Read Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time for Free Online Page A

(terrorists, Martin? Can those protestors really all be terrorists? I doubt it), as I made mental tallies of the dead (that bomb in the market place) and the rumoured dead (those shaky YouTube videos, the shuddery figures running away from the men with guns)… my train this morning, as the burnished rooftops of Reading town reflected the rosy-fingered dawn in all its glory outside the grimy windows and Lego Head sat staring into space as usual and the Competitive Tech Nerds talked loudly and without listening to each other about the Web 3.0 (nope, no idea either)… my train this morning was delayed.
    What happened? I do hope it wasn’t another particularly nasty fatality. I feel bad enough about the last one. And I also (sincerely) hope the driver of the train that hit whoever it was last night is OK. That’s a pretty crappy thing to have to deal with and I’m sure you’re not paying him enough to do so.
    But on the other hand – don’t you have contingency plans for such eventualities? I mean: people do jump in front of trains, don’t they? They do it quite a lot. Isn’t there a system in place, or does the whole flimsy façade crumble and fall away every time it happens?
    Perhaps – and I’m no managing director, obviously, so take this with a pinch – but perhaps what you could do is concentrate on running a business that can cope with the occasional emergency. (I say ‘occasional’ but you know what I mean.) What you could do is put your energies, abilities and (whisper it) budget into making Premier Westward trains the kind of company that doesn’t fall apart every time something awkward happens.
    Or am I being hopelessly naive again? Am I applying disingenuous tabloid logic onto a very complicated situation?
    Oh dear, I’ve just read this back and realised that now I’m sounding very cross. I’m not generally a cross person. You should see me normally. I’m lovely. I’m a pussy cat. It must be something about your trains that bring out the grumpy old man in me. It must be something about these letters that reveal the person I really am. I did wonder if this would become like therapy, didn’t I? Are you really to be my therapist, Martin? Will you be my shrink?
    I’ve got 18 minutes to fill today, and in the absence of anything else to talk about, why not? Let me tell you some more about my life.
    I’ve been thinking: how much of our lives are just a succession of Pyrrhic victories?
    You want to afford a comfortable, happy life? Fine: go get a job, work for a living. And the price of doing that is that your job will take up the majority of your time, your life, your happiness.
    It’s a Pyrrhic victory. Sure, you’ve got the security, you can provide for your family, you can feed and clothe and shelter the ones you love. But it comes at the price of never really seeing them.
    Or take marriage. That’s what we all want, isn’t it? The Cat Stevens ‘find a girl, settle down’ thing we talked about before? One true love: that’s what every poem, every pop song, every wish wished upon a star since the dawn of forever has been about. Find The One!
    And what’s the price of finding The One? Real life with The One.
    Real life with The One – and knowing there’ll never be another one. That’s a Pyrrhic victory. It’s a win that comes with prohibitively huge losses. Or if not losses, then at least a cost. A big old cost.
    Don’t get me wrong. I love Beth. I’m in love with Beth. I reckon she really is The One. But we’ve been together seven years now and the realisation that there’ll never be another one is beginning to bite a bit.
    Let’s say, for example, just hypothetically and all, there was a girl who gets on the same train as me every day, who always stands at the same place on the platform at the same time, who always makes for the same seat on the same carriage, just as I do. And let’s say, for example, just hypothetically, that that place and time on the platform and that seat