I sat next to a lovely old American gentleman on my coach journey to London this morning. He was over for his holidays. He ‘did’ the Lake District at the weekend, he ‘did’ Oxford yesterday and he was ‘doing’ London today and tomorrow. On Saturday he was off to France to ‘do’ Paris, before tripping over to Deutschland to ‘do’ Germany – all of it, mind – on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. He was one of life’s doers. I really liked him. I liked his energy. He was about 85 and he was ‘doing’ Europe in about ten days. Europe was totally his lobster!
When I grow old I’d like to be like that. The doing bit/Europe being my lobster thing, I mean, obviously. Not the holidaying alone on a coach bit. When I grow old I’d like to be one of life’s doers. How about you? Would you like to be a doer someday too?
And in the meantime, and in the absence of any doing to do – I made a wordsearch for you. It’s not in the same league as my old dad’s were, but it’s something. See how many you can find!
Au revoir!
Dan
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Re: 07.31 / 07.52 / 08.06 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, July 12.
Dear Dan
I am sorry once again that you have had to write to me. The 21.48 on July 7 was late leaving Paddington due to a problem with the relief driver.
Yesterday we unfortunately experienced widespread disruption to our services in the morning due to vandalism on the line in the Banbury area. The theft of copper wiring is a serious and ongoing problem and one that we are working hard with Network Rail and the British Transport Police to prevent in future.
I am sorry that you felt you had to catch the coach to London, and also sorry that the delay caused problems when you arrived at work. ‘Goebbels’ sounds a fearsome chap!
Best
Martin
Letter 14
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Re: 21.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, July 15. Amount of my day wasted: 16 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Overkeen Estate Agent.
Top o’ the pops to you, Martin. Phew! What a scorcher! Summer has arrived. Here comes the sun, little darlin’… and I say: it’s all right.
Summertime – and the view from the window of one of your delayed trains as the sun sets over England…
London is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Not Tower Bridge or Buckingham Palace or St Paul’s Cathedral or any of the other tourist traps, but the real London. The dirty jumble of it. The glorious mess. The triumph of human endeavour and failure and achievement that’s written in every building – from the vaulted roof of Paddington Station to the sloppy tower blocks west towards Ealing Broadway. In the purple haze of a summer sunset, it all looks beautiful.
And the train line, Martin – it cuts right through it all. To gaze out of a smeary Premier Westward train window as you arrow west out of the capital is to see a sight you won’t find advertised in any visitor brochures (well, maybe in one of yours, but you get the point) but it should be. It should be.
Those great slabs of building either side of the sidings around the Paddington basin – every window holding its own human story, hidden behind nicotine curtains and pot plants; the brown brutal thrust of the Trellick Tower, burnished by the last of the sun, somehow looking something like its architects must have first imagined it would – like a symbol of hope, of aspiration. The goods yards and building sites and vast car parks of Acton and Southall – in the right light they speak of industry, of work, of progress… of getting things done. And there’s nothing so gloriously human as the wonder of getting things done, is there? That’s what we’re here for: to do things. To get things done.
And then the slow slipping away of the city, the sporadic trees and parks of Hayes, and Drayton and Slough, until beyond – the gentle glory of the English countryside. In the dusk, in the last of the light, over and across and along the looping line of the River Thames towards Oxford. It’s beautiful, Martin.
And after the sun had set and the skies had darkened? Well, then there’s nothing to look at but your own reflection. Or those of your fellow passengers. Actual humanity. And, of course, actual humanity does tend to break the spell, somewhat.
So it’s a sigh, an unscrewing of the cheap wine, an unconscious sniff of the collective sweat and the fractious soundtrack of Overkeen Estate Agent jibber-jabbering endlessly into his white iPhone about ‘event horizons’ and ‘outsourcing the subs bench’ and ‘making the portfolio wash its own face’ and all the various ‘legendary’ deals he and his ‘bros’ are setting up.
I’m on this train too much, Martin.
And if you think I’m annoyed about it, you should hear what Beth has to say. She doesn’t know I’m writing to you, of course (she’d only laugh at me. She’d only call it a midlife crisis, these rants of mine. She’d think that – and she’s supposed to be the depressed one. What does that say?) but she’s not at all happy with the hours I’m away every day.
They’re not helping the situation at home, let’s put it that way. Me never being around, I mean. They’re not helping convince my postnatally depressed wife that there is more to her life than attending to the every whim of the baby. They’re not helping her believe that there was any point in marrying me at all actually, when we barely see each other, and less still when we’re both awake.
They’re not helping her believe that her life is in any way better now than it was before she married me.
All she does, she says, is feed, burp and change. Feed, burp and change. Her life is broken up into three-hour segments, 180-minute chunks, eight of them a day, during which she feeds, burps and changes the baby. Milk, wind and poo. That’s all she’s about now.
Do you know how long it takes to feed, wind and change a three-month-old baby? Beth reckons it takes about an hour and a half. Which gives her another hour and a half after she’s finished before she has to do it all over again. Eight times in every 24-hour day, seven days a week.
She’s sleeping in one-hour bursts, every now and then through the day and night. She’s eating where and when she can: frantic, gobbled-down, quick microwavable bits of whatever she can get, any ideas of enjoyment or pleasure in food abandoned in favour of simply getting something down her in those brief, blessed moments when Sylvie’s not screaming for attention.
Refuelling, that’s what she calls it. Not eating. Refuelling. And she’s low on fuel. She says she feels like she’s constantly running on fumes. Like she can only put enough gas in the tank to get her through the next few miles.
And all the time, the constant, deafening, relentless, ear-piercing, heart-piercing, soul-piercing crying. The perpetual wail of the three-month-old; and the perpetual sobs of her mother. Neither seem to stop for very long. They’re driving me crazy and I’m hardly ever even there.
So where am I? Where am I when all this is going on? I’m at work, mostly, or travelling to and from work, or sitting on one of your delayed trains fretting about it all. I’m barely at home for eight hours in every 24. Monday to Friday I’m around for two, maybe three, of those feed–wind–change routines. And always in the middle of the night, when normal people are sleeping.
Through the week I do try to help: doing the midnight shuffle with the screaming bundle, shushing and cooing and pacing the same six paces across the bedroom floor, up and down, down and up, shush, shush there, shhhhh… I put in what hours I can. But I can’t breastfeed. Beth’s still got to get up to do that. And I do need to get up and function at work the next day. We’ve got a mortgage to pay. I can’t work all day and stay up with Sylvie all night.
Weekends are easier. For Beth, I mean. Weekends she’ll at least sleep more, waking only to hoik her nightie down or pull her pyjama top up, latching Sylvie on half-comatose, mechanically, somnambulantly, refuelling her, filling her up, giving her the necessary, before
her little flushed face finally turns away, lips still pursed like the tiniest rosebud, white drops like dew on them, and Beth will hand her back to me without a word and collapse back into bed and sleep again.
And despite it all – I can’t help myself – I’ll find myself thinking: is that the loveliest sight in the world? Is that the most beautiful thing I’ll ever see in my life? And then the rosebud lips will tighten and widen, and the eyes will screw up into angry knots, and Sylvie will start with the screaming again.
Christ, it’s hard, isn’t it? How do people do it? Beth and I – we spend most of our time thinking: this can’t be how it should be done. This doesn’t make sense at all. There must be an easier way, there must be something we’re missing here… After millions of years of evolution, we still have to go through this? Science and nature and the human race hasn’t come up with anything better than this?
Not that we actually discuss it or anything. Not that we ever actually talk or anything. When I’m around, then I’m on the Sylvie shift, and Beth grabs the chance to do her own thing (sleep). She’s not going to waste valuable sleeping time actually talking to her husband or anything. And even if she were to, I’d only be telling her about work, about my increasingly unhinged boss, about the culture of paranoia and fear that’s beginning to creep into the place. About how we’re all getting a bit worried this whole scandal might not blow over after all.
She’s depressed enough already. No point in having her worry about me on top of it all, right?
Although there is one silver lining: at least she’s no longer at home all day. The baby groups seem to be working. A bit. She’s gone along three times now. She’s making (tentative) friends at least. She’s no longer spending all day every day feeling her mind turn to mush in front of Antiques Hunt and Murder She Wrote. If it’s a comfort to the miserable to have companions in their misery, then perhaps she’s getting something out of it, at least.
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
Letter 15
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
Letter 16
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 moo
d 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!
Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time Page 6