Free Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time by Dominic Utton

she’s no longer at home all day. The baby groups seem to be working. A bit. She’s gone along three times now. She’s making (tentative) friends at least. She’s no longer spending all day every day feeling her mind turn to mush in front of Antiques Hunt and Murder She Wrote . If it’s a comfort to the miserable to have companions in their misery, then perhaps she’s getting something out of it, at least.
    And in the meantime, I just get on with it. I just get on with work and travel and the utter weirdness of home life (it’s no life really. It certainly doesn’t feel like married life, much). I just get on with it and don’t burden my depressed wife with the details.
    And instead… I burden you with the details! Sorry about that.
    Still. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Last day of the working week for me. A day off for you. How will you be spending your weekend? As if I needed to ask! You’ll be at Silverstone, right? On another corporate jolly. The British Grand Prix. Zoom! Zooooom! More champagne! More petits fours ! More hobbing and nobbing with all your other managing director chums! What super fun!
    Is it exciting? The Grand Prix, I mean. All that engineering. All that technology. All that speed. Do you look at that engineering, that technology, that speed and ever think, we could use some of that here? No? Oh well. Enjoy the fizz, eh?
    Au revoir !
    Dan
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Re: 21.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, July 15.
    Dear Dan
    Thank you for your email yesterday. You can be assured I value all feedback on our service.
    Unfortunately the 21.20 was delayed outside Southall due to problems caused by the sudden hot weather. I hope the situation is resolved now.
    Best
    Martin
‌ Letter 15
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, July 21. Amount of my day wasted: five minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Guilty New Mum, Lego Head.
    Just a short one today, Martin! A welcome change for both of us, after the lengthy ravings of my last few missives. A breath of fresh air in this stifling heat, this heatwave, this hot, hot summer we’re having.
    This is the summer, isn’t it? It’s been a week now, this heat. That makes it summer, all right. A week’s unbroken sun? That makes it a memorable summer. That makes it a classic. A loooong hot one! Snappers will be dispatched to Brighton Beach to catch candid shots of sun-soaking lovelies. Should it continue for another week, the records will tumble. The old ‘since records began’ phrase will be wheeled out in the Sunday Globe newsroom. (Incidentally: do you know when records actually did begin? It was only, like, a century ago. It’s not that impressive, is it? The hottest July since women got the vote! The hottest July since the invention of the toaster!)
    Anyway. It’s still hot, that’s the point. I do hope you’ve managed to adapt to the unexpected conditions. I do hope you won’t continue to be caught out by the ‘sudden’ heat.
    I’ll tell you one thing, though. It’s not all bad, this heat. It has its upsides. The girls! The girls in their summer clothes. The bare legs, and bare arms, and bare shoulders. The crop tops and micros and minis. The toning and tanning… even Train Girl’s at it. The best-looking person on the morning commute looks even better than before. Her business suit seems notably skimpier. Her business skirt is definitely shorter. It almost makes one happy for a slight lengthening of the scheduled journey time. Almost.
    Not that I’m looking. But like Harry the Dog says: it doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, so long as you eat at home. Right? Right.
    Besides. My thoughts are on higher things than checking out the chicks in their ever-decreasing hemlines. I’m above all that bare flesh, all that sudden skin. I’m all about the