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

right, facing the direction of travel). We sit and we talk, and we laugh, all the way from Oxford to London. So perhaps I do have someone to talk to properly, after all. Perhaps.
    She works in PR. That’s why she was looking at bylines in the paper three weeks ago. That’s how she recognised me. She’s funny and smart and actually rather beautiful (not that I’m looking or anything, not that her looks have anything to do with our friendship at all) and she gets my jokes and she makes pretty good jokes herself. She lives in a little flat in the city centre, she’s single, she says she prefers it that way. She says she never has to go looking for a date – she’s always got plenty of options. She says that if she’s in the mood for a, er, ‘date’ then she rarely has any trouble finding a suitable candidate. She’s cool. She’s funny and smart and independent and liberated and cool. And she’s got good legs. (Not that I’ve noticed, really.)
    And she listens to me. (You listen to me too, of course, but you don’t really have any choice in the matter. Train Girl listens to me through choice. She chooses to sit next to me and listen – there’s a big difference there.)
    When I talk about the ups and downs of work and the weirdness of home, she listens. She even seems interested.
    And home is weird. Home is still weird. Beth and I – we’re still not talking, not really, not much besides baby updates, Sylvie headlines, 24-hour rolling Sylvie news… but she at least doesn’t seem to be as depressed as she was. Those coffee mornings are helping. The coffee mornings and the afternoon playdates. Most afternoons she’s over at someone’s house now, eating biscuits and drinking (more) coffee and watching Sylvie make friends. Most afternoons it’s Mr Blair’s house, in fact, with Mr Blair’s one-year-old son. Apparently it doesn’t really matter that he’s eight months older than Sylvie: it’s the stimulation she’s getting that’s important. And the stimulation Beth’s getting too, I guess.
    Actually, you know what? I tell a lie. We are talking, Beth and I: we’re talking about Mr Blair. About how brave he is, to carry the burden of single parentdom after his wife upped and left (so I was right about that). About how much he cares for his little boy, how he’s given up everything to look after him. About how committed he is to the environment, and to fair trade, and to the rights of Taiwanese factory workers (or whatever). About how he not only reads the Guardian , he regularly writes letters to the Guardian . About how beautiful and tasteful and fashionably minimalist his charming half-a-million-quid house in Jericho is.
    Yes, we talk about Mr Blair. Good old Mr Blair, eh?
    (We don’t talk about Train Girl. What would be the point? Beth would only get funny about her. She’d only get depressed again.)
    So there are some positives. And work too: there’s some good stuff happening at work. We can take inspiration from that. I’ve got my Celebrity Big Brother half-page – and it’s got my name on the top of it. Three hundred bylined words every week guaranteed: and a chance to show I can handle a column. I’m no longer writing anonymous NIBs and I’m no longer the news desk’s whipping boy. It’s all good. It’s all coming together.
    But then, as we know from our discussions about Pyrrhic victories, there’s always bad stuff to go with the good, right? There’s always good stuff and bad stuff together. That’s the way the world works. Take North Africa: there’s the good stuff we already know about, but then there’s the flipside. The recent stuff. The refusal of the vicious old dictator to go. The urgings to fight to the death. The… well, the death. All the deaths.
    All these deaths… and the fact that the whole thing is possibly not going to be over by the bank holiday and I may have lost my £50. That’s the worst bit. About the only person who does seem to be happy is Harry the Dog.