Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time (12 page)

And then do you know what he told me? He told me, with an actual pat on the back, that I could be a part of all that. He told me my Jamie Best scoop was the best thing we’d run in years. He told me I was a natural. He laid it all out – like this was all I’d ever wanted.

And then he told me he didn’t want me as junior showbiz reporter on his paper any more. He told me I’m moving to the news desk – and I’m to report directly to him from now on. He wants me chasing stories. Proper stories. Because this, of course, is all I’ve ever wanted.

And I… I nodded. It was about all I was capable of, by that time. I nodded, and I smiled, and I clinked glasses with him and I slurred something like ‘Cheersennn’.

But here’s the thing, Martin. Is this all I ever wanted?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, August 23. Amount of my day wasted: 12 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Lego Head, Universal Grandpa.

Dear Martin

It’s been, what, six days without delays? Well done indeed. Keep this up and people will start thinking you run a competent train service. Keep this up and I won’t need to write to you at all.

You know who has been reading my column? You’ll never guess. Get this: Universal Grandpa – he’s been reading my column! It seems that along with his daily
Telegraph
, he likes to partake of a guiltily pleasurable
Globe
on a Sunday. Who’d have thought it?

He nodded to me last week, the day after Guilty New Mum’s recounting of the incident in the Putin meeting (still can’t get over that name!), and then on Friday he caught my eye and actually smiled at me as he sat down in his usual seat. At the time I thought he was smiling because Train Girl was running down the carriage with two cups of coffee howling ‘Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!’ as it splashed on her hands (she gave me mine with ‘That’s two quid and a skin graft you owe me,’ which was quite funny, to be fair). But no! It turns out he was smiling for another reason!

This morning, Universal Grandpa said hello. More than that! He nudged me and with a twinkle in his eye whispered: ‘Very funny column you had there on Sunday, son. You’re a cheeky devil but it made me and my daughter laugh.’

How about that? Fame, Martin! The adulation of the British public! It’s why we do it, isn’t it? It’s why every journalist insists on a byline. For the glory. For the glory of making a twinkly old man with a white beard laugh at my
double entendres
.

He winked again as we arrived in Paddington and shuffled our way through the corridor to the train door. Train Girl did a double-take. I think she thought he winked at her. She didn’t look quite as unhappy about that as you might have thought, either.

So. Eight million people including Universal Grandpa and his daughter are reading my column! Do they include you? I hope so. And if you’re not… well, what else is there in the news to keep your pecker up and engines stoked?

North Africa! Here we are, barely a week off the August bank holiday, the Reading Festival, and my deadline for the newsroom Victory in North Africa sweepstake, and it looks like the rebels are coming good for me. Lord love ’em, it looks like they might actually win this after all! And by default net me a grand or so in the process. Democracy – it’s a beautiful thing, right?

Newsnight
is amazing at the moment. Twitter is electric. The blogs and YouTube posts coming out of the area are as gripping, action packed and loaded with drama as anything I’ve ever seen at the cinema. Harry the Dog is on fire. And our picture desk… it’s a wonder they’re researching anything else. Every day the shots come in – from our men out there, from freelancers, from adventure-seekers, fortune-hunters, aid agencies, mercenaries – and every day we hear the gasps and exclamations from the picture desk, the whistles and swear words muttered with eyes wide and heads shaking.

I’ve no idea how those boys out there are doing it. Only the capital remains, Martin! Only the mad old dictator in his mad old imperial palace with his mad old imperial guard remains. They’re nearly there! Like I say: amazing. Inspiring.

And how’s it inspiring me, Martin? As I schlep to and from my desk at the world’s most famous (and now infamous) newspaper?

Oooh, as Robert Plant once said, it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder what I should be worrying about. It makes me wonder if the average bleeding freedom fighter in the dust and desert and blood really gives a damn about the affronted privacy of some bewigged fool of a crooner back in London town. It makes me wonder what the arguments Beth and I are having are really about. It makes me wonder, when I look at little Sylvie’s perfect little face, just what will become of us all, lost here on our little rock in space.

It also, if I’m being honest, makes me wonder what I’m going to spend that thousand quid on, when they storm the palaces in a week’s time. But maybe that’s just me.

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
22.21 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, August 27. Amount of my day wasted: 13 minutes. Fellow sufferers: no regulars (Saturday).

Dear Martin

It’s Saturday! Saturday, Saturday! Saturday night’s all right! Old Elton knew the score, right? Or, to bring things up to date: Saturday night’s all right for hanging around West London’s dreary Paddington Station after a 12-hour shift with nothing to look forward to other than a sad pasta meal for one and a mini plastic bottle of wine from M&S on the train home. And hanging around longer than usual because the train’s delayed. Saturday! Saturday, Saturday! Etc.

I say nothing to look forward to… there is the loving bosom of my family, of course, once we’ve finally boarded the train (actually, I’m on the train now; I’m writing this on the train, having polished off my pasta and wine before we reached Maidenhead and, for the record, we’re currently nine minutes late and counting), once we’ve made our torturous way through England to Oxford in the night. There is that.

And, to be fair, my family will be waiting up for me. Beth will be pleased to see me. She’ll say something like ‘Thank Christ for that’ as I walk through the door, she’ll hand me a wailing, bawling, howling little bundle of love and she’ll turn around and go to bed. Relieved, happy, pleased I’m finally home.

Yes. Saturday nights might be all right for Elton, but for me Saturdays are difficult, Martin. Saturday is press day. Saturday is when the editors decide that all the work we’ve done from Tuesday to Friday is basically worthless and pointless and the whole paper needs to be rewritten from scratch in order to make Sunday’s
Globe
worthy of the title. Somehow, for some reason, every Saturday is the same.

Every Saturday there’s a panic. Do we have a scoop? Is the scoop we have really a scoop? What does everyone else have? What do the lawyers say? But what do the lawyers say? Listen! What do the lawyers say?

(There are an awful lot of lawyers these days. The lawyers have more say than Goebbels does at the moment. The lawyers are setting the news agenda right now.)

Saturday was bad enough before. There is an unspoken rule on Sunday papers that any work you do on a Tuesday or Wednesday is essentially pointless, that any story you uncover before Friday (or at a pinch Thursday) will never make it through the weekend, either because someone else will have uncovered it too, or else because after four or five days of being mentioned in morning news conference everyone will have become so bored of it that it will feel stale by then regardless.

But now that we know we’re going to court, now the big cheeses know they’re going to have to justify themselves, their methods, their working culture, Saturdays have become seriously acrimonious.

It’s no longer enough to have a story – or even to have a story that survives the week, or even a story that survives the week and stands up – these days it seems every story has to survive the kind of legal scrutiny that would make Atticus Finch throw in his wig and give up.

It is, for want of a better word, intense.

Still, at least the column’s going well. Are you enjoying the column, Martin? Are you enjoying its expansion away from just
Big Brother
and into the whole of reality television? Are you enjoying it as much as Universal Grandpa, my new biggest fan, the man who told me yesterday that his daughter ‘couldn’t believe I catch the same train as you’. (His 42-year-old daughter, before you ask, and before you start down the same thought process that Harry the Dog went down when I told him. The one that ended with him drawling, ‘Well if you don’t want to cash in on your fame with her, send her my way. Tell the old duffer you know a real journalist…’)

Do you get a kick out of my
bon mots
and pithy puns and puerile put-downs; my searing dissection of the lows and blows of the more lurid end of the television schedules every week? I hope so. Everyone else is. I mean, modesty forbids but… everyone else is. Except perhaps the hopeless, helpless lot of ‘celebs’ I’m taking the rise out of. I dare say they’re hating it. But who cares what they think, right? They can take it.

And, of course, it is the weekend. Two days away from the nonsense. Two days in the warm, enveloping embrace of my family. And as it happens Beth is feeling generally better about things. She’s still depressed of course, but not as depressed as before. Those coffee mornings and playdates and toddler groups are helping. Her afternoons watching Sylvie and mini-Blair and all the other babies bond – they’re helping too. They, apparently, are helping most of all.

And then… next week. And we do it all again. That’s the way the world turns, Martin. That’s the way the mop flops. That’s the way the cookie’s consumed. And who knows what might happen next week? Anything could happen! When there’s news about, when there’s news in the air, anything might happen. The future, as Sarah Connor so perfectly put it in
Terminator 2
, is unwritten. Why, you might even manage a week without a delayed, congested, broken-down or otherwise busted train! Can you imagine such a thing?

I’ll tell you one thing that is happening next week, Martin. I’ll let you in on a secret. Me and Train Girl – you know, my new almost-beautiful friend, the one I don’t fancy in the slightest – we might be going for a drink.

An actual drink, in an actual pub, after actual work. As actual friends. She mentioned it, all casual-like, yesterday morning. ‘We should have a drink,’ she said. ‘It seems mad we only ever talk for an hour at half-seven in the morning each day. We should have a drink. We should go for a drink.’

And do you know what I said? I said, that sounds like a great idea. I said, let me clear it with the wife and get back to you… but that sounds like a great idea.

Have I cleared it with the wife? Of course not. Will I this weekend? Of course not. Like I’ve told you before, there’s no point in starting another pointless argument. So I won’t clear it with the wife – but I almost certainly will be going for a drink with Train Girl next week. Why not? Two friends can have a drink together, can’t they? It’s… civilised.

It’s not like I’m planning any funny business. If I were that way inclined I’d be going for Universal Grandpa’s star-struck daughter, wouldn’t I?

Oh! Hello! Check it out, Martin! The cooling towers of Didcot loom into view out of the dark, we’re 13 minutes behind schedule, and according to my patented delay-to-letter-length formula I’ve pretty much reached my limit for the evening.

Farewell and
adieu
, Martin! Have a lovely weekend, you hear?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
22.21 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, August 27.

Dear Dan

Many thanks for your letters of August 17, 23 and 27. I am sorry for not replying sooner to any of them, but I have been away from the office on annual leave. Mrs Harbottle and I are lucky enough to have a holiday home in Spain.

Your train on August 17 was late due to a problem with a relief driver before it left Oxford. On August 23 we were the unfortunate victims of a failed Cross Country train congesting the area around Reading, and on August 27 the train was late leaving Paddington due to its late arrival into Paddington. This lateness subsequently caused it to lose still more time on its journey to Oxford.

On another note, I would like to reiterate that anything of a non-train-related nature that you tell me in these letters will be considered strictly between us. And so, with reference to your letter of August 17, are you able to give me a further clue as to who the TV mogul in question might be?!

Best

Martin

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, August 31. Amount of my day wasted: seven minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Competitive Tech Nerds, Lego Head, Guilty New Mum.

Martin!
Hola
!
Buenos días
!
Hasta mañana
! How were the
sangría
and the
señoritas
? How were the sun and the sand and the silence? I hope you had a lovely break. Sincerely. I hope you got away from it all.

Thanks for your most recent reply. It makes me feel so much better to know that the reason my train was late on Saturday night was… because it was late. That’s some serious zen you’ve got going there, Martin. That’s some major Buddhist mind-bending philosophical shizz you’re spouting.

And I’m sorry – much as I love a good gossip, I simply can’t tell you any more about the exact identities of our misbehaving celebrities. If I know anything about libel law (and believe me, I know a great deal), I know enough not to go committing stuff like that to paper. Not without the weight of the world’s most-read English-language newspaper behind me, anyway. But I’m sure you can work it out. I’m sure if you put your mind to it, you’ll get there eventually.

Talking of libel… I’m in a funny old mood this morning. I’ve got stuff to look forward to, and stuff to dread. On the one hand, tonight’s the night I’m meeting Train Girl for that civilised, just-friends drink. After a weekend of rows with the one I love, tonight’s the night I remember what it’s like to make a girl I don’t love laugh. And to be honest, I can’t wait. We talked it over on the train this morning (the train I’m writing about now, the one that was seven minutes overdue arriving into London). We’re hooking up in Soho. We’re going to sink a few cold ones in the warm August evening, watch the hustlers and bustlers around Dean Street and Old Compton Street, chat about this, chat about that, clink glasses and go our separate ways. She’s staying at her friend’s empty place in Clapham tonight (her friend is in Machu Picchu right now, just so’s you know); I’ll be on one of the late trains home.

Don’t worry, Martin. I will behave myself. I will not stoop to the level of those I write about. I’ll make that train all right.

So that’s good. That’s something positive. But on the other hand, I’ve got a meeting this afternoon. A meeting with Goebbels. And it’s not going to be one of those meetings where he drunkenly tells me I’m the future of this newspaper. In fact, it has all the makings of a good old-fashioned bollocking.

I’m assuming you saw the news over the weekend? The England squad for next Saturday’s qualifier against Azerbaijan? The very notable omission? Your friend and mine, England’s erstwhile Number 9, the young, precociously talented and as we now know closet kleptomaniac Jamie Best – dropped.

Well, it was hardly a surprise, was it? After his red card in his last outing, his poor start to the season in Manchester… his mind’s clearly not on his game. Only right to give him a rest. Probably best for the boy, in the long run.

The only thing is – Jamie’s not seeing it that way. Jamie’s blaming us for his below-par playing at the moment. Jamie’s saying we set him up. Or, more specifically, that I set him up. Jamie’s saying the CCTV’s been doctored, that we got a lookalike, that we bullied and blackmailed him into giving us the story. Jamie’s saying he’s just another hapless victim of the worst excesses of the
Globe
.

And yesterday Jamie’s lawyers wrote a letter. A letter threatening legal action, defamation, slander, emotional distress, loss of earnings even. (Loss of earnings! The boy’s on more per week than I’d earn in three years!) And today I’m going to find out just what we’re going to do about it. So it looks like I really may need that drink tonight after all.

But don’t you worry, Martin. I’ll keep you informed. And I can’t wait to hear more about your wonderful summer holidays!

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
20.50 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, September 2. Amount of my day wasted: nine minutes. Fellow sufferers: Corporate Dungeon Master.

Dear Martin

How’s tricks? How’s the tracks? Keep on truckin’, that’s the spirit!

I expect you’re looking forward to the weekend. I’d like to do that – have a weekend worth looking forward to, I mean. I need a holiday. Beth and Sylvie and I, maybe that’s what we need. A holiday.

And in the meantime… here we are again.

So what’s occurring? Well, there’s Corporate Dungeon Master, slaying and spell-casting his way around his virtual universe. I caught a sneaky peek at his screen when he attempted the train toilet (a move brave enough for any universe, virtual or otherwise). Do you want to know what his character is called? This middle-aged city worker with his pin-striped suit and briefcase, his beer belly and his moobs, commuting between the Square Mile and his comfortable home and (no doubt) loving family in rural Oxfordshire? Do you know how he’s known in his alternate universe? He’s known as Sauron Flesh Harrower.

That’s his alter-ego. That’s what he’s chosen to call his virtual self. Sauron Flesh Harrower. That’s the image he wants to portray every day, to and from work, in these hours (plus delays) away from the drudgery of real life. Sauron Flesh Harrower. A nod to
Lord of the Rings
, a childish bit of horror, a name that would embarrass even the nerdiest of schoolboys. I was almost too amazed by it to laugh as he came huffing and puffing back from the (flesh-harrowing) toilets. Almost. Not quite. Sauron Flesh Harrower!

Do you know what I would call myself, if I was playing an online sword and sorcery game? If I was controlling a virtual warrior wizard in battles with socially inept American teenagers every night? If I was trying to portray myself as a dungeon master not to be messed with? I’d call myself after former Chelsea striker Didier Drogba.

Drogba! Say it out loud. Drogba. DROG-BA! I am Drogba, destroyer of worlds! Look on my Champions League record, ye mighty, and despair! It’s a name, Martin! It’s a name to strike fear into portly middle-aged men and emo kids everywhere.

Until that time, however, I’ll content myself with watching Corporate Dungeon Master mutter and curse his way around the dragons and dungeons on his computer screen. Although I may rename him: Corporate Dungeon Master no more – arise Sauron Flesh Harrower!

But I digress. I’ve got news! You want the scoop! And there’s just enough time to tell you about my drink with Train Girl before I let you get back to hobnobbing with the rock gods and flesh harrowers of the Reading Festival.

So. Here’s what happened. We… went for a drink.

We had a few drinks. We went to a few places. We started off standing outside a pub in Dean Street, cradling pints and smoking fags (she drinks pints, Martin! She smokes Marlboro Red!), we ended up working our way up that road, back down Wardour Street and halfway along Old Compton before calling it quits.

She looked great. She looked like she’d worn something especially. She stood out in the Soho crowds: her bare legs, her strappy shoes, her strappy vest; the way she carelessly held her drink forever on the edge of spilling (but never quite); the way she kept brushing her hair out of her face when she laughed.

We had a laugh. We had a real laugh.

And you know what else? That’s all that happened. At the end of the night, when I had a train to catch home… I caught my train home. With nothing more than a peck on the cheek by way of goodbye. Nothing more than I might give any female friend with whom I’d been sharing a drink and a laugh. Nothing inappropriate at all.

You see: I am a good person. I totally told you!

Au revoir
!

Dan (aka DROG-BA)

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
20.50 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, September 2.

Dear Dan

Thanks for your letters. Unfortunately on both occasions this week your trains were late due to congestion. And for the record, the correct term for online ‘Dungeons and Dragons’-type games of the kind you wrote about is MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. And contrary to popular prejudice, they are not the sole preserve of ‘portly middle-aged men and emo kids’, whatever an emo kid might be, but rather one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the internet, with whole societies (we call them ‘guilds’) and communities dedicated to social interaction, as well as ‘swords and sorcery’. I feel it is a shame that you feel compelled to judge Sauron Flesh Harrower purely on the basis of his avatar’s name and I must say I do consider it rather ‘tabloid’ of you.

Regards

Martin

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
17.21 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, September 6. Amount of my day wasted: seven minutes. Fellow sufferers: No regulars (far too early).

Martin. Oh, Martin. What a day. Have you seen the evening paper yet? Have you caught the news? Christ, where to begin?

Here’s how it began, Martin.

I arrived in work this morning as usual, dumped my stuff, logged on, checked my emails as usual, nipped up to the canteen for a coffee as usual, grabbed the morning papers, sat at my desk, scanned the wires, double-checked my emails… all as usual. The ordinary office chatter was going on (football, telly, kid troubles, wife troubles), Goebbels was swearing at some sad sack from IT on the phone, nothing worth reporting, when suddenly, all hell broke loose.

Have you ever seen a police raid, Martin? I mean, in real life? I’d seen two before today, both in the line of duty, both from the outside looking in, as it were, both times on the side of truth and justice, notebook and Dictaphone in hand. Today, I saw my third. And this time, I was on the inside.

There was a shout, a clatter by the lifts, something getting knocked over. We all looked up, and suddenly the newsroom was full of policemen. They were all yelling at us to stay where we were (where exactly were we going to go? We’re four floors up here) – and they were all striding around to man themselves at each bank of desks: news, features, showbiz, city, foreign, sport (sport?), two to each department. They were kitted out in the full shebang: black combats, boots, high-viz jackets, truncheons swinging from utility belts. They were acting like they were busting the secret mountain stronghold of al-Qaeda; they were loving the self-importance of it all.

And behind them all, striding in like Napoleon Bonaparte, the boss. Chief Super, or whatever. (Is ‘Chief’ not enough? Or ‘Super’ not enough? He has to be both Chief and Super?) He was actually holding his truncheon. He was barking orders: ‘Nobody move! Put your hands where we can see them! Do NOT touch your computers!’

About six people stood up – Goebbels amongst them – and were promptly pushed down again. The editor came flying out of his office at the far end of the floor – and was promptly told to get back in. Bonaparte followed him and shut the door. And meanwhile, we all sat there like spare parts, staring at the riot squad.

The only sound was the faint clicking of a dozen different camera phones surreptitiously being turned on to video mode and subtly slid around to point at the policemen. (If you’re going to try it on with tabloid journalists, Martin, you better make sure you stick to the rules.)

And so… we all waited. Goebbels must have tried to get up and been told to sit down half a dozen times. The rest of us contented ourselves with eyeballing the coppers. Harry the Dog offered his policeman a cigarette. The sports editor told his exactly what he thought of him, mostly in words of one-syllable and four letters. A terrified-looking trainee asked if she could phone her mum. (That’ll be a no, love.) The tension grew.

From her office we heard
Amazeballs!
’ editor Rochelle call out: ‘How long exactly is this all going to be? I’ve a spray tan booked and a Dior launch later…’

After 20 minutes or so the editor’s door opened again. He didn’t come out. Bonaparte came out, puffed-up and self-important like a peacock; he marched straight up to the features editor, told him to get his things and asked him to accompany them to the station.

Pin. Drop.

And then smiling – actually smiling, the sadistic so-and-so – he turned to address the newsroom. ‘Acting upon information received,’ he said, ‘we are apprehending this man in the course of our enquiries to possible lawbreaking at the
Globe
.

‘And as for the rest of you: nobody touches anything until my team has conducted a search of these premises. You all make yourselves scarce. Out of consideration for your working practices, we’re doing this at the start of your working week so as not to disrupt the production of your newspaper too much – but we will need you to leave the building. And anyone who objects,’ and he turned to Goebbels as he said this, who was physically shaking with rage, ‘will be arrested for obstructing the law and wasting police time.’

And then what? And then we all filed out, stunned, and we went to the pub. And after four or five hours of sitting listening to everyone getting increasingly furious, I bailed and caught the train home. Tomorrow I’ll turn up at work as usual and see what’s what.

And so I get on the train home. And then what do you do, Martin? You screw that up as well. Another seven pointless minutes of my life wasted. Nice one. Well done.

Au revoir
!

Dan

PS – I got a text from Goebbels as the train drew in, by the way. They released the feats ed without charge. But the company have dismissed him anyway. Lovely.