Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time

by Dominic Utton

  I’ve been trying to eradicate all evidence I’ve ever done anything at the Globe, other than sit in my chair, deaf, dumb and blind, seeing no evil, hearing no evil, speaking no evil, writing no evil. (If I could, I’d try to remove the chair too.)

  It’s not easy, of course. The published stuff I can do nothing about. A byline’s a byline: it’s there for all eternity. But the rest of the stuff – well, put it this way, I’m doing what I can.

  My notebooks – every page covered in shorthand scrawl and scribble, phone numbers and addresses, names and quotes and questions and answers; my notebooks – the vapour trail of my whole career, the physical, tangible paper trail of every story I’ve ever worked on; my notebooks, the same notebooks we’re supposed to keep for ever just in case they’re ever needed as evidence… that evidence was the first to go. They came home with me on Wednesday in a couple of carrier bags, were piled up on the allotments across the road in the dark, torched and burned and consigned to ashes before the pubs called last orders.

  And the rest of the paper stuff? The invoices, the memos, the printed transcripts and half-finished stories and tip sheets and ledgers? Rather brilliantly, someone brought a portable shredder in. Even more brilliantly, he was charging a fiver for 15 minutes on it, no questions asked. The queue was hours long. He made a bundle. And I got my slot (I paid for a half-hour); I did what I had to do.

  The electronic stuff is trickier. Clearing your internet cache, deleting your emails, emptying your trash – that doesn’t really cut the mustard, unfortunately. All of that – it’s just cosmetic. It’s papering over the cracks, it’s hiding the damp under a coat of fresh paint. You’ve not got rid of anything. It’s all still there, even if you can no longer see it.

  And so me and Harry the Dog got one of the lads from IT up, we bribed him with a couple of hundred quid, and he got a shredding program for us. A virus, basically. A nasty little virtual vandal that gets into your email system and properly scrambles seven shades out of everything you’ve ever sent or received. Trying to rescue anything legible after this bad boy’s been at it, apparently, is all-but impossible. Decoding a single message would take days – working through an entire newspaper’s ten-year history of emails would take an army of major tech-nerds a couple of millennia.

  And you know what, Martin? This clever, deadly, borderline-legal little beauty is easily available to anyone with a bit of internet savvy and about £50 to spare. Amazing, eh? If it weren’t quite so close to home, it would make a great little cyber-shocker feature for the paper.

  Anyway. Obviously we installed it. We unleashed it into our servers. We let it do its worst. (Although one old hack on Sport still didn’t believe it was enough. He’d seen a documentary, he said, and the only way to wipe a hard drive properly is to physically smash it up. He wanted to take an actual hammer to his workstation. He had to be calmed down quite dramatically.)

  As for the rest… well, that was less precise. The work phones were lost, of course, in the Thames, minus their SIM cards, which were also lost, though off a different bridge over the river. The home phones were wiped and lost, and replaced with new Pay As You Go numbers, as before. And before they were wiped, an awful lot of calls were made to an awful lot of people requesting, begging or threatening silence.

  And then, in the middle of it, of course, our Leader made his speech. No question of the paper shutting, he said! Just a little restructuring! Corporate housekeeping! Spring cleaning!

  What does that mean? I haven’t a clue, Martin. So I kept destroying as much evidence of everything I’d done at that paper as possible. And I vowed that, as long as I continued to work there, I would no longer go anywhere near an interesting story again. It’s blandsville for me, from now on in. It’s strictly the safe stuff.

  Which is another way, of course, of saying that I basically won’t be doing anything like what they’re paying me to do. And barely what you might call journalism at all.

  Christ, this train is slow. Train Girl’s not on this morning, so I’m writing this delay in real time. (Lego Head’s not on either. Lego Head hasn’t been on this train for months. After two years in which Lego Head was on the 07.31 every single weekday I caught it, after two years in which he never even seemed to take a holiday, the Buddha of the morning commute has just disappeared. Should I be worried? Should I be pleased? Is it anything to do with you, Martin? Is it anything to do with the incident? Quo vadis, Lego Head? Whither goest thou?)

  Anyway. Given we’re still stuck near Slough, it seems I’m going to have to keep going a little longer.

  OK then. Fair enough. I’ll tell you what I did last night.

  Last night I called my mother-in-law’s again. I wanted to speak to my wife. Finally. I called after I knew Sylvie would be in bed; I called when I knew we could talk without the distraction of our baby.

  And so what did we talk about? We talked about our baby, of course. About how much she misses me. About how she’s a talker, not a walker. About how every day it seems her vocabulary doubles – but how every other sentence is prefixed or suffixed by ‘Dadda’. About how she needs me. (Sylvie, I mean. About how Sylvie needs me.) About how Sylvie needs a man around the place.

  And that’s when I nearly started crying. And so do you know what I did, to stop myself crying? What I did, so my wife wouldn’t hear me tearing up and think me weak? I said something stupid.

  I said that I was sure Sylvie was getting plenty of male guidance from Mr Blair. I asked how often they saw him, my wife and child, how often he came round. How often he came round to see them, to be with them.

  And then Beth started crying. Spluttering and choking through the sobs, pleading with me, telling me she loved me, she was sorry, it had really been a one-off, it was terrible, she hasn’t seen him since she told me, she hated seeing him those times she had done since it happened (that Halloween, when we had the argument, when I took him to task in the pub – Christ!), that all she wants to do is move on, that she’s worried about me, that she can’t stand me being so horrible to her, that I need to realise what I’ve got and what I’m losing before Sylvie’s heart gets broken like our two hearts have been.

  And what did I do then? I started crying too. I said I know she still loves me. I said I still love her. But I can’t forget. I said I can forgive (because I love her) but I can’t forget (because I love her). I said I know I’m a dick, but I can’t make things right, I can’t move on. Not just yet.

  And now we’re nearly at Paddington. And that’s all you’re getting this morning.

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  PS – Martin, I’ve just realised. It’s Good Friday today! How will you be celebrating? Shall we have a crucifixion? Shall we free Barabbas?

  From: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  To: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, April 6.

  Dear Dan

  Thank you for your most recent letters. I can tell you that your 22.20 service on April 3 was delayed after a collision between a train and some livestock between Reading and Taplow earlier in the evening. I am very sorry to report that three cows died in the incident, and another disfigured so hideously that it had to be put down as an act of mercy. The disruption unfortunately had a knock-on effect throughout the evening, resulting in many services being delayed.

  On April 6 your service was held up after the failure of deliveries for the first-class buffet carriage meant that the train could not depart the sidings until more cream and sugar had been sourced. Thankfully, this only resulted in a delay of 15 minutes, which I think is a huge credit to all concerned.

  And on another note, I am familiar with the phrase ‘corporate housekeeping’. It is, in business, what you might call, a euphemism. Rarely a euphemism for expansion of a business either, if you get my drift!

  And at the risk of appearing unprofessional, it’s OK to cry, Dan.

  Best regards

 
Martin

  ‌Letter 85

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 23.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, April 7. Amount of my day wasted: seven minutes. Fellow sufferers: no regulars. (Saturday, innit.)

  The police came back today, Martin. We’ve been watching the detectives. Police and thieves in the street – scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition. They burst in, proper style, old-school rules, all shouting and running, dozens of them. They told us not to move a muscle. They started unplugging and picking up computers even as we’d barely finished typing on them. They swept up notebooks and emptied draws into those big clear bags you see on the cop shows… all without so much as a by-your-leave. A proper raid, Martin!

  They waited until the minute after the last pages had gone to press – which is a tad suspicious, don’t you think? I mean, if it were a genuine surprise raid, they wouldn’t know or care when we went to press. They wouldn’t be bothered if we went to press at all. But no… they waited to spring their shock raid until just after we’d all finished for the week.

  It’s almost as if they’d arranged it with the big brass upstairs, isn’t it? It’s almost as if the whole thing was done according to some kind of gentleman’s agreement (‘You can confiscate all the computers, take all the paperwork, arrest who you want… but let us get the paper out first, eh?’). Or am I being paranoid?

  Anyway, in they came, shortly after ten tonight. Shouting and running and whatnot, brandishing their plastic bags. And while some of the guys shouted back in return, while some tried to keep hold of their hard drives, tried to stop them taking their notebooks and files and folders, some of us just laughed at them.

  I laughed at them, Martin. I heard Harry the Dog laughing too. ‘Fill your boots, gents,’ he said. ‘You’ll find nothing there to interest you.’ And then they promptly arrested him. And then they arrested one of the guys on Sport (the same one who wanted to smash up his hard drive, which is interesting). And then they looked towards me – and then, and I still have no idea why, they looked past me and arrested poor terrified Wee Tim’rous Trainee. She immediately burst into tears and was led from the floor shaking and sobbing her heart out.

  Why didn’t they arrest me, Martin? I can’t work it out. I’m the new showbiz editor! I’m the one who took down the teen-tax-Tory! I’m the one who fingered the boy Best for his kleptomaniac tendencies! Surely I’m worth at least questioning?

  Well, apparently not. I’m trying not to be too offended.

  And in the meantime… I came home. They’ve released everyone on bail, apparently, pending the investigation into all the stuff they seized tonight. I’m not worried about Harry the Dog: he’ll be OK, he’ll be fine. Harry’s one of those people who will always be fine. I’m not even worried about Wee Tim’rous Trainee. She’ll be all right. Like me, they’ve got rid of anything and everything they could.

  But as for the paper… that’s a different matter. How can the paper survive this? ‘Corporate housekeeping’ or otherwise: we can’t keep going on like this. And now we don’t even have any computers. Trust me, Martin, no matter what the Grand Fromage says: it’s the end of the Globe.

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  ‌Letter 86

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, April 10. Amount of my day wasted: six minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Guilty New (Spymaster) Mum, Universal Grandpa.

  Happy Easter, Martin. Well, yes, I know it was Easter Sunday two days ago, but still. Happy Easter!

  Actually, that reminds me – I once had to write a feature on Easter Egg packaging, back before I was on the Globe, back when I was freelancing and therefore basically up for doing whatever work anyone could put my way. The idea was to take a selection of the six best-selling eggs, disassemble them completely, weigh each part of the whole package separately (the cardboard, the plastic, the foil, the chocolate) and then present the results in as shocking a way as possible (twice as much plastic as cardboard! Twice as much cardboard as foil! Twice as much foil as chocolate!). And you know what? It wasn’t an entirely bad idea. It could have worked. Except it didn’t. There was more chocolate than cardboard, or plastic, or foil. The whole thing was entirely unshocking. The whole thing was as any sensible person would expect it to be. So what did I do? I lied, of course. I lied, so that I’d still get paid. And after we published it on a double-page spread, and the nation was duly shocked, and the manufacturers disputed it, and we admitted the figures were wrong, and we printed a tiny apology correcting the figures buried near the letters page, I still got paid. That, in reflection, probably was immoral. Perhaps none of us are innocent, after all.

  I’ve been thinking, Martin. On my way to work today, unsure just how much of the office will still be there, will remained unpounded by the cops; unsure of whether there will be a computer to use, or a phone; unsure of how many of my colleagues will remain… I’ve been thinking – you know what we should do, if they’re going to shut the paper? We should run my story. We should nail that Scottish fool for good, once and for all. I’ve been thinking – I’m going to give that girl a call. I might talk to her anyway. I might line it all up, just in case. Just in case we’ve got nothing left to lose either way. Just in case we need the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories.

  Or… I could do the sensible thing. And shut up. I could do the smart thing and do nothing at all.

  And in the meantime, Train Girl wants to go out again. On the way in this morning, as Guilty New (Spymaster) Mum complained about her childcare (‘And I said to her, at that price I’d want my child learning Mandarin! At that price for a morning – just a morning, mind, that’s the price for just half a day – I said I’d want my baby playing Grade 8 piano by Christmas…’) Train Girl popped the question.

  She’s giving me another chance, she said. (She said it with a wink.) She’s giving me another shot at the prize. And what am I to think about that?

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  ‌Letter 87

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 22.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, April 13. Amount of my day wasted: 0 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Overkeen Estate Agent.

  Shock! Awe! Shock and awe! And also – blimey! It seems I got it all wrong. It seems that someone is doing something good. It seems that someone might be saved after all.

  Even what’s left of the foreign desk were amazed. Even they didn’t see this one coming. (Harry the Dog’s not there anymore of course – all those arrested the other night have not been allowed back to work. They’re suspended until the police investigation is concluded. However long that takes. And so we are a skeleton staff, working on laptops: the biggest newspaper in the world reduced to resources that would embarrass most student publications. But he’s OK, anyway. I spoke to him yesterday: he’s sitting at home watching Antiques Hunt and A Place In The Country. He doesn’t seem bothered, either way. I’ve not been able to get hold of Wee Tim’rous Trainee, though. Seems nobody has. Seems she just isn’t answering her phone any more.)

  Anyway. Were you as amazed as we were? A full-scale attack! A massive bombing raid! Missiles screaming out of the blue! War in North Africa! And this time, the good guys are involved. This time, for once, somebody’s doing the right thing. This time, for once, NATO and the UN have finally shown just what it is they’re about, what they can do, what they’re supposed to be there for.

  I’ve got to say, Martin, it was rather brilliantly done. Calling the head honcho over to New York like that, summoning him, in his aviator shades and all, to address the leaders of the free world, letting him think it was to welcome him into the fold… and then arresting him. For war crimes. And then la
unching a full-scale, coordinated, meticulously planned, fully thought-through and entirely top-secret attack on his newly won positions in North Africa.

  Amazing. Like I say: amazing. Amazeballs. Shocking. Awesome.

  Is it legal? Oh, who cares? There were no referendums, Parliament was not consulted, there were no debates and public deliberations. They just thought it up themselves, decided it themselves and then did it. And that’s fine by me. That’s what they’re there for – and finally, they’ve done something good, something worth the name.

  So: today, the arrest, the air assault. And, we learn, armadas heading that way too. Artillery, tanks, ground and sea support. A full-scale invasion in the offing.

  Oh – and you know what else? This train isn’t even delayed! Isn’t that a scream? I started writing because I just assumed it would be, for some reason, and here we are chuffing into Oxford bang on schedule! Even Overkeen Estate Agent seems surprised (‘Gotta 86 this convo, captain,’ he said just now. ‘Seems we’re running on time for once. But let’s diarise some face-time and do this skin-to-skin? Wicked. Legendary.’)

  So – sorry about the unnecessary letter! But you know what? You owe me anyway, right? Those other times when I was too drunk or too upset to give you as many words as I should have? Consider this a payment. Settling the score. Until next time.