Opening music.

Scene: Hamilton, Scotland. Outdoors, morning. Van marked “Hamilton Eggs” drives along a street and parks outside a small food shop on the lines of Quicky Mart. Two women workers AMY and JACQUI are carrying some boxes of eggs into the shop. Jacqui also has a clip board with a ballpoint and a couple of leaves of paper on it

Opening captions.

Scene: Interior of shop. JOE MCSMITH is behind the counter. Amy and Jacqui enter the shop. Amy, Jacqui and Joe all speak with Scots accents.

Caption on screen: Hamilton, Scotland

Music finishes.

AMY: Here’s today’s order, Joe, two dozen extra large.

JACQUI: Sign here.

JOE MCSMITH: Thank you.

Joe McSmith signs the delivery note.

JOE MCSMITH: (Continues) Put ‘em in the rack for me, would you?

Amy and Jacqui put the eggs into a wire rack labelled Hamilton Eggs.

AMY: You know this is our last delivery today, don’t you?

JOE MCSMITH: Say that again?

AMY: This is our last ever delivery. We’re closing. Going out of business.

JACQUI: You should have had a letter about it a week or two ago.

Shot: Huge pile of unopened letters in the corner of the shop.

JOE MCSMITH: I’m sorry, ladies, I don’t get much time to open the post.

Shot: General view of the shop, continues

AMY: There’s not much to it. Hamilton Eggs is closing down. Ceasing to trade. Going belly up, in administration, winding up, taking a one way trip to Carey Street in a hearse, call it what you will – we’re treading the same road as every other company. Oh, and the letter also says please pay up within twenty eight days.

JOE MCSMITH: And if I don’t pay within twenty eight days then I won’t have to pay at all, is that right?

JACQUI: Completely. There’ll be no trace of the business. The entire company will just be an executive housing estate by then, and not a cluck to be heard.

Shot: Exterior, sunset. The flat, muddy river bank where Upper Clyde Shipbuilders used to stand.

JACQUI: (Continues) Remember Upper Clyde Shipbuilders?

JOE MCSMITH: There’s not much left of them now.

Shot: of Joe McSmith

I shall miss you. Always here on time, rain or shine, good product, good price. What happened?

Cut to: Scene: Afternoon, interior. Property sales company office. The Factor is sitting behind a desk and Paul is sitting in front of it.

FACTOR: I’m glad you’ve come in. I wanted to talk to you about the lease you’ve got on the property in Rooster Road. The Hamilton Egg Company took out a ninety nine year lease on the premises in 1911 and it cost them £100.

PAUL: That will expire this year, then.

FACTOR: Monday 5 April to be exact. The landlord has asked us to set a value for the renewal of the lease, and he and I looked at process locally and we came up with the figure for a ninety nine year renewal of the lease for £50,000.

PAUL: Fifty grand.

FACTOR: Plus stamp duty, land tax, chicken tax, farm tax, capital gains tax and agriculture tax. It’s fair for the location and the land use. It should be well within the resources of a well managed business like yours.

PAUL: Well, maybe it should, but it’ll double our outgoings at least. Look, I’ll offer you £30,000 with a rent review after ten years.

FACTOR: Mr Over, the landlord has had an offer for the freehold from Leakey and Falldown Executive Housing Corporation. Because you’re the current tenant the landlords are asking a bit less from you than from Leakey and Falldown, but I’m afraid they aren’t likely to negotiate.

PAUL: Couldn’t you just try?

FACTOR: Shakes head.

Cut to: Scene: Interior, afternoon. Bank of Glasgow office.

BANK MANAGER: (Examines cash flow chart carefully.) So what this cash flow tells us, really, when you strip away the optimism, underneath it all, is that you can’t continue in business.

PAUL: We have some new customers that we could sell to if we expanded a little, but it will be a struggle.

BANK MANAGER: How many new customers?

PAUL: Two.

Pause.

BANK MANAGER: That isn’t going to help all that much, really, unless they’re Tesco and Sainsbury.

PAUL: No, they’re the new vicar and the man in the top flat on Bonaparte Avenue.

BANK MANAGER: Then is there scope for a price rise?

PAUL: We’re in competition with the big boys. If we put our prices up even five per cent we’d probably lose business.

BANK MANAGER: Shakes head.

Cut to: Scene: Morning, interior. Meeting in the office of Hamilton Eggs Ltd. Amy, Jacqui, Paul and Simon are sitting around one desk. They look miserable. Paul holds up a letter on headed stationery from Bank of Glasgow plc. Shot starts by displaying the letter full screen and gradually pulls back to include the room and all four characters.

PAUL: This is it, I’m afraid. Not only have they said no, they’ve written it down. It takes them two pages to say it, but that’s what it means.

Pause. Amy, Jacqui and Simon shake their heads.

I’m sorry, unless someone has a last-minute bright idea, there’s nothing more I can do.

SIMON
Does it say what’s going to happen to us?

PAUL: You’ll get what’s owed to you, don’t worry about that, and you’ve all been here for years so redundancy pay will be quite substantial. Holiday pay, outstanding wages, statutory redundancy payments, excellent references. You won’t starve. You all have talent. You’ll find something. Maybe even I will find something.

JACQUI: What’s going to happen to the chickens?

PAUL (Shrugs) Mainly stuffed and roasted, I expect.

JACQUI: (Shocked) No!

PAUL: Then there are pies, soup and cat food.

JACQUI: You can’t just turn them into pies and cat food!

PAUL: Oh, really, Jacqui, at a time like this are you really worried about the chickens?

Cut to: Scene: Morning, outdoors. A van marked “Slaughter & Payne, Chicken Pies” drives along a long road. It starts close enough for the camera to read the company name and it drives at speed into the distance. Music: Jazz improvisation of Simple Simon Met A Pieman.

Cut to: The van arrives at Hamilton Eggs Ltd. front gate. SIMON is waiting at the gate to greet the van as it arrives and stops. There are no chickens to be seen.

PAYNE gets out of the van on one side as SLAUGHTER gets out of the other side.

SIMON: Welcome. The birds are…

Cut to: Interior. Inside the chicken shed. There are no chickens to be seen or heard.

SIMON: (Continues) ...in here–

Noticing that the chickens have all gone

Oh, they’ve all gone.

PAYNE: Where are they?