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

and that carriage all happened to be right next to where I am every day. Let’s call her Train Girl, for want of a better name.
    So: hypothetically, my instinct is to check her out, right? I mean, she’s actually pretty hot. If I were still in the market and on the lookout, I’d say she was definitely my type. She doesn’t look much like Beth (bobbed dark hair to Beth’s longish blonde locks, perhaps a little curvier to Beth’s dancer’s physique, a touch softer, more delicate around the eyes and nose compared with Beth’s sharper features) but she’s still my type.
    If I was looking, I mean. If I was checking her out.
    Which, of course, I’m not. Because I’m married, and the price, the cost, the Pyrrhic victory of marriage is that you’re no longer allowed to check people out. Just as the price, the cost, the Pyrrhic victory of checking out someone other than your wife could be your marriage itself. The consequences are too great. The whole situation’s too totally Pyrrhic for words.
    Don’t get me wrong. Please don’t let me be misunderstood! I know it sounds like I want to cheat on my wife, but I don’t. I’m just trying to make a point. The price of victory is defeat – in all things. And besides: it’s nice to offload on you like this. I feel like if my train delays are going to have any upside to them, at least it might be that I can bore you with the workings of my mind without having to pay a shrink to listen to it all. You’re listening because you care about your customers, right? Right!
    Oh, hang on! What’s the word count? Where are we at?
    Ah. I’ve still got about six minutes to waste, I’m afraid. That’s the deal. So. What shall I say? How shall I fill the time?
    I know!
    Just to reassure you about my marital steadfastness and matrimonial happiness, I’ll tell you about how Beth and I met. Would you like to hear that? It’s a beautiful tale. It’s got everything. A real tear-jerker. An old-school romance. A bonkbuster!
    We met eight years ago, in a bar in London’s fashionable Central London. I was technically unemployed at the time, writing for a couple of music magazines for cash in hand (when they had some) and signing on to Her Majesty’s Dole. I’d not been long out of university, you see: I was still finding my feet in the grown-up world.
    Beth was still studying. She had just started her nursing degree, and was sufficiently young, naive and drunk enough to be impressed by my patter. We were introduced by mutual friends: my mate Trev and her friend Claire were seeing each other, and were at that slightly embarrassing stage in their relationship when they want all their friends to become friends with all their other half’s friends.
    So there we were. Both slightly the worse for wear, in one of those bars where the barmen pretend they’re somehow better than the people they’re serving – and from the moment we were introduced to the moment we were finally kicked out of the place long after everyone else had left, we didn’t talk to anyone but each other.
    I won’t lie: she was the hottest girl I’d ever met. (And let’s not forget, I’m on first name terms with most of the Hollyoaks cast.) A few years younger than me, a million times better looking than me, at least as funny and certainly as clever as me… I was properly smitten. She did this thing when she listened to me: her eyes widened. Her pupils actually dilated. You have no idea how much of a turn-on that is.
    So, anyway, for the rest of the night, until the chairs were stacked on tables and the glasses were taken away and the uppity bar staff finally lost their tempers and turfed us onto the street, we didn’t talk to anyone but each other.
    And then… she went back to her place, and I went back to mine. Without so much as a kiss. She went back to her place, and her boyfriend, and I went back to mine, and my girlfriend.
    Oh yeah: I had a girlfriend. Surprised? I already told you: I’m not the cheating