This Little Piggy Read Online Free PDF Page B

it just about fit to use again. Maybe clean sheets on the bed would help her to sleep through the night.
    She could even emulsion the living room walls, put some posters up… Then again, she ought to wait until her wage cheque went into the bank. So next weekend, not now. With a vague sense of relief, Clare closed her eyes.
    It was almost seven in the evening when she woke up, her neck painfully twisted, and her brain too fuzzy to recognise the ringing of the phone for a few moments. She let it ring. She ought to get one of those answerphones, she thought, so it could lie for her and pretend she was out. Another thing to do after pay day.

three
    Monday 16th July
Clare had had enough of the day already, and it was only ten o’clock in the morning. She sat at her typewriter, staring at the wedge of blank copy and carbon paper waiting on the table and held in place by the little metal fingers. It was no good writing about what had happened to her on the picket line, because she’d always been trained to believe the reporter was never part of the story. So the miners could shout and spit and gesture at her all they liked and it would all go unreported. Anyway, Clare thought, she knew why they were angry. She wanted them to be angry. Her newspaper, along with almost all the others, was doing the miners over. And she felt like swearing at the strike-breakers herself.
    A few weeks ago, she’d mentioned to her news editor that the picket lines were tricky places for women reporters.
    “It’s not just that they’re furious with our paper because of these editorials Blackmore keeps writing,” Clare said to Dave Bell. “All the reporters get the backlash for that. But when they see a female reporter it’s worse, because they shout ‘get your tits out’ and all that stuff, all the bloody time. It’s a pain, Dave.”
    Her news editor shrugged. “Yeah, sorry, but think of it this way. At least as a woman you’re less likely to get thumped.”
    Sharon Catt had been listening. “Anyway,” she’d cut in. “If Dave didn’t send the female reporters out to the picket lines you’d probably call it sex discrimination, wouldn’t you, Clare?”
    Clare glared at the ceiling for a moment. “No, Sharon, I don’t think I would.”
    She caught Dave Bell’s eye. His mouth was twitching. Clare shook her head at him and walked away. There was no need for male chauvinist pigs in her newspaper office, when Sharon did such a good job of demeaning all the other females at every opportunity. Why was it some women were so horrible to each other? A philosophical question for the girls in the pub later, Clare decided. Catt never bothered coming out for a drink with them. Just as well.
    The mood on the picket lines outside Sweetmeadows Colliery was both angry and resigned today, writes Clare Jackson. As the bitter strike drags into its nineteenth week, the miners are more determined than ever not to give up. Shouts and insults were hurled at the heavily protected van that rushed the handful of strike-breakers past the pit gates this morning. But the continued police presence, with lines of officers armed with riot shields keeping the picketers at a distance, meant the miners were prevented from physically attempting to stop it going through.
    The number of men who’ve broken ranks with the union is so tiny that no production can be taking place inside the pit. But the very principle of their action means…
    Clare’s phone rang. At the other end of the line, there was a silence, breathing and a muffled giggle. For a second or two, Clare thought it was some kind of prank caller. Newspaper offices were prone to them. Then something told her who it was.
    “Amy? Is that you?”
    “Hiya, Clare. How’d you know?”
    “Hi. Just a guess. You okay?”
    “Yeah. I just thought… I just wondered… are you coming to teach me the fast writing today?”
    “Today?” Clare ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t think so, Amy, sorry. Not