Deleted Scene from The Greatest Blogger in the World

Deleted Scenes. They’re bonus mate­r­ial used to pad out the spe­cial fea­tures of a DVD. We’re always very inter­ested to watch them and they almost always let us down. ‘Oh, I see why they didn’t use that,’ we say. ‘But it’s nice the pro­duc­ers put it on the DVD for us.’

Keep­ing this in mind I now present a deleted scene from my first, only and best­selling (in Per­sonal Best terms, any­way) novel The Great­est Blog­ger in the World. This ‘deleted scene’ was orig­i­nally a char­ac­ter sketch that I wrote dur­ing the writ­ing of Great­est Blog­ger to flesh out the rela­tion­ship between protagonist-blogger Char­lie and his best friend Phat­tius Beats.

I have given it a light copy edit for rea­sons of style and gram­mar, but it is oth­er­wise untouched since I first wrote it. It wouldn’t have worked in the con­text of the rest of the book, but I did end up using a cou­ple of lines in the final text.

So, enjoy. In an, ‘Oh, I see why he didn’t pub­lish that, but it’s nice he put it on his blog for us’ kind of way.

DELETED SCENE

Fea­tur­ing Char­lie Ridge and Phat­tius Beats

I looked down at the address that Phat­tius had writ­ten on the back of a busi­ness card. I was just around the cor­ner from the des­ti­na­tion – the Splishy Café. I flipped the card and realised that it was Phattius’s own busi­ness card. Phat­tius Beats – Busi­ness­man and Pro­fes­sional Opin­ion Con­sul­tant. So these were what Phat­tius had been mak­ing in art class that day when he said he’d ‘thought of noth­ing good to make’, despite work­ing hard for hours.

    I turned the cor­ner and there was the Splishy Café, right next to the Mr Sploshy’s Hair­dressers. Phat­tius was already seated at a metal­lic table in the sun out the front of the Splishy Café. I sat down oppo­site him and put my school­bag at my feet.‘Good morn­ing,’ I said.

    Phat­tius was sip­ping at a half-drunk cap­puc­cino. ‘Morn­ing, brother! I hope you don’t mind meet­ing me here before school?’

    ‘No, it’s fine.’

    ‘I would have met you at school but I just had a meet­ing with my accountant.’

    ‘Phat­tius, you have an accountant?’

    ‘Well, no. He was my dad’s accoun­tant. I was sell­ing him cal­cu­la­tors. I got a whole bunch cheap the other day. You want one? Half-price for friends. Plus you don’t have to buy bat­ter­ies because they work when you stand in the sun or near a microwave.’

    ‘No, no thanks. What did you want to talk about? I had to leave Joshua to feed Bar­code this morn­ing and to be hon­est I don’t know which of them will end up eat­ing the most duck food.’

    ‘Well, I appre­ci­ate you com­ing this morn­ing, brother. It’s not every bestie who would come to a meet­ing before school.’

    ‘Every bestie? You have others?’

    ‘I have a new prod­uct that I think I can start sell­ing to the kids at school.’

    ‘Really? Is it more excit­ing than calculators?’

    ‘It is, but it’s a bit more abstract. I want to sell Childhood.’

    ‘Childhood?’

    ‘Childhood.’

    ‘Maybe you should stick to calculators?’

    ‘How often to do you hear adults say­ing, “Child­hood was the best time of my life” or “Youth is wasted on the young”?’

    ‘Well, Grandma does say that a lot. She’s for­ever curs­ing Joshua’s soft, soft skin.’

    ‘His face is like a rub­ber mask.’

    ‘So elasticy.’

    ‘The point is that us kids are being forced to grow up really fast these days.’

    It was true. Lots of kids from school already had jobs. Cathy Old­beck did a few hours every week behind the counter of her aunty’s car­pet shop, Brent Looter worked at the Trunk Fast Food Restau­rant and Rory Corey filled in for his dad some­times as a secu­rity guard at the Schlock Pub of Excel­lence. That place is the worst. Its slo­gan is Get Schlocked at the Schlock.

    Phat­tius con­tin­ued. ‘So how would you feel if I said to you, “Char­lie, I have the solu­tion to being a kid”?’

    ‘I would say, “I’m already a kid, I don’t have any­thing to worry about – least of all NOT being a kid.”’

    ‘Yes, but you’re more than just a kid. I mean, how often do your par­ents get you to wash the dishes, sweep the floors, take your lit­tle brother to kinder?’

    ‘All the time,’ I said, which wasn’t exactly true because some­times I tell Dad I don’t want to walk Joshua to kinder and he sends Bar­code off with Joshua instead. Bar­code doesn’t mind – in fact he loves going to kinder with Joshua. Bar­code is good at beak paint­ing, he loves going down the slide and he takes to the lawn sprin­kler like a duck takes to water.

    ‘You see,’ said Phat­tius, ‘apart from school a real kid’s time should be spent play­ing video games, drink­ing from the noz­zles of slurpee machines and rid­ing around on the biggest dogs in the dog park. You know – kid stuff.’

    ‘I hear you Phat­tius, but how exactly are you going to sell this Child­hood thing?’

    Phat­tius reached down to his school­bag and brought back a big pile of papers. He passed the bun­dle over to me. There were about 100 pages all sta­pled together. The first page read You Can’t Be Young At Heart If Your Aorta Is Old: 10 Steps for Kids to Reclaim Their Own Child­hoods by Phat­tius Beats. It was a book. Phat­tius had writ­ten some kind of self-help book for kids.

    ‘So what do you think, Char­lie?’ Phat­tius asked. ‘Do you think it’ll sell? I wrote it myself. Last night.’

    ‘I’m not sure if this will sell as well as red cor­dial,’ I said, leaf­ing through the pages.

    ‘You don’t think it’s a good idea?’

    ‘No, no, it’s a good idea,’ I said, and it was. But books are a has­sle to get printed and annoy­ing to get into bookshops.

    ‘But…?’

    ‘But maybe it’s not a book,’ I said, look­ing up and smil­ing at Phat­tius. ‘Maybe it would be bet­ter as a blog?’

Copy­right  Andrew McDon­ald 2009