Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time (15 page)

Of course Mr Blair’s going. Mr Blair, with his well-thumbed copy of the
Guardian
and his vegan coffee blends. Mr Perfect, with his perfect house and perfect child and perfectly balanced viewpoints. How could he not be going?

And so that settles it. If Beth’s going for her weekend, then I’m going to do something nice with one of my friends too. Train Girl mentioned having another drink and I told her Saturday night would be good. Saturday, after we’ve put the paper to bed (with or without the dictator’s head on a stick). And with no wife and child to get me up on Sunday morning, so much the better, right?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
20.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, September 28.

Dear Dan

Thanks for your letters of September 14, 20, 24 and 28. I am sorry you have had the need to write to me again and I would like to take this opportunity once more to extend my deepest apologies. I would like to point out, however, that only the delay of September 14 was over ten minutes – ten minutes being the marker by which we class a train as being ‘officially’ delayed. But nonetheless, I fully understand how even the shortest lengthening of your journey can prove frustrating.

To address your other points: I have been following the news from North Africa with great interest, though I must confess the court case which your paper is defending has not captured my imagination to quite the same extent. Nevertheless it is fascinating to hear your stories of the ‘crooner’ in question. Quite the dark horse, as they say!

I am also flattered you consider my advice ‘avuncular’! For what it’s worth I can offer little else other than to repeat myself. The first years after having a baby are very difficult, but you must try to allow for your wife’s hormonal imbalances and mood swings. Things will get better!

All the very best

Martin

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, September 29. Amount of my day wasted: ten minutes. Fellow sufferers: Lego Head, Guilty New Mum, Train Girl, Universal Grandpa.

Oh, Martin. This is no good. I write to you last night, and now I’m having to write again this morning. The very next day. The very next train. It was delayed coming into Oxford, it dawdled a fair while on the platform at Oxford, it was overdue leaving Oxford. Is it any wonder it got into London ten minutes late?

Which apparently barely counts as a delay at all! Are you serious? Are you redefining the English language? Are you redefining the very concept of time itself? Tell you what: let’s just stick with my definition of delayed. Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that ‘delayed’ means ‘didn’t arrive on time’.

So. My train to work this morning was delayed – whichever way you choose to define it. And I really could have done with arriving on time today, too. Given what happened last night and all. Given I was up all night, watching it happen live on the news channels, Sylvie balanced on my lap, chubby little cheeks lit blue by the light of the three a.m. telly, alternately gurgling, screaming and sleeping. (That’s Sylvie gurgling, screaming and sleeping, not me.) Given it’s going to mean a big day at work today. (Even for us showbiz types. It’ll be all hands on deck, even for those of us who wallow in the shallow end.)

But it was mental stuff, all right. It was worth staying up for. The pursuit, the chase, the capture. The execution. When I tuned in, reports were filtering through of something afoot in the Imperial Palace and by the time they’d got their man on the ground in amongst the action, a full-scale hunt was in progress. Hundreds of men legging it through corridors and bursting into rooms, robes and sandals and bare feet and everyone clutching some kind of weapon. Battered automatic guns, machetes, kitchen knives, sticks, bricks, bottles… anything that could do a bit of damage. Rushing from one room to another with deadly intent and our lone western reporter right in the thick of it.

Word had got out that the old dictator was still around. He hadn’t scarpered too far after all. He didn’t even make it off the premises. In one of the thousand nooks and crannies and secret places of his old palace, the most hated man in the world was holed up. Elvis had not left the building. And now everyone who could find something to hurt him with was ripping the place apart trying to find him.

Do you know what it reminded me of? Do you remember back when English football hooligans used to tear up foreign cities? Like a ragged, shambolic, sunburned militia, running through the streets hurling whatever they could find at whatever they could reach, seemingly completely chaotic yet all oddly guided by the same instinct, the same unarticulated plan: left here, right there, up against the
Carabinieri
there, and more often than not with a breathless, half-scared, half-exhilarated reporter amongst them, ducking the debris and the beer spray. Well, it reminded me of that, in a strange way. There was no strategy to the chase – but you just knew that with every ransacked room and smashed-up corridor they were getting closer.

And then they found it. The secret door. An actual, real-life, secret door! Those things really exist! Not only that, but the reporter, the man with the only live camera feed back to the west, was right there with them when they uncovered it. And then… and then it got quicker. Things sped up – and things turned brutal.

Door smashed in, stairs charged, camera almost dropped in the crush, a room uncovered, a moment’s pause as they took it in – and then howls of protest, cries of anguish, screams of absolute rage. The old dictator’s old torture chamber. His personal torture chamber, for his personal use. Manacles and shackles and electrical cable. Bloodied tables and bins full of… stuff. Tool kits. Meat hooks. Bodies and bits of bodies. Horror.

And, finally, the money shot. A shaky zoom towards one of the torsos still hanging on a wall – and there, what’s that, behind it, a glimpse of beard, two terrified eyes and a mop of matted black hair. Cowering behind a mutilated corpse was the man this whole thing was about. You couldn’t make it up, Martin. Hollywood couldn’t do it justice.

That glimpse was all we got before the crowd, the mob, saw him too and the shot was lost in an angry blur. And then the awful bit. Thank Christ Sylvie was asleep. Just the noises alone could give you nightmares. The hacking and slicing and bashing and crunching and breaking and squelching and screaming and, underneath it all, our man on the ground, our eyes and ears, pleading, begging, sobbing at them to stop. But never taking his lens off the action.

There wasn’t much left in the end. And when they cut back to the studio, there was horrified, unbelieving silence for at least 30 seconds before someone remembered what they were supposed to be doing. And I have never ever seen anything like it in my life.

These are the good guys, remember. These are the ones we’ve been cheering along all this time. Those guys being broadcast committing murder last night, those boys literally beating the life out of someone live on TV – they’re the ones we’ve been calling heroes all summer long. Little wonder the bods in the studio weren’t sure what to say.

So: it’s going to be a big day at work today. I’ve had next to no sleep and it is what I think can safely be called a major news day. I’m going to be lucky if I leave my desk before at least ten hours have passed. And starting the day late thanks to ten minutes spent kicking our heels at Slough isn’t exactly ideal, is it, Martin?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, September 30. Amount of my day wasted: 15 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Lego Head. (Where is everyone?)

Oh hello, here we go again. Back once again with the renegade station master. Three delays in three days, Martin! The hat trick. That means you buy everyone a drink, right? Everyone in the Premier Westward Imperial Palace gets a glass on the house, courtesy of the MD’s Wednesday to Friday treble of delays. And you saved the best to last. Fifteen minutes this morning.

Standards. That’s what it’s all about. Standards, and making sure you keep hold of them. That’s the thing: in work and in life. Those North African rebels – it rather looks like they may have lost their standards a little, doesn’t it? What with the way they ripped apart the man who used to be in charge of them. What with the dismembering and the beheading and whatnot. The dispassionate observer might say they let their standards slip a smidgen there. Even if their motives seemed understandable. Tricky to set yourself up as a champion of freedom and justice when you’re physically ripping the bowels out of someone with a kitchen knife.

It’s got everyone in a bit of a flap. It’s got a lot of people unsure just what they should be thinking. (Not us, though: we’ve got a very clear line on the whole messy business. Do you want to know our angle? Shall I give you a world exclusive scoop of this Sunday’s front-page splash? We’re running with: GOOD RIDDANCE. That’s what we do, Martin: we take a complicated problem and make it beautifully simple. Good riddance. You won’t find a better headline all weekend. It’s one of Harry the Dog’s finest. He’s as proud of those two words as he ever was of anything achieved at Oxford.)

And talking of standards, the
Globe
has always been a newspaper that sets standards, right? One way or another. It’s the biggest-selling paper, that’s for sure, the most-read. It’s almost certainly got the biggest budget. It gets the biggest scoops, the best stories. It nurtures talent and pays talent and poaches talent and looks after talent. It’s got standards, all right.

But then it’s also got a certain standard of ruthlessness too. It’s quick to judge, slow to forgive. It doesn’t tolerate slackness, or incompetence, or weakness – from politicians, public servants, celebrities or, to be honest, its own staff. It takes no prisoners.

That’s the standards we set, right? That’s what’s expected of us, as the scurrilous, scandalous, standard-bearer of tabloid journalism. That’s what we do.

Except maybe it isn’t any more. Goebbels pulled me aside yesterday afternoon, into his office, cleared space among the million fuzzy pictures of what was left of the old dictator, the bits of him they strung up on that flag pole, and motioned for me to sit down. He wanted my opinion. He was worried. This court case, he said, was in danger of diluting everything the
Globe
stood for. Our standards, he said, were under threat.

Take a look at the paper, he said. What have we been splashing with lately? This Sunday aside – nothing. Nothing worth the title it’s printed under. Nothing that wouldn’t ordinarily make a page seven lead at best. Or a mid-paper investigation. An
Amazeballs!
feature. We’re scared, he said. While this legal nonsense is going on and the attention of the world’s media is focused on us, examining our every move through forensic eyes, we’re bottling it, too frightened to take a risk on a great story. We’re becoming scared of pissing anyone off. The
Globe
has become timid, he said, and it was breaking his heart. And he wanted to know what I thought about it.

I said I thought that it was better to be careful now. I said we were right to play the long game. And given what we know about the way some of the things around the place used to work (Did I tell you the story about the reporter who regularly filed expenses for prostitutes and cocaine? Do tell me if I repeat myself!) perhaps it was better to calm it all down a bit.

And then do you know what he said? He said nothing. He threw a mouse at me. (Not a real mouse, a computer mouse. And it only made it about a foot out of his hand before being jerked back by its cable and falling on his desk.) And then he stood there and glared at me for what must have been a full 90 seconds.

And then, finally, he started shouting. ‘Listen, sunshine,’ he yelled, ‘do you know what paper you work for? Do you know the history of this place? The standards we set? If you’ve not got the balls for this job, if you’ve not got what it takes to be a proper journalist, then I suggest you go buy yourself a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and head over to the bloody
Guardian
and spend your days chewing lentils and writing about sodding Danish dramas nobody watches or cares about.

‘But as long as you’re here, and as long as you want to be a journalist, you do what I say. And I’m saying this: the fightback starts here. Let’s get inspired by these boys in North Africa. Let’s come out swinging. Specifically, with your column. You’re too… nice,’ (he spat the word). ‘You started promisingly, but it’s getting boring. Dig up some dirt. Say something that’s going to get people talking. Make me laugh. Make me wince. Write something that’s going to get quoted by other people.

‘Listen, Dan,’ he continued, voice softer now, but if anything even scarier than before. ‘You’ve got real promise in this place. But you need to show me you can cut it. Jamie Best was a great result – but it’s over now. And until you find me another splash like it, make your column something this paper can be proud of.’

And then he walked out, leaving me alone with all those photos. He’d even tacked one on the wall above his computer screen. It was (most of) the dictator’s head: half-scalped, missing an eye, beard matted with blood and bits of brain. As I came out he saw me and pointed at it: ‘If I had my way,’ he said, ‘that would be our front page. Head on a stick, son: that’s what they want. Head on a stick.’

So, yes, Martin: standards. These are the standards of the world’s greatest newspaper. And I’m being told to set the bar high once again. Today is Friday, and I’m going to have to spike this week’s column and start again. I’m going to have to hit the phones and find a story. Something Goebbels will like. Something nasty.