, he had – under relentless pressure – condescended to let her read first the traffic, then the weather on the half-hour during his three-hour show. He was ‘considering’ letting her have her own slot – a twenty-minute radio book club every fourth Thursday afternoon. Every second Tuesday since last October, when she had put together the proposal and shown it to him, she asked him how the consideration was going, and he always replied that good things came to those who waited. And once, when he’d eaten a dodgy curry and had terrible trots, he had let her read the news headlines and introduce Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” before he sent her out to get him some Imodium. How she had resisted the temptation to substitute Dulcolax for the white pills she would never know. She might