Bite The Wax Tadpole Read Online Free Page A

a gouty archbishop who’s stubbed his toe on a hassock but instead he sighed. Was it the effects of the tapes or was he was dissolving into his old man who’d come home whistling “Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kitbag” the afternoon they’d discovered the spot on his lung. Anyway, it wasn’t too late, not yet. He could still save himself from one of Nev Beale’s spittle fuelled rants. Not as though it was the first block of scripts in the show’s history to be less than workmanlike. He started turning the stories around in his head so that they rolled about in the tumble drier of his creative unconsciousness. Yes, the “who’s been wearing my underwear story” would work much better if... Thud!
    Rob lurched forward as the car stalled. He closed his eyes, knowing that when he opened them he would see something unpleasant. Sure enough, the lids went up to reveal that the driver in front was already out of his ute and stomping towards him. Six foot twelve of pissed-off plumber.
    By the time heads had been shaken, dents examined and insurance details exchanged, the traffic was beginning to move at a reasonable speed. Rob took deep calming breaths as he pulled back into the flow. The hulking tradie had turned out to be one of the “don’t worry about it, mate, it’s only the work’s ute” types. He’d even given him his business card and offered him a ten per cent discount should he ever need his U bend unblocking. Although grateful for not being added to the road rage casualty statistics Rob was now even later, would have to fill in some arse-aching form from the insurance company and find time to get the car to a garage to have the headlights fixed. Time, the ever rolling stream, true to form, was babbling and burbling over razor-sharp rocks.
    “The Ride of the Valkyries” suddenly blasted out of his trouser pocket and he scrabbled around among loose change for his mobile while keeping his eyes on the road.
    “Yes, hello?”
    “Could you please, please, stop writing in bed! Or at least put the bloody top back on your pen when you’ve finished. And why, for God’s sake, do you use red ink?”
    “Is a red stain worse that a black one? Anyway, it’ll wash out. Won’t it?”
    “That is not the point!”
    “Isn’t it? What is then?”
    “You writing in bed. You spend the whole day writing. Isn’t that enough?”
    “It’s serial television, soap. It’s not real writing, it’s choreographing the commercial breaks.”
    “It pays the bills.”
    Rob’s attention was taken by a car gliding past him, a car with blue lights on the roof and “Police” written in an arresting shade of red on the side. A police officer wearing jet-pilot sunglasses was pointing at the mobile and shaking his head.
    “Oh, bollocks!”
    “What? What did you say?”
    He closed the phone and smiled at the policeman while looking sheepish and mouthing the word “sorry.” Had he been an attractive blonde or the officer’s maiden aunt the ploy might have worked but as it was the police car moved in front of him, “Pull Over to the Side of the Road” flashing on its digital sign board.
    Taking deep breaths, trying hard to remember the calming advice of Randy Pratt, Rob indicated to pull in to the breakdown lane. All those bloody zigzagging P-platers and speeding utes and tailgating trucks and grey-haired blokes in soft-top sports cars who should be arrested just for buying the bloody thing and they pick on him! Christ on a bike, what is wrong with the world?

CHAPTER TWO
    Somewhere far, far away, or so it seemed to Malcolm, one of the Seven Dwarves, possibly Tuneless, was sitting inside a toilet bowl singing “The Sun Has Got His Hat On.”
    On the other hand, reasoned that part of his befuddled mind that dealt with the increasingly difficult task of bringing him round each morning, it could very well be the radio alarm. Simultaneously, the synapses in his cerebral cortex angrily fired off the rhetorical question to the