Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time (27 page)

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, January 14. Amount of my day wasted: five minutes. Fellow sufferers: no regulars (Saturday, innit).

The kids are revolting, Martin! They want a riot of their own! All last night they were out, smashing seven shades out of the Seven Sisters Road, firing up Finsbury Park and tearing down south Tottenham. Wasn’t it extraordinary? Christ, I love a good riot. Nothing like a good riot for filling a newspaper!

(Don’t get me wrong, Martin. I’m not a fan of riots
per se
– I disagree in principle with the principle of civil unrest, of course: arson and looting and vandalism are all thoroughly bad things and to be wholeheartedly condemned… but in this instance, at this time, this riot is a godsend.)

Yesterday morning we had nothing to put in the paper. Nothing worthy of our paper, anyway. No big hits at all. And then, as the freezing cold dusk drew in on another January afternoon, some stupid (white) copper happened to thump some hapless (black) street-corner hash-peddler a little too hard (we’re hearing it wasn’t even real hash he was selling, Martin; we’re hearing it was melted and refrozen chocolate), he happened to do it in full view of all the kid’s mates, without any back-up, and then made the whole situation worse by attempting to calm things down by standing on the boy as he tried to get up again. He actually stood on him, Martin!

Well, the rest was inevitable. A thrown brick, and then another, the cop chased down the road, the kids suddenly drunk on the power they had (they chased an actual policeman off their manor!), one shop window stoved in, then another, and another, a fire lit, a few phone calls made, texts sent, BBMs back and forth… and before the moon was fully up all the way through to dawn, the whole borough in flames.

I’m hearing they plan to kick it all off again today, Martin. Pick up where they left off. I’m hearing the boys from the neighbouring boroughs fancy a bit of the action too. What I’m hearing is that today’s going to be worse than yesterday, that tonight’s going to make last night look like a tea party.

I can’t even imagine what Goebbels is going to be like today. Kid in a sweet shop. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got out there with a meths-filled milk bottle and a broken brick himself, just to make sure the story had enough legs to last till Sunday’s paper.

And what am I going to do? I’m going to work late, of course – it’s Saturday, after all – but then I’m staying in London tonight. Why not? There’s nothing to go home for, is there? And I might as well enjoy the riot while I can…

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, January 14.

Dear Dan

First let me please apologise again for the slow running of some of your trains. As I believe I have pointed out before, any disruption of less than ten minutes does not actually register as an official delay on our records.

However, I did want to reply to your letters to reassure you that I do take even the smallest inconvenience to your journeys with the utmost seriousness. And also because I wanted to check that you’re OK. And to remind you that it is an offence to be drunk on a Premier Westward train.

Best regards

Martin

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, January 18. Amount of my day wasted: 12 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Guilty New Mum, Lego Head, Universal Grandpa.

An offence to be drunk on a Premier Westward train? Are you serious? Have you ever been on one of your trains back from London after 9.30 at night? Everyone’s drunk. Old men and young men, businesswomen and students, tourists and day trippers – they’ve all had a drink. How else could they cope with the awfulness of it all? How else could they pass the time before they get home?

And, Christ, those later trains… I guarantee to you now, Martin, that on any given train after ten p.m., somebody will fall asleep and miss their stop. Head down, tie askew, dribbling onto their shirt, or else slumped over the remains of their Burger King, hands and chin and suit pockets shiny with grease.

There’ll be cans rolling on the floor between seats, Martin, little rivulets of lager running down the aisles, and outside the toilets a pool, where the booze meets the overflow from the dripping, stinking bowl. And on that last train, more often than not, somebody slumped in it all.

So it’s an offence to be drunk on a Premier Westward train? You know what I think? I think the most offensive thing about the drunks on Premier Westward trains is the fact that they’re stuck on those trains at all, paying massively over-the-odds fares for a service that rarely gets them to where they’re supposed to be going in the time in which it promised it would. That’s what I think is offensive.

Anyway. Martin: I’m not drunk now. It’s not even eight in the morning. The sun is struggling to rise, I’m muffled up and huddled up and on my way to work and life is getting back to normal. Creeping in its petty pace. Even the riots are over.

Those riots – they’re all done for. On Friday night they tore up the Seven Sisters, by Saturday they’d set fire to great swathes of Zones 2, 3 and 4… and by Sunday they were finished. And now? The blame game. Now the politicians will wade in, with talk of zero tolerance and outrage and lessons that must be learned. (Will one of those lessons be that it’s generally a bad idea for white policemen to go knocking over and then stamping on black kids? I’m no professor of law, but I’m thinking probably not.)

It was good while it lasted though, eh? I mean: it was terrible, it was frightening, it was awful and reprehensible and totally unacceptable… but it was exciting at least.

What did you do during the riots, Martin? Did you watch them at home, eyes wide as the buildings burned, mouth agape at the streams of angry youths pouring in and out of TK Maxx and Topshop, stumbling in with hoods over their heads and jumping out again with jackets stuffed with loot? Did you marvel at the depth and breadth of consumer electronics swiped and stolen? Did you wonder that the only shops left alone seemed to be the bookshops? Did you have your own little riot party in the Premier Westward nerve centre?

I had a riot party. I stayed in London on Saturday night, as you know. I wasn’t about to venture out to Paddington when I finished up in the office at 10 p.m. Edgware Road was in flames, the locals were out with knives defending their turf – and the word was that the boys were coming up from the wrong end of Shepherd’s Bush to take them on. There were battles on Praed Street, Martin, and I didn’t fancy that one bit.

Also, I didn’t really fancy going home too much anyway. And Train Girl had suggested that if I was going to be in London anyway and needed a place to crash…

So out we went, she and I, and had our own riot party. London was in flames, but central London was partying. Zone 1, Martin, Soho, Covent Garden, where the people with money are… there were no riots there. Just people having a good time. We hit four pubs – each with their big screens tuned to News 24, each crammed with drinkers watching the action unfold like a crowd watching a big football match, noisy, raucous, cheering and groaning. It was like a cross between the Blitz and the World Cup semi-final. Everyone drinking like there was no tomorrow, raising toasts to their burning city.

We went to four pubs, and then we went clubbing. The DJ was playing riot-appropriate tunes. We got smashed. Train Girl and I – we got properly, paralytically drunk. We drank and danced and laughed and laughed and danced some more and drank some more and told each other everything. I told her about Beth and Mr Blair (like she hadn’t guessed about my ‘friend’ and his ‘wife’). I told her I had no idea what to do. She told me she’d finished with her architect. She told me not to think, not to worry, not to beat myself up, not tonight; she told me to have another drink and have another dance… and so that’s what we did.

I don’t remember leaving the club. I don’t remember going back to her friend’s place in London. And when I finally got back to Oxford, some time on Sunday afternoon, I went straight to bed again. By the time I woke, the riots were over and the clean-up had begun. And now… the blame game.

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
22.51 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, January 21. Amount of my day wasted: 14 minutes. Fellow sufferers: No regulars (Saturday).

Hey, Martin! Guess what? I’m drunk on one of your trains! How offensive! Are you shocked? Are you offended? I do hope so! I do hope I’ve caused offence by being drunk on this dingy train of yours in the night.

So. You know how I said how pleased I was about the riots, journalistically? How great they were, in terms of knocking our problems off the front page and giving us something we could report on too, on equal terms with the rest of the country’s media (which, of course, what with us being the
Globe
, means ‘better’ – when we report on equal terms, we report better)? You know how I said all that? Well, it’s a week later and I’m unhappy about the riots now.

Martin: in tomorrow’s paper there should be a brilliant scoop of mine – my first as showbiz ed – and although it still will be there, it’s been bumped right back. It’s on pages 12 and 13 now. Why? Because the riots are taking up pages one to 11.

And it’s not even the riots themselves, now. It’s the fallout. The aftermath. The trials. Seventeen years for the boy who started it all, the one whose mate got stamped on, the one who cast the first stone, so to speak. Nine years for the stamped kid himself. None for the copper who did the stamping. Not even a reprimand. Understandably, Martin, there is some outrage. Naturally, people are asking if this is strictly fair.

And guess who’s asking loudest, who’s whipping up as much outrage as they can? We are, of course! We’re leading the charge on this one – we’re sticking up for the hopeless youth against the bullyboy cops like we’re the liberal Left or something. We’re demanding answers! We’re asking for resignations at the highest level!

Why do you think we might be doing that? Why do you think one of the key heads we’re insisting should roll might coincidentally happen to belong to the very same Dibble who’s been so enjoying himself marching in and out of our offices recently? And, more to the point, do you think anyone else is going to make the connection?

And – and this is the one I really can’t work out – is this attack on the police an example of Goebbels’ genius, or of his madness? Is taking the fight to the Old Bill an act of tactical brilliance or a kamikaze mission? It’s a hell of a thing, either way.

You want to know what else it is? It’s a bit of a pain in the proverbial, where I’m concerned. Because it’s all knocked back my scoop to the page 11–12 wilderness.

My scoop! My revelation! My undercover reporter in the West Kensington branch of Narcotics Anonymous. The people she saw there! The stories she heard! Martin, it’s the oldest, the stupidest trick in the tabloid journalist’s book, so naturally it’s brilliant. And it’s all thanks to my most junior reporter, young Wee Tim’rous Trainee, a girl barely up from the regionals, a girl who this time six months ago was reporting planning permission applications and the squabbles inside local councillors’ meetings. When she came to me and said she’d had this idea, to enrol at NA in swanky and celeb-filled West Ken to see who turned up, to see what might come out of it – well, the first thing I did was laugh, of course.

The second thing I did was tell her how I’ve heard that story told a dozen times before – and how each time the journo’s been sussed within about five minutes of walking through the door. And then the third thing I did was tell her to go for it. Why not? It shows the girl’s thinking, at least.

I tell you – she may look like she’d be terrified of her own shadow, but that girl’s got serious skills.

It took her precisely two meetings, Martin. Two sessions with the smackheads and dope fiends of West London, two meetings with the chaz-monkeys and pill-poppers of Kensington town. She went there twice and she got me four Class A names, with pure, uncut confessions to their ever-so-secret habits.

Four! An actor’s wife, a high-street heiress, a high court judge and, to kick it all off, a royal butler. An actual butler to the actual monarchy! All standing up there, believing the whole ‘anonymous’ shtick, unburdening themselves, letting it all out, telling my girl with the tape recorder all about their secret sessions with the pills and pipes and powders. Unbelievable.

We’re running with the butler first, of course – he’s the man who squeezes the toothpaste for the man who ties the shoes of the man who would be king! And he’s also nosing up five grand a week’s worth of the old Colombian marching powder. It’s a brilliant story. And now it’s going on pages 11 and 12. Justice, Martin! Where’s the justice?

I’m just hoping for a better show in the coming fortnight. We’ll go for the wife and the heiress a week tomorrow, and hit the judge the week after. Build the whole thing up into a kind of high-society drugs ring. Stretch it over three weeks and make the story look like a genuine phenomenon. Like everyone in swanky West Ken is at it. Plus, of course, by doing so we may have more names to add by then, more establishment figures with their noses caught in the till, so to speak.