Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time (8 page)

And in the meantime, I just get on with it. I just get on with work and travel and the utter weirdness of home life (it’s no life really. It certainly doesn’t feel like married life, much). I just get on with it and don’t burden my depressed wife with the details.

And instead… I burden you with the details! Sorry about that.

Still. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Last day of the working week for me. A day off for you. How will you be spending your weekend? As if I needed to ask! You’ll be at Silverstone, right? On another corporate jolly. The British Grand Prix. Zoom! Zooooom! More champagne! More
petits fours
! More hobbing and nobbing with all your other managing director chums! What super fun!

Is it exciting? The Grand Prix, I mean. All that engineering. All that technology. All that speed. Do you look at that engineering, that technology, that speed and ever think, we could use some of that here? No? Oh well. Enjoy the fizz, eh?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
21.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, July 15.

Dear Dan

Thank you for your email yesterday. You can be assured I value all feedback on our service.

Unfortunately the 21.20 was delayed outside Southall due to problems caused by the sudden hot weather. I hope the situation is resolved now.

Best

Martin

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, July 21. Amount of my day wasted: five minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Guilty New Mum, Lego Head.

Just a short one today, Martin! A welcome change for both of us, after the lengthy ravings of my last few missives. A breath of fresh air in this stifling heat, this heatwave, this hot, hot summer we’re having.

This is the summer, isn’t it? It’s been a week now, this heat. That makes it summer, all right. A week’s unbroken sun? That makes it a memorable summer. That makes it a classic. A loooong hot one! Snappers will be dispatched to Brighton Beach to catch candid shots of sun-soaking lovelies. Should it continue for another week, the records will tumble. The old ‘since records began’ phrase will be wheeled out in the
Sunday Globe
newsroom. (Incidentally: do you know when records actually did begin? It was only, like, a century ago. It’s not that impressive, is it? The hottest July since women got the vote! The hottest July since the invention of the toaster!)

Anyway. It’s still hot, that’s the point. I do hope you’ve managed to adapt to the unexpected conditions. I do hope you won’t continue to be caught out by the ‘sudden’ heat.

I’ll tell you one thing, though. It’s not all bad, this heat. It has its upsides. The girls! The girls in their summer clothes. The bare legs, and bare arms, and bare shoulders. The crop tops and micros and minis. The toning and tanning… even Train Girl’s at it. The best-looking person on the morning commute looks even better than before. Her business suit seems notably skimpier. Her business skirt is definitely shorter. It almost makes one happy for a slight lengthening of the scheduled journey time. Almost.

Not that I’m looking. But like Harry the Dog says: it doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, so long as you eat at home. Right? Right.

Besides. My thoughts are on higher things than checking out the chicks in their ever-decreasing hemlines. I’m above all that bare flesh, all that sudden skin. I’m all about the news. The real news, I mean, not the tittle-tattle I write about. The serious stuff.

It’s getting worse, isn’t it? The North African situation. It’s headed for civil war. Take it from me. Take it from Harry the Dog, who knows about these things.

On the one side, the old dictator, funny headgear and ludicrous, medal-bedecked outfit still intact. On the other, a raggedy uprising with no discernible leader leading them. And in the middle, the army. Which way will the army swing?

This is what happens when nobody listens, isn’t it? This is what happens when nobody learns. And nobody is learning. Nobody’s looking at the bigger picture. The whole region’s about to go up like a petrol bomb and nobody in charge can see it.

I tell you what, Martin. I’ll tell you— Oh, hold up. No I won’t! Not right now, anyway. Look at the time! It’s time to say
au revoir
.

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, July 26. Amount of my day wasted: 18 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Lego Head, Guilty New Mum, Competitive Tech Nerds.

Hey hey, you’re the Martin! People say you Martin around! But you’re too busy singing, to— What’s that you say? You don’t think that’s working? Martin/Monkee? No? Oh, suit yourself then.

No matter. Because I’m in a good mood today! Nothing’s gonna bring me down. Not the fact that things at home are still too weird for words, not the fact that my wife and I still continue to live like two strangers in the same house, passing our baby between us while the other sleeps (her) or works (me). Not the fact that full-blown civil war has indeed begun in North Africa. (It was the tanks that did it, in the end. Those two tanks – and the moment that one turned on the other. When the turret slowly swung around. When that single tank broke ranks. When it stopped rolling towards the crowds with the others; when it stopped, and paused, and the turret swung slowly around. That was the moment that did it. That was the moment the army split in two and civil war began. It was just about the maddest thing I’ve ever seen on the ten o’clock news. And captured brilliantly, I might add, on pages six and seven of last Sunday’s
Globe
.)

None of it’s bringing me down today though. Not even the fact that you’ve delayed my journey to work again. Not even that you did so by 18 minutes.

No! Screw all that! I’m in a good mood today. I’m in a good mood because two brilliant things have happened to me since last I wrote. Two totally egocentric things. Two of those all-important boosts to the old self-esteem that confidence players like myself need in order to perform.

I got the splash! My first splash! I only went and knocked those rebellious North African tank commanders off the front page of the most-read English-language Sunday newspaper in the world. I only went and bumped the dead bodies and the bloodshed to pages six and seven. The splash! My name all over pages one, four and five of the
Sunday Globe
.

Did you see it? Did it scream out of the newsstands at you on Sunday morning, in black and white and red on top? OOPSY DAISY! KING OF DRIBBLE IN IGGLE PIGGLE PICKLE!

What a story! ‘Premier League crook Jamie Best was exposed last night as a compulsive thief – with a bizarre addiction to stealing cuddly characters from the children’s TV show
In The Night Garden
. Light-fingered striker Best, 24 – on a reported £100,000 a week salary – said: “I don’t know what comes over me. They’re just so cute. Iggle Piggle’s my favourite. But I feel gutted now. Sick as a parrot.”’

What an intro! What a scoop! Are you proud of me?

I got the tip late Friday – someone at a Manchester branch of Toys R Us who reckoned he had England’s Number 9 on CCTV. I was the only one still on the desk – I took the call, I claimed the tip, and so I was the one who got the job.

I was on the last train out of Euston (not one of your trains, no offence) and first thing Saturday morning I was watching it myself, in grainy black-and-white but unmistakeably the boy with the golden boots, open-mouthed, notebook out, chequebook ready. It was a story – it was a story all right. But it wasn’t a splash – not yet, not without Jamie himself.

And do you know what happened then? Just as I am about to name a price and take a copy of the footage back to London with me, I only get a nudge from the kid who called me in the first place. He’s jumping up and down. He’s buzzing like a mobile phone. He’s so excited he can barely speak. And he’s pointing at the monitors. At the ones showing the live feed, at what’s happening in the store right now. And there he is! England’s Jamie Best, handsome and tall in his designer threads and plumped-up quadruple-Windsor knot, sauntering down the aisles to the pre-school section!

He doesn’t even have kids!

One sharpish text to Goebbels back at the office (‘story big, send snapper, more to follow’), and I was out of there like a whippet, like a young Maradona, showing blistering pace, with the kid from security hot on my tail. And as we streaked down to intercept the boy Best, we talked tactics.

It was a classic move. We sprung the old inside-out, the onside-offside trap. The give-and-go. Security hung back, out of sight, behind our man’s back… and I took up a position on the wing, off the ball as it were, but close enough to see his every move.

It worked like a dream. I watched England’s hottest young prospect in 20 years hoover up Iggle Piggles and Upsy Daisys and Makka Pakkas. I witnessed him shovel in armloads of Tombliboos and fistfuls of Pontipines. I saw the precocious Boy Wonder fill his bag with Ninky Nonks and Pinky Ponks. It wasn’t shoplifting: it was theft on a grand scale, every bit as audacious and extraordinary as the 30-yard screamer against Italy that marked his England debut just eight or so months ago. And if his goal that day filled me with wonder and joy and heart-bursting belief in the future of this country, Jamie Best’s performance in the aisles of Toys R Us on Saturday made me feel a million times better.

After that it was easy. A tap on the shoulder, an introduction, a flash of the press card, a nod towards the security guard and the offer of a deal. My heart was hammering and I felt sick with terror at what I was about to do… but I kept my voice calm, I kept my gaze steady, I held my nerve. I did it all by pretending to be Harry the Dog.

Talk to me now, Jamie, I said, tell me everything I want to hear. Lay it all out in heartfelt detail, in sentimental, remorseful, sincere tones, in the simplest, most easily understood terms. Fess up to the crime. Give me the skinny on every cuddly toy you’ve taken and every children’s plaything you’ve pinched. Don’t spare a single detail.

And then, tell me and my eight million readers about the terrible pressure you’ve been under, about your troubled childhood, about your need to get professional off-the-pitch help. Plead with us to show you some compassion, to let you get your head together so you can get back to doing what you do best for club and country next season. Pose for the photos, promise us the exclusive follow-up chat in a week’s time and another after that should it ever happen again…

Do all that for me, Jamie, play ball, give the
Globe
everything you’ve got – and I think I can persuade my boy in the uniform over there, and the other lads watching in the security office, to do the decent thing and not press charges. I think I can convince them that the best and most compassionate thing to do would be to let you seek the help you need, on your terms, and not according to the ruling of some judge in some crown court. I think I can leave the police out of it, pretty much.

What do you say, Jamie?

Oh, and we need to have this chat right now. (I need to file my copy by three p.m.) The snapper’s on his way. He’ll meet us at my hotel. And you need to not tell a soul until the first editions hit the stand tomorrow morning. And then not talk to any other papers about it. Not ever. Or at least not until we say it’s OK.

Are we cool with that, Jamie? Are we game?

Of course we were cool with that! He never stood a chance. I took England’s Jamie Best on, and I totally
owned
him. It was a stellar performance. Textbook tabloid journalism. A classic. I nearly threw up with relief when he nodded and followed me out of the shop.

(Goebbels, needless to say, was over the moon. A proper scoop, willingly and lawfully obtained. When I called him, when I breathlessly filled him in on developments in the cab on the way back to my Travelodge, with a frowning, furious, terrified Jamie Best sitting next to me, taking in every word, he sounded so happy he could have cried. I swear if he’d been there he would have kissed me.)

After that it was easy. Autographs for the boys in security, autographs for me and the photographer and Goebbels and Harry the Dog back in London, contracts hastily drawn up and emailed over and signed, two hours of chat, another half-hour of pictures, hand-shakes all round and Jamie got back to his club in time for training. And I sat at my desk in my Travelodge with my laptop, shaking – literally shaking – as I bashed out the copy.

So did you see it on Sunday morning? Did you splutter into your cornflakes? My name, right there on the front page of the
Globe
. And better than that: my photo! A page one picture byline! That’s about as good as it gets, in my filthy trade.

Did you see it? I’ll tell you who did see it. Because that’s the other reason I’m in such a sunny mood on this beautiful sunny day.

You remember Train Girl? The only good thing about the 07.31 from Oxford to London Paddington? The girl with the bobbed dark hair and the soft eyes and the winningly short business skirts just now? The girl I always see at the same spot on the platform, who always sits in the same seat opposite me in Coach C every day? The girl I’ve never actually spoken to but have, um, noticed?

Today, she didn’t sit in her usual seat opposite me. Today she sat down next to me. She sat down next to me in that too-short skirt and bare legs, and she spoke to me.

She pulled out a copy of Sunday’s
Globe
. She’d saved it to show me! She smoothed it out, put it on my lap, pointed at my picture byline and said: ‘It is you, isn’t it? I
knew
it was you!’ And she burst out laughing. In a good way. And then we talked, all the way to London. And she’s funny. Funny and smart and quick. And it was nice to actually have a conversation with a girl that didn’t revolve around how unhappy she is or how difficult everything is or how if only I was around more/listened more/cared more then perhaps her life wouldn’t be so rubbish. It was nice to make a girl laugh again. It was really nice.