The Raddling Trouty

I'm trying this post out in Verdana just for you, Danny :)

Here I am, sat in front of 'Jackie Brown', drink can in hand after the umpteenth trip out to the vending machine. I'd prefer water, but there's none in the machine and some fiend has binned my resident drink bottle and the canteen's closed. I'm too scared to right my coffee cup from on top of the monitor and deal with the (potentially furry) contents. I'll bill the station for my Clearasil. Right now, there's nothing to do.

But let us cast our imaginations back 20 minutes.

The studio have finally nailed their update on the seventh take. There is steam rising from my keyboard as I try to hammer in the 1.5-minute cross with the help of a VCR that probably pre-dates the moon landings (hell, probably pre-dates the discovery of the moon) and a keyboard with a self-ejecting shift button.

The phone rings. Fool that I am, I answer it.

ME: Captioning.
LIL SIS: Hi, matey, I've just...
ME: Not now!

I hang up on a bewildered Chicken Legs and make a mental note to apologise later. The studio buzzes me.

STUDIO: Captions, transmission for that last update in 3 minutes.
ME: (Sweating quietly) Oh, goody.

2.5 minutes later I'm about three-quarters of the way through the sodding thing when its intro appears on the TV I've got set to the live channel. It's starting.

ME: Fuckity, fuck, Mcfuck.

I fumble back to the beginning of the file with one hand and buzz the Chief Cheeses downstairs with the other. I reminded them half an hour ago this was going to happen and they've forgotten me - there are no captions on air.

ME: Captions through to air, please, Control!

There is the sound of gentle, almost bovine, chewing over the intercom. I can almost smell the nougat.

CHEESE: Huh?

ME: (Frothing at the mouth) Captions through to air, please, now!

CHEESE: Ah. Right.

Just as I'm switched over my monitor drops out. The studio has started recording the next update. Now I'm sending with one hand, fumbling with the remote with the other, twisted around to watch the TV behind me to monitor my transmission. With my third hand I'm trying to convince the reluctant jaws to for-Chrissakes-eat-a-cassette. I finally get the monitor back on and realise I'm hurling myself headlong into a 10-second gap of no captions. You'd be amazed how ordinarily composed and agile fingers type complete shash under the pressure of going to air. I stamp out the literary equivalent of a mobile phone love poem service advertisement which captures perhaps one in six words rattling out of the presenters, thump record and clear on the machine and start the whole process over with the new piece.

Finally the panic is over and I collapse, shaking and burping, onto the floor. (Alright, onto the chair. Dramatic, though, eh?)

STUDIO: Next record in an hour, Captions?
ME: Oh, sure.

So now there's nothing to do but drain another can and toddle off to mark another cross on the glass of the vending machine. All that's left is a faded packet of Skittles. Never before have I craved broccoli with such passion.