Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time by Dominic Utton Page A

Paddington, July 26.
    Dear Dan
    Thank you for your letters of 21 and 26 July. I’m sorry to hear that once again our service has not been up to the standard I expect. The five-minute delay on the 21st was due to minor congestion and the lengthier delay on the 26th occurred because of the late arrival of a driver to another service in the Reading area. Unfortunately that left that particular service stuck on the platform – which then impacted upon a wide number of other services, yours included.
    On unrelated matters, I’m afraid I don’t take generally take the Sunday Globe as a rule, though I have been known to pick it up on occasion. I am very pleased to hear that you scored a ‘scoop’ however and I do hope it makes things a little easier for you at work. I am more of a rugby than a footer fan myself, but I also hope Mr Best receives the professional help he so clearly needs. He would seem to be a very troubled young man.
    Best regards
    Martin
‌ Letter 17
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Re: 20.50 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, July 27. Amount of my day wasted: nine minutes. Fellow sufferers: Corporate Dungeon Master.
    Martin, I’ve been thinking again.
    What you want to do is take inspiration from the people of North Africa. Look south. Look beyond Paddington station and over Europe and into the streets and the squares of North Africa. There’s change afoot. There’s a revolution going on – and for once, it looks like the good guys are winning.
    It’s inspiring, isn’t it? It only takes a spark. It only takes a moment to change everything about everything.
    We’ve got another sweepstake running in the Sunday Globe newsroom. This war will be over by Christmas? Forget that: this war will be over by Halloween. (Although I’m not sure they celebrate either Christmas or Halloween down there.) When will this war be over? You know where I’ve put my money? I’ve put £50 on this war being over by the August Bank Holiday. I’ve put half a ton of my hard-earned on this war being over by the Reading Festival. They’ll be dancing on top of those tanks before September – you watch.
    And if that’s not inspiring enough for you, take a look at the streets of Athens! Have a butchers at the piazzas of Naples! Get yourself an eyeful of what’s going down in Seville and Murcia! The people are taking control again. There’s agitation. Aggravation. There’s anticipation of change. Strikes and barricades, marches and demonstrations: all across southern Europe.
    What are they getting up and angry about in our holiday hotspots? Who cares? Isn’t it enough that they are at all? Taxes, unemployment, corruption, student rights, agricultural policies… whatever. The point is that they’re putting down their cappuccinos, they’re abandoning their kebabs, they’re spurning their siestas and they’re shouting about it. They’re trying to make a change. They’re trying to make a change .
    Still not inspired? OK, try this. How’s this for a tale of changing fortunes? You can keep your civil wars and revolutions, you can pooh-pooh your populist uprisings – this one’s a doozy. This one came straight out of left field.
    It’s about me.
    It seems I’m the man these days. At work, I mean. (I’m not the man at home. I mean, I am the man, the only man in the house, the only one of the three of us there with a Y chromosome – but I’m still not the man. I’m still the one to blame for everything, back at home.)
    But at work… at work, I’m the man. Since my adventures with England’s Number 9, I’m the new darling of the news desk. It may even be that my days of non-bylined NIBs (News In Briefs, Martin, do keep up) might be numbered. It may even be that all those hours I spend getting the stories and standing up the stories, only to hand the stories over to someone more senior, might be over.
    Goebbels is practically in love with me