I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [91]
‘The book’s being pulped tomorrow. It’s over, Alan.’
‘Henry, I’m begging you. I’m literally on my knees.’
‘It sounds like you’re driving.’
‘Okay then, not literally. Just throw me a bone here, buddy.’
‘Well if it’s any consolation you’re more than welcome to go along to the pulping.’
I hung up in an explosion of fury. Go to the pulping of my own book? How dare he? HOW DARE HE?!
I was deeply moved by what I saw at the paper mill the following day. (I did go after all. I decided to take some sandwiches and make a day of it. It seemed only right that I should pay my respects.) There was great dignity in seeing fourteen thousand copies of my own book being ferried along a conveyor belt to their certain death. As they jiggled and jaggled their way into the jaws of a state-of-the-art pulping machine, it was all I could do not to stand bolt upright and salute. Those poor bastards.
Of course this wasn’t goodbye, though, it was just au revoir. After all, my fallen brothers would soon have an exciting new life as recycled paper. Sometimes, if I was feeling a bit blue, I’d sit down in my favourite armchair with a big mug of milky coffee, shut my eyes and imagine what could have become of every trounced copy of Bouncing Back.
I like to think me and the odd fragment have met again in the years since. Yes, I like to think that very much indeed. An A4 jot-book from Rymans? A love letter from one man to his troubled bi-sexual fuck buddy? Or maybe a ream of high-grade printer paper purchased by a thriving local business. Shoved into the tummy of a Canon iP 2000, it would bide its time, until one day emerging kicking and screaming into the world, caked in the latest set of company financials. Of those three, the one I’m least keen on is the fuck buddy.
The only option I’m not prepared to risk is toilet paper. That’s why I insist on buying foreign these days, and hang the cost. If it’s not been imported, it’s not going within a yard of my exit chute. And if the shop only has British then I just make do with a wet wipe or a splash wash.
Never mind all that, though, because I actually had a really good day at the paper mill. I would say it was easily the level of a very good school trip. Ignore all those people who say pulping is just a matter of chucking loads of books into a big bin, then letting a massive mechanical fist duff them all up into a papery porridge. It is that, but it’s also a highly technical industrial process.
By the end of my time there I felt I’d really come to understand it. ‘If books really do need to be destroyed,’ I screamed at the foreman over the deafening roar of machinery. ‘This is definitely the most humane way of doing it.’
He didn’t hear me but it didn’t matter. I’d made my point. Call me an old softy, but as a memento I asked if I could take home a doggy bag of Bouncing Back slurry. To my delight, the foreman agreed and that bag now has pride of place at the back of my attic.
204 Press play on Track 36. I love the shiny black legs!
205 ‘Clemence: practising goalie throws by hurling kids over hedge.’
206 He wasn’t dropping stones into a well.
207 Press play on Track 37.
208 Richard Madeley is one such person. He’ll never consume meat unless he’s seen it be handled by a trained butcher first. And preferably been to – or seen a video of – its slaughter.
Chapter 29
Good Grief
I KEPT MY EMOTIONS in check during the pulping.209 It wasn’t easy, but you draw on all your experience and I’d been attending funerals since I was eight.210 In recent years I’d been to the send-offs of Tony Hayers (chief commissioning editor of BBC Television), Chris Feather (chief commissioning editor of BBC Television), Mum and Dad (my mum and dad), and [DON’T KNOW NAME] (the racist mother of the woman who works for me).
In the case of the latter, I immediately gave my assistant 36 hours off. I swung by the hospital to explain the terms and conditions to her.
‘I’m giving you 36 hours off, whether you like it or not.’
She didn’t reply, which could have been rudeness but was more likely to be because