Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time

by Dominic Utton

  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

  ‌Letter 34

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  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.

  What do you think about that? Do my standards matter? Do I even have any standards any more? My wife doesn’t think so, for a start. I told Beth about it, of course. I asked her the same question last night, and do you know what she did? She started crying.

  She said, ‘You sold your standards when you started working for that paper.’ And then she said, ‘Whenever they tell you to jump you always jump. You don’t ask how high, you just ju
mp as high as you can and hope it’s high enough.’ And then she said, ‘What’s happening to you? What’s happened to us? We used to laugh, we used to have a laugh. And now… you’re always stressed and I’m always in a shitty mood and all we do is argue and worry.’

  And then she told me she loves me. And I told her I love her too. And we both started crying because it’s true but we keep forgetting it, what with life and everything getting in the way. How did that happen? How did life get in the way?

  When we first moved here, Martin, to Oxford, out of London and into our dream little terraced house, it was always better. I might have the rose-tinted aviators on here, but the way I remember it, everything was better then. How is that? It can’t just be about Sylvie – and it can’t just be about my job. Can it?

  The thing is, we don’t do stuff now. We used to do stuff. We even went punting once. (Actually, I lie: we went punting twice. The first time was on a glorious afternoon in May, the kind of afternoon where every cliché about Oxford in the spring is duly ticked off – the students in black tie swigging champagne after their exams, the thwack of leather on willow in Christ Church meadows and University Parks, the dons asleep in the Botanical Gardens, and on the river, sparkling in the sun and drifting gently with the apple blossom down to Folly Bridge, dozens of punts, filled (mostly) with the young and beautiful and carefree. And us with them, sharing a bottle of white and zigzagging our way along. The second time… well, the second time was later that night, after the pubs shut, when we were good and plastered and decided to nick a boat and punt our way home, like pirates. We got about eight feet downriver before I overbalanced and took us both overboard.)

  We used to go to gigs together, Martin. We even went to the theatre. We hung out in the cafe at the modern art gallery and walked out to little pubs in the country. We did couple stuff, the stuff couples do. And if love is an endless afternoon, it felt like an endless afternoon. An endless afternoon in the summer.

  And now she’s away this weekend and I’ve lost my standards. And as if to prove it, today I’m going to write something gratuitously nasty about a bunch of stupid kids on a reality TV show and tomorrow night I’m getting drunk with Train Girl.

  Standards, Martin. Always the standards.

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  From: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  To: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, September 30.

  Dear Dan

  Thank you for your two most recent letters, I am sorry to hear your morning commute to work has been disrupted again. The problem on Thursday was related to communication issues at Network Rail’s end of things, and on Friday all of the trains were delayed after a malfunctioning door at one of our depots resulted in some carriages being unable to be put in to service until later in the day. As I’m sure you appreciate, both events were the kind of unforeseen problems that one simply cannot plan for.

  I do hope, however, that such ‘acts of God’ will not put you off continuing to travel with Premier Westward, and I can assure you that we strive every day to maintain the standards for which we have become rightly famous.

  Best

  Martin

  ‌Letter 35

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, October 4. Amount of my day wasted: 13 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Lego Head, Competitive Tech Nerds, Universal Grandpa.

  Dear Martin

  Are you OK? Did you write that last letter to me drunk? Are you having some kind of episode? What on earth are you talking about? Acts of God? Have you lost your marbles completely?

  I think perhaps it’s best if we forget you ever wrote that last letter to me at all and simply agree to move on and never mention the whole embarrassing business again. But really: acts of God? As the editor of Amazeballs! might say, WTF?

  Besides: there are so many more interesting things to talk about. There’s news to report, home and away. And as well as all that, there’s dirt to be dug!

  (Did you see my column on Sunday? What did you think of this new slant we’re taking, this aggressive new stance we’re adopting? Did you like the bit where I described that unfortunate girl with the eating disorder as ‘Moominmamma with a meat-feast pizza for a face’? Or the way I basically outed that over-aggressive Geordie lad as a secret bisexual by judicious employment of the phrase ‘a real man’s man’? Were you impressed with the sarcasm? With the use of fair comment to disguise a load of unsubstantiated insults? Did it tickle you how I appeared to have not only thrown away my standards but done so with gay abandon and, actually, appeared to have rather enjoyed it? I do hope so!

  Universal Grandpa seemed to be impressed, anyway. ‘My daughter liked your column again on Sunday,’ he told me, as we waited for the train to arrive this morning. ‘She said to tell you you’re a saucy devil.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ I replied, ‘tell her it takes one to know one.’ And then I thought: what am I doing? Flirting with an old man’s daughter I’ve never met – and doing it through the old man himself? That’s got to be wrong on soooo many levels.)

  Anyway, we’ll see today what the fallout is. We’ll see what the lawyers made of it. Goebbels seemed to like it, anyway. ‘It’s a start,’ was his text on Sunday morning. That was all. A start.

  Actually, perhaps we won’t hear from the lawyers today. The lawyers look set for a busy time of it again; it looks like the lawyers may have bigger fish to pull out of the fire and back into the frying pan. If yesterday was anything to go by, the court case is picking up pace again. There were developments, Martin!

  It seems our syrup-sporting friend is rather enjoying his moment in the sun. Or rather, his lawyer is. (It seems to me that his lawyer sees himself as a bit of an amateur entertainer himself. There are too many verbal flourishes, a little too much grandstanding, for an ordinary performance. I can’t help thinking that he’s seeing this as his chance to impress, to be noticed, to make a name for himself. Lawyers, singers, byline-hungry journalists: we’re all the same, really, aren’t we? All hopping up and down, desperate to be seen, shouting ‘look at me, everyone’ to anyone who’ll listen, ready to drop our standards at a moment’s notice.)

  So. That stuff in the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday. That talk of iceberg tips and avalanches (I love a good mixed metaphor!), of this case ‘not being extraordinary, but, rather, horribly ordinary’, of all the crimes (are they crimes?) we supposedly inflicted upon the poor helpless pup – the listening, and following, and fabricating, the interceptions and investigations and harassment and honey traps – being ‘standard practice’ and ‘accepted practice’ and ‘just another day at the Globe office’.

  And then the specifics. That nosy-neighbour-type they wheeled out, the net-curtain-twitching lady of a certain age who told how she used to see photographers hiding in the bushes; the postman who fessed up to taking a bung for the loan of his uniform for an hour one afternoon (oldest trick in the book – everyone trusts a postman at the door); the florist who said the same of her van (who can resist flowers?); the parade of doe-eyed, flicky-haired girls who recounted the huge sums of money they were promised for a camera-phone snap of our man in flagrante. (Notice they only called up the ones who turned the money down. There were plenty who didn’t.)

  And after all that, rather brilliantly it has to be said, the dismissal of all their evidence – by the man who had called them to the stand in the first place – as ‘trivia’ and ‘hardly worth bothering with’. These aren’t the real crimes, he said. The dynamite is still to come. The dynamite in this case… and in many more cases after this.

  ‘If anyone thinks for a moment that my client is the only man to have suffered such shocking treatment at the hands of this “organ”, then do please think again,’ he said, waving a piece of paper. ‘I have h
ere a list of names several dozen long who have all approached me for similar representation. This case may be the first to be brought, but it will not be the last. And it almost certainly will not be the most shocking.’

  It will not be the last. That’s not good. That’s going to get everyone nervous. But what was that last line about? Not the most shocking? What’s the story there?

  I can’t help wondering who he’s got on that list. I mean, if it is just a bunch of has-beens and wannabes and nearly-weres all out to make a buck on the back of a little press intrusion, that’s one thing. And even if it’s proper celebs, or public officials, or MPs… I reckon that’s dealable with too. A Public Interest defence goes a long way. Everyone’s got skeletons to expose.

  But if it’s something else… well, let’s not go there again. Like I said back in August, that stuff about the mobile phone of the mother of the best-known victim of the Beast of Berkhamsted – it’s just rumours. Just newsroom paranoia. Not even the gutter-dwelling, scum-wallowing Globe would stoop to hacking the families of murder victims. We wouldn’t bother with normals at all. What would be the point? Where’s the Public Interest defence in that?

  No, despite what some are muttering, I don’t reckon there are any ordinaries on that list of his. I’m sure it’s just another flock of whining, over-pampered, double-standard-touting celebs looking for a bit of publicity, cash, and revenge. Although it will be interesting to hear what the older boys on the news desk make of it.

  And meanwhile, back in the real world, things are moving again too. The newest government in the world (to be accurate, I’m not sure they’re actually a government yet, as opposed to a rag-tag people’s militia who’ve found themselves in charge) are trying to find their feet. Job one: make sure that victory’s not Pyrrhic.