Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time

Dan's got a new job. But he's moved out of town in order to start a family and had to start commuting into the city every day, leaving his young wife Beth and newborn daughter at home. After 14 months of the trains either making him late for work or late getting home, he's had enough. Tracking down the email address of the train company’s director, he starts to write him letters. Emails that take as long to write as the delay to his journey has been. If his time's been wasted, why shouldn’t he waste the director's? And so begins a hilarious and extraordinary correspondence. When the director begins to write back, Dan finds himself with a dysfunctional father confessor to talk to — one who he never imagined would care. In truth, he probably doesn't. But Dan finds solace in opening up to a stranger about the dramas of his day job at a scandal-hit newspaper, the challenges of his night job as the father of a baby who isn't sleeping, and about life as it is played out in the confines of Coach C, while world events pass by its odd mix of inhabitants.