Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time (23 page)

Thank you again for writing to Premier Westward.

pp Martin Harbottle, Managing Director

*This is an automatically generated response. Please do not reply*

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

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

Oh, you know what? If you can’t be bothered writing properly, neither can I. Let’s play a game instead. Let’s play Scrabble.

Here’s a screenshot of one of the many online Scrabble games I have going at the moment. What’s the longest word you can make?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re: Out of Office Reply

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your email dated November 29 this year. I can confirm that Mr Harbottle has received it and will endeavour to respond as soon as possible. Your concerns are of utmost importance to us.

Thank you again for writing to Premier Westward.

pp Martin Harbottle, Managing Director

*This is an automatically generated response. Please do not reply*

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, December 2. Amount of my day wasted: 14 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Lego Head, Guilty New Mum, Universal Grandpa, Train Girl.

Yeah, hello, whatever. Greetings and salutations.

Me… I’m in a bit of a state, as it happens. I’m all over the place. I don’t know if I’m coming or going. Work is still surreal. Work is like a dream. We go in, past the vans, the cameras, the shivering huddles of reporters cradling cups of coffee, we get our security cards checked and double-checked by men in high-vis vests (why have they started wearing those? Have they been saving them for a crisis?), we sit at our desks in the office and we try to do what we’re paid to do.

I’ve finally persuaded my Tory-tupping teenagers to go on the record, at least. We can’t run the story just now, obviously, given his high-profile ‘war’ on our paper, his daily interviews, his rocketing opinion polls, his new status as the darling of the broadsheet press… but we will. We’ll get it all together and we’ll hold it in the safe, ready to run when the time is right. And if his newfound popularity should take him right to the top of his party – well then, so much the better. The story will be so much the bigger.

That’s how we roll: we look to the future. We play the long game – and we always win in the end.

Anyway, both girls have signed the necessary legals; both have agreed to the full on-the-record interview, both will pose for the obligatory photoshoot. In their school uniforms, of course (skirts a little shorter than usual, obviously, with legs bare and shirts untucked and at least one button too many undone), in suites at Claridges and the Ritz, sipping champagne. And when it does run, a nation will look at them and feel simultaneously outraged and envious. And when it does run, his career, his credibility, his family life, are shot.

But like I say, not just yet. For the moment, we’ve got nothing decent on at all. For the moment, while we are the story, we’ve got no stories.

But enough about work. Work, believe it or not, is not really the problem. It’s my home life, my own life, that’s got me in a spin. Beth is still in the weirdest of moods – and coming so soon after I made that resolution that work should not be as important as home, that all the excitement and madness of generating the news should not be as exciting or as mad as the goings-on of my wife and daughter – to take a step back like this just seems a terrible shame.

We are talking though. That’s good. We talked last night. The problem, Beth says, is not that I made friends with Train Girl. That’s fine, of course it is. The problem is that Train Girl wanted to be more than friends. Like that was something I could control. Like that was something I actually wanted to happen. Like that wasn’t something I nipped in the bud as soon as I realised what was happening because, actually, I love Beth and I didn’t (don’t) want anything to threaten that.

The thing is: Beth believes me, too. She believes nothing happened, she believes that I broke it off before anything could happen. She believes I wouldn’t cheat on her. And yet… she keeps on about it.

And I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. And between you and me, I’m pretty pissed off about it. I’ve just about had enough.

So, you know what I did this morning? On the (very) delayed train of which I’m writing to complain as we speak? (I’m writing this letter at work, by the way: there’s nothing else to do, after all). This morning, as I boarded the 07.31 express service from Oxford to London Paddington, as I shuffled forward to my usual seat in Coach C… I shuffled on past my usual seat until I got to Train Girl’s seat. And then I sat down next to her.

‘All right?’ she said. ‘You took your time. You lasted far longer than I thought you would.’

And so, guess what? Train Girl and I are friends again. Well, why not? If I’m going to get all kinds of grief from my wife for being friends with her in the first place, I might as well be friends with her now, right? I mean – why not?

So. Anyway. Train Girl and I are friends again. And I asked her what she meant by ‘you took your time’. And do you know what she said? She said this: ‘I meant you held out for longer than most of the other boys ever do. All the ones who tell themselves they shouldn’t be friends with me, who start off all keen and then run away. They all come running back – and almost always quicker than you did. So well done. You managed to resist me for an impressively long time.’

And then she winked. Because she was joking, of course. About me resisting her: of course I’m still resisting her!

Although, as it turns out, not many do. She wasn’t joking about that. On our delayed train to London this morning, Train Girl passed the time by filling me in on her love life – not the full story, of course, we’d need a decade of delayed trains for that, but the edited highlights. I think I mentioned before how she doesn’t believe in ‘boyfriends’ as such… well, it seems her list of non-boyfriend conquests is impressive both for its length and its variety. She sees people she fancies, she has fun with them in whatever way they both fancy, and when she fancies something or someone else, she moves on. She’s had young and old, students and professors, city boys and dropouts, lawyers and barristers and benefits cheats and just about everything in between. She’s consorted with single men, bachelors, married men. Quite a lot of married men. It turns out that married men are quite her thing.

‘The thing about married men,’ she said this morning, smoothing out a wrinkle in her tights and adjusting the hem of her skirt. ‘The thing about married men,’ she continued, idly dangling a shoe from her toe, ‘is that they’re almost a better option than single men. Single men are an unknown quantity. And more often than not they’re single for a reason, if you know what I mean. When I meet a single man, the first thing I ask myself is: “why hasn’t he got a girlfriend?” Whereas a married man…’ She smiled and pointed at me. ‘A married man is married for a reason. Someone has decided she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. That’s amazing. I can’t imagine liking anyone so much I actually want to spend the rest of my life with him. Say what you like about married men – but they’ve all got that.’

I couldn’t deny it. I do have that. And I reminded her, despite myself, that it was kind of something I wanted to keep – no matter how much I moan about it. But I also told her I wanted to be friends. She’s cool, Train Girl, she’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met. The irony is I think Beth would really like her too.

Anyway, she was fine. ‘Of course you do,’ was all she said.

Of course I do. Right? Even if my wife wouldn’t approve. Of course I do. I still do.

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re: Out of Office Reply

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your email dated December 2 this year. I can confirm that Mr Harbottle has received it and will endeavour to respond as soon as possible. Your concerns are of utmost importance to us.

Thank you again for writing to Premier Westward.

pp Martin Harbottle, Managing Director

*This is an automatically generated response. Please do not reply*

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
22.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, December 6. Amount of my day wasted: 0 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Overkeen Estate Agent.

Jesus, are you still here? What have you done with Martin, you evil email program? Where have you buried the Managing Director, you cold-hearted computer? I need to speak to him! Not just about the ongoing delays, the general incompetence, the conspicuously poor service his company is providing, because, to be fair, I’ve not been delayed for a week (I’m not even delayed now). No: I need to speak to him about everything else.

Overkeen Estate Agent’s here and he’s talking turkey (choice phrases tonight: ‘Going forward, we need to nail our colours to the mast’; ‘Give me an idea bomb!’; ‘There’s no reason not to be a product evangelist about this’; ‘Let’s loop back and think offline’; ‘Let’s fire up the Flymo before the grass grows too long on this one’; ‘Think low-hanging fruit first, yeah?’). I’ve been listening to him since we left Paddington, I still have no idea what he’s on about and I don’t think I can bear another moment of his nonsense.

It’s just not the same, talking to an automatically generated email response. It just doesn’t have the same heart.

I’ll tell you what? Can you at least pass a message on? Can you tell him I wrote? Can you tell him I miss him?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re: Out of Office Reply

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your email dated December 6 this year. I can confirm that Mr Harbottle has received it and will endeavour to respond as soon as possible. Your concerns are of utmost importance to us.

Thank you again for writing to Premier Westward.

pp Martin Harbottle, Managing Director

*This is an automatically generated response. Please do not reply*

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
22.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, December 6.

Dear Dan

First of all, please accept my apologies for the recent lack of responses from me. It was in no way intended as a personal snub, or an indication that as Managing Director of Premier Westward I don’t take every single one of your concerns very seriously. I was merely away from the office, using up some annual leave with my family before Christmas. We like to go to Germany at this time every year. The markets there are wonderful!

I did set up an automatically generated email response system to deal with any correspondence while away. I see from your letters that you did receive those notifications. I hope you found them reassuring!

I’m afraid that it may take some time to find out exactly the cause of all your delays while I was out of the office. Please be reassured that I shall devote my time to it as soon as I am able to.

In the meantime, it seems like I did pick quite a time to be away! I’m not quite sure where to start. I do hope you haven’t been caught up in any of the shocking practices being uncovered at the
Globe
, although I’m sure you’re made of better stuff than that. And likewise, while I was initially pleased to hear that you and your wife had patched things up and made a new start, as it were, I am very sorry that you seem to be having difficulties again. I must confess that I feel perhaps renewing your friendship with ‘Train Girl’ (especially given her penchant for married men!) is not the best way to rebuild that particular bridge.

But as I say, your wife’s jealousy would seem to be a little extreme. I wonder if there are any other underlying issues influencing her anger?

Warmest regards

Martin

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, December 14. Amount of my day wasted: 10 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Guilty New Mum, Lego Head, Universal Grandpa.

Martin! You’re back! Like a great fiery phoenix-train rising from the ashes of the engine sheds, you return! And everything is going to be OK again. The atrocities in North Africa, the horrors at work, the sadness at home… you’re here, to make it all better. Or to at least make the trains run on time.