Introduction 2
There was a time when this kind of thing wouldn't have happened to Jeremy "Handysides" Lindsay.
He'd been a Big Man. And not just in the physical sense. He'd headed up the "Investigative Journalism" team at the IPC Network, and had had an entire newsroom's worth of minions at his command. Most of the major scandals of the 60s and 70s had their roots in work that Handysides' team had done. It hadn't made him popular in the outside world, but within IPC he'd been God. No, scrap that, he'd been bigger than God. The Beatles claimed it, but he knew it. A word from Handysides and he could break you.
But things had changed. He'd got lazy - his nickname said it all. He'd spent more and more time enjoying the "perks" of his position, and not actually doing his work. He'd delegated everything, without thinking of the consequences.
And now he was living those consequences. Having the crap beaten out of him in an alley beside a dirty inner city pub, knowing that there was no-one he could call on. No, that wasn't strictly true, there WERE people he could call on, but they'd probably just ask him to leave the phone on so they could hear some of the punches being rained into his ample belly.
Yes, laziness. Shortcuts. That had been the problem. In fact, he could blame everything on shortcuts. Even this pub was on one of his shortcuts from his God-awful hovel of a flat to the off-license and back. But perhaps if he hadn't been too busy drinking away his vast salary and fucking whichever innocent little temp came his way, while leaving his minions to do the dirty work, perhaps he wouldn't have screwed everything up quite so spectacularly.
He'd been a Big Man. And not just in the physical sense. He'd headed up the "Investigative Journalism" team at the IPC Network, and had had an entire newsroom's worth of minions at his command. Most of the major scandals of the 60s and 70s had their roots in work that Handysides' team had done. It hadn't made him popular in the outside world, but within IPC he'd been God. No, scrap that, he'd been bigger than God. The Beatles claimed it, but he knew it. A word from Handysides and he could break you.
But things had changed. He'd got lazy - his nickname said it all. He'd spent more and more time enjoying the "perks" of his position, and not actually doing his work. He'd delegated everything, without thinking of the consequences.
And now he was living those consequences. Having the crap beaten out of him in an alley beside a dirty inner city pub, knowing that there was no-one he could call on. No, that wasn't strictly true, there WERE people he could call on, but they'd probably just ask him to leave the phone on so they could hear some of the punches being rained into his ample belly.
Yes, laziness. Shortcuts. That had been the problem. In fact, he could blame everything on shortcuts. Even this pub was on one of his shortcuts from his God-awful hovel of a flat to the off-license and back. But perhaps if he hadn't been too busy drinking away his vast salary and fucking whichever innocent little temp came his way, while leaving his minions to do the dirty work, perhaps he wouldn't have screwed everything up quite so spectacularly.
posted by U-B | 11:36 am
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