Blog - Page 3 of 3 - The Clock Shop

History – maybe it’s all just smoke and mirrors

I’m reading Hilary Mantel’s ‘The Mirror and the Light’ and loving it. Or should it be called ‘The Smoke and the Mirrors’? I become increasingly conscious that history is not all it at first appears to be. Indeed, some of it may not even be real.

light on derwent water

If ever you thought you could perhaps pen a novel, reading Hilary Mantel will convince you that you probably can’t. She writes so beautifully. She makes the most intimate detail sparkle whilst never losing track of the complex interwoven tapestry of plot. Sometimes her descriptions stop you on the page and you have to just sit, breathless, and soak up their beauty and richness. That is a rare talent.

Immersed in the meticulously researched history she describes, of conversations and glances, of personal reflections and dark thoughts, I find myself irritated by the introduction of what she admits are invented characters – an intrusive servant perhaps or an illegitimate daughter. Why, I wonder, spoil the factual portrayal of important moments in history by ‘making up’ extraneous characters?

So compelling is the rest of her writing that it takes time for me to realise my folly.

Did I bring the milk in?

This is fiction. Those historic conversations and angst-ridden musings by which I am so convinced – they are made up too. The characters may be real. But those private moments of confession or intimacy? She can’t know they happened. She can only surmise motive on the part of the king, or imagine the anxieties of the brilliantly portrayed Cremuel. Those musings that Henry VIII, Ann Boleyn, Norfolk or Cramner reveal in the pages of her books were never actually thought. They are in her imagination, not in ‘real’ history at all.

You don’t have to be a Mantel reader to spot it. You are surrounded by examples elsewhere. David Olusoga does it all the time in his excellent TV series ‘A House Through Time’. When he doesn’t have evidence for something, he simply makes it up. “Looking down the bleak hallway of 121 Grove Street, poor Annie Orphan must have thought, ‘What does my life hold?’” And we happily go along with it.

But really? Must she? How does David know? She might have been thinking, “I wonder what historians will make of this house in 100 years’ time” or “Did I bring the milk in?”.

Perhaps we are no better

Don’t get me started on Netflix’s ‘The Crown’.

But now that I understand what’s going on, I can happily forgive Hilary Mantel her invented characters just as easily as I embrace her invented encounters and those illuminating, imagined conversations between real characters. It all adds wonderfully to the richness of the picture and it engages us, utterly.

And I wonder too, as we think back over our own histories, how much of what we remember is imagined. Or how much of what we attribute as motive or hidden thought in others is actually just driven by our desire to support the narrative we choose to create.

That worrying moment of no return…

There comes a time when you have to take the plunge. It is that worrying moment of no return.

Ansonia drop dial wall clock — *Once dismantled, will all those parts go back together again?*

There it is. Exposed, out of its case, separated from its hands and face. One plate is removed and everything is just about holding in place, for now. Thankfully you have remembered to let down the power on the springs so that all that pent up energy contained in their wound coils has been released. That way, as you start to dismantle the mechanism, it won’t come to bite you back.

And they are all there, all the bits that go together to make something which is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Now is the time to take things apart, mindfully dismantle, inspect, resolve flaws, clean and nurture. There will undoubtedly be a point when all those components sit on the workbench, a puzzling array of disparate bits, and the fear kicks in that you will simply never remember how they all go back together.

One of life’s simple pleasures

Another time I’ll write about how dismantling and reassembling clocks has taught me the art of patience – of quite literally ‘taking time’. But here, suffice to say that one of the beauties of clocks is that they comprise elements all of which have their rightful place. With applied patience, they do fit together, they connect, perfectly. The sense of achievement at the point at which those wheels once again interlock and turn each other in turn is one of life’s simple euphoric pleasures.

And as with so many things in life, by gently, sensitively taking them apart with care – inspecting, refreshing and reassembling – you get a better understanding of what makes them tick.

To see the clock whose movement is pictured above, click here

Putting a name to a face – and why it matters

In the mid to late eighteenth century, it didn’t seem to matter too much. Neddey Wells, Neddy Wells? When it comes to a name, what is an extra or a missing ‘e’ amongst friends?

Nowadays it seems to matter almost too much. Get one digit wrong in an email address and the dreaded ‘your email did not reach some of its intended recipients’ message is only moments away from gracing your inbox. Make a mistake keying in a URL and you find yourself not immediately where you intended to be. Instead you are perhaps shepherded to safety by that watcher and manipulator of all things – Google – and asked ‘ did you mean….?’.

It still strikes me as odd though. Neddey Wells of Shepley. Here was a man who, back in the 1770s, engineered clock movements with a craftsman’s precision. As a result of his skill, clocks he made before the French Revolution and the start of the American War of Independence still work today, two and a half centuries later.

Detail matters

To the 18th century clockmaker, detail clearly mattered. A fraction of a fraction of an inch out on any component in a clock movement and the whole thing wouldn’t work.

Look at the symmetry of the clock hood with its beautifully fluted wooden pillars and its balanced broken swan neck pediment. Then look at the engravings on the face of Neddey Wells’ brass dialled clocks. They are so ornate, so beautifully wrought, so artistic. Whether he did his own engraving or bought in dials from specialists, it clearly mattered that it was right.

But seemingly it didn’t worry Neddey that his name was spelled in at least two different ways on clocks that survive to this day. Even if he couldn’t himself read, he would have been conscious, surely, of the difference between what he saw on one face and what he saw on another?

What’s in a name?

There is so much I don’t know. We know so little of the life of Neddey Wells, and what we think we know seems contradictory. That is another story entirely. But the name so often provides the starting point for finding out more.

My researches around the subject have unearthed fascinating details about members of his family and their lives but precious little about the man himself. Yet his presence is so palpable each time the clock he crafted strikes the hour with unerring reliability and its ring echoes lastingly in my home.

What I do know for certain is this. On longcase clocks, names matter.

When Frederick James Britten first published his Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers in 1894, he fulfilled that desperate yearning in clock lovers to know something more about the character behind the clocks they owned. G.H. Baillie and Brian Loomes in turn have continued the work with missionary zeal. Their books, even in this digital age of universally shared knowledge, are must-have fixtures on the clock-lovers’ bookshelves.

Transcending time

Longcase clocks exude character. They were each individually crafted by individuals whose own personalities shaped their masterpieces’ personalities. And every evening, as I pull the cord which lifts the single weight which drives the thirty hour movement which turns the hands – just as so many before me have done these past 250 years – I look the man in the face and know that, however he spells his name, his legacy transcends time.

Butterflies – the Yorkshire Moors and the question of destiny

Coming out of lockdown, the Yorkshire Moors and the Yorkshire Wolds have never looked so stunning. And for me, a bit of a birdwatcher, the new revelation has been butterflies. They might always have been there but I see them now through new eyes.

Standing on the Cleveland Way above Kepwick and looking out across the Vale of Mowbray to the eastern edge of the Yorkshire Dales is spectacular enough at any time. To do so as the sun is setting over the far hillsides whilst six kestrels hang in the updraft above you, hunting prey on the scarp slope, is something else.

It all gave such a sense of freedom and space after months exercising only on the flat expanse of Ouse floodplain. (Yes, I know, hardship is relative so please understand I am really, really not complaining).

Peacocks and ringlets

It was on my first post-lockdown walk, up from Kepwick then along the ridge towards Osmotherley (such a splendid Yorkshire twang to it, that place name), that I began to notice them – bright, colourful, and strangely deliberate in their movement. Mostly they were peacocks and small tortoiseshells I later discovered. But by the time I had headed off the ridge and down through forest to the valley floor again, I was struck by another. This was less spectacular in its brightness – soft brown but with remarkable eyespots and a sort of glowing translucence around the edges of its wings. It waited, on foliage, letting me come close as if it took delight in posing for pictures. A ringlet.

Later still, on the Wolds, it was the common blue, gatekeeper, marbled white and the green veined white that captivated me. And of course the peacock with its startling pattern of eyespots, designed to ward off or confuse predators.

At the mercy of the wind

To think, for all these years I had believed that such delicate creatures had no control over their destiny or direction. I thought that being so light and frail they travelled merely at the mercy of the wind, blown wherever the breeze took them. Now, I discover, they have purpose. Monarch butterflies have been tracked flying 3000 miles in directions of their own choosing. The painted lady can fly 100 miles in a day, at speeds of up to 30mph. York scientists have discovered that it migrates an incredible 9000 miles but it takes six generations to make the journey. Now that is putting species before self!

The peacock, I learn, as I find one hibernating in the open case of a mantel clock on top of the bookcase in my growlery, isn’t a migrator but is largely nomadic. It lives for up to eleven months and wards off predators by rubbing its wings together to make a hissing sound. I listen hard but the ticking of a myriad of clocks drowns out the warning.

Fine, fragile, in control

As I walk, I will always delight at the call of the curlew or the scream of the oystercatcher, the soar of the buzzard or the busy fussy strut of the pied wagtail. I will relish the jumble of goldfinches chasing along hedgerows, the majestic lone yellowhammer on a telegraph wire above stubble fields.

But now I have a new diversion – the spectacular, inspirational flight of butterflies making their way purposefully across the glorious Yorkshire landscape.

And the reassurance of knowing that even something so fine, so fragile, so delicate, can still control its own destiny.

If you have enjoyed this article – you see they are not all about clocks – sign up to the blog to be notified when new posts appear. And feel free to leave a comment below…

Unless you already know the answer, finding it isn’t easy

Sometimes searching the internet tells you not what you want to know but what others decide you ought to want to know. Or it tells you what it knows, whether or not that’s what you asked for. It is limited by what you are able to ask it – which depends on what you already know.

Ultimately, irritatingly, too often Google tells you simply what someone wants to sell you. That’s why, occasionally, the internet just doesn’t do it for me.

What could be easier?

It should have been simple enough. I wanted more facts about those black mantel clocks which were such a feature of homes in the late Victorian era. Setting Google to work, what I actually got was a lot of sales pitches and an abundance of misinformation – fake news!

Perhaps that is testimony to the effectiveness of SEO management by antique dealers and on-line sales platforms. But when you genuinely want information, it is just plain annoying.

The answer may surprise you

I already had an idea about why those clocks were so popular. What I wanted to know was what they were made of. The answer may surprise you. And unless you know the answer, finding it isn’t easy.

I think you will be familiar with them. They are black, sometimes with marble pillars or gilded decorations. They are often in the form of simple cubes. Others have wider scrolled bases and the clock movement sits in a barrel-shaped housing. They have both a simplicity and a grandeur about them. There is something dignified in their presentation, even when the black is relieved by gold leaf or coloured marble or vibrant green malachite insets.

A nation in mourning

small marble pillared black slate mantel clock — A typical small black marble pillared mantel clock dating from the second half of the 19th Century.

Black slate or black marble clocks came into their own after the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, in 1861. The nation went into mourning. From that time on and until her own death in 1901, Victoria wore black. In sympathy (or out of deference), the nation started painting ornaments black, decorating homes with black drapes and buying black clocks. Sombreness was the order of the day.

But the majority of the clocks in question are made neither of slate nor of marble. You wouldn’t easily know that if you relied on your Google search. You would find endless antiques sites looking to sell you their ‘first class examples’ in a range of styles – although click through and you will generally find the ones on show are already sold. You’ll find Ebay or Gumtree vendors who will tell you helpfully ‘it almost certainly works but I don’t have a key so I can’t be sure’ (you may risk buying a clock from this vendor, but please don’t buy a used car).

You will find experts who will give you invaluable facts such as ‘popular in France in the 18th and 19th centuries, they typically needed to be wound in order for them to function properly’. Well I never!!

And they would all perpetuate the myth that all these clocks were made from slate or marble.

I tightened my search terms – ‘Victorian black mantel clocks materials’ then adding ‘what are they made of’ but still the same sites came to the fore, just selling their wares and not answering my question.

Ultimately I got there, but only because, beyond merely the internet, I knew where to look.

Nerd alert!

Warning – I should post a ‘nerd’ alert here. I am about to explain.

The Price Guide to Collectable Clocks 1840-1940 by Alan and Rita Shenton has a whole chapter on marble cased clocks. It differentiates between genuinely marble clocks and the Belgian marble clocks. Belgian marble, of which so many Victorian clocks were made, isn’t marble at all. Marble is a metamorphic rock, but Belgian marble is actually a limestone (which as you all know is a calcareous sedimentary rock) extracted in Wallonia. There are examples of similar rocks found in Derbyshire and used in clock case making.

Some clock cases were made of slate from Wales or from Caithness, but most were made from the Belgian limestone, polished and glued together, or held together with blobs of plaster of paris, and sometimes strengthened with metal wire supports. Glues then were not necessarily built to last for 150 years and metal degrades. That’s why some experts advise not to let the cases get wet or stay wet and when moving them to carry them ‘like you would a baby’.

Hold them like a baby

A fine example of a Victorian mantel clock with a visible escapement.

Over 120 years old they may be, but these beautiful timepieces are remarkably adaptable to modern homes. They are neat, squat, stylish and rich in history, just lovely to own. So now, in the true spirit of the internet, you might choose to go to my ‘clocks’ or ‘books’ pages. There, you might find a first class example of just what you are looking for!

*
If you have a black Victorian mantel clock and it is faded and jaded don’t worry. The excellent clock and watch components and materials supplier Meadows & Passmore has a product called Marblack ™ which will restore it wonderfully. Find them on the internet, and you can download a pdf instructing you how to use it. Google search ‘Victorian-black-slate-mantel-clocks-cleaning’ and they come up first, before all the Ebay listings. Remarkable. I guess it’s all about knowing what you are looking for!

If you enjoyed this, please feel free to post a comment or sign up at the top of the ‘reflections’ page to be notified of future posts.

Everybody’s Nan had one – with the utmost satisfaction guaranteed

There is something sad about the paired item at an auction – the one that is lumped in with a more appealing piece because alone it is unlikely to sell on its own merit. It was just such a clock which reintroduced me to a bygone age of unassuming courtesy and the wonderful richness of language.
*
I hadn’t even wanted to buy them. Registered to bid in an online auction, I was just flexing my bidding muscles, putting in a low bid on an early lot I wasn’t too excited about, but which I wouldn’t mind having. I was confident that someone would go another fiver and I would miss out. They didn’t and, against my better judgement, I had become the owner of a pretty Edwardian inlaid mantel clock…

…and a rather indifferent Enfield mantel clock.

You know the sort. Everybody’s Nan had one, on the grey or beige tiled mantelshelf, beneath the picture of ‘Tina’, above the open fire, in front of the semi-circular hearth rug with the black scorch marks where low grade coal had spat its smouldering embers.

Enfield Clock Company, a British business, had set up in 1929, granted permission by the Enfield Cycle Company to use the name on condition that the clocks were made to the same high standard as the bikes. Initially they mass-produced movements for export or to retailers in the UK to ‘case up’ themselves. But as early as 1933 they were feeling the bite of competition and sold out to Smiths Industries, their combined endeavours benefiting from the economies of scale.

Between Hitler and the Welfare State

Outwardly, Smiths, Enfield and Smiths Enfield branded clocks only differed in the names on the dials. By 1949, Enfield had ceased to be marketed as a stand-alone brand.

So the squat, oak veneer cased, 1930s Arabic letter-faced clock, sitting apologetically on my workbench, started life sometime between the rise of Hitler and the founding of the Welfare state. Its beginnings straddled the horrors of World War 2. It may be unprepossessing, but it must have some stories to tell.

In a day, I dismantled it, cleaned it and reassembled the movement. I retouched the smudged lettering on the dial where sweaty fingers had pushed on the minute hand because Grandad had forgotten to wind it. I waxed the case.

Battenberg cake and Christmas decorations

And to be honest, it looks a treat. It keeps perfect time, striking on the half hour and the hour. I have forgiven it its dullness. In fact, I rather like it, in the way that I still keep a place in my heart for Battenberg cake slices, lumpy blancmange and the concertina paper Christmas decorations with which it would have shared so many sitting rooms during the 1950s and 1960s.

But the real bonus was to be found within the case itself. Tucked away, beneath the movement, in the dusty recesses behind the chime pillar, was a small brown, faded, waxed leaflet. It must have been there since the clock was first bought, over 70 years ago.

‘Give yourself time!’ it exclaims in a chatty script typeface. Then, more somberly, ‘Read these instructions carefully’ in bold caps, before closing with the racy italicised Enfield logo beneath.

The centre spread provides a neat number-labelled diagram and six clearly written instructions on how to set up your clock. It is the clarity, the confident assertion of the instructions, that strikes home. This is not IKEA or one of those Argos pictures-only incomprehensible guides. Enjoy this:

If however the tick tock is irregular, it will be necessary to move the crutch (5) either to the left or to the right until resistance is felt when a slightly increased pressure will move the special friction on which this is mounted and make the necessary adjustment.

Explain that with diagrams alone, if you can!

Rendering every assistance

There is a beauty and a dignity in the language. For anyone who appreciates words, this will resonate with a warm glow.

So next time you buy a gazebo from Argos or a phone from Apple or a garden chair from B&Q, check if they sign off with this level of commitment and style –

It is the wish of the company that this clock gives you the utmost satisfaction and in case of any difficulty consult your supplier who will be only too willing to render you every assistance.

Then wonder whether, almost a century on, it will still be giving ‘the utmost satisfaction’.

Read more about the history of Enfield and Smiths Clocks in The Price Guide to Collectable Clocks by Alan and Rita Shenton. See more clocks from this era here.

And thank you to a blog reader for the suggestion that I should show all page from the leaflet. Here goes…

enfield mantel clock instruction leaflet — *As requested by a reader, the leaflet in full. What you can’t savour from the pictures is the weight and feel of the waxed paper*.

Grandfather clock or Longcase clock? Here’s one ‘going for a song’

Grandfather clock or longcase clock – which is it? Well, George Bernard Shaw famously described the British and the Americans as two nations divided by a common language. In the war of words, when it comes to clocks, grandfather clocks or longcase clocks, it seems the Americans are winning.

People who trawl the internet for those tall floor standing clocks which for centuries have graced the halls, dining rooms and parlours of great and humble houses alike, tend to search for ‘grandfather clocks’ rather than ‘longcase clocks’. Why?

The blame lies in the unlikely combination of an American self-taught songwriter of the Civil War, and a North Yorkshire pub.

Longcase clocks have been around since the invention of the long pendulum by Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, in 1657. It revolutionised timekeeping because of its accuracy and it led to the move from wall-hanging clocks to free-standing clocks.

For 200 years, through their heyday, these beautiful clocks were rightly called longcase clocks. What could be better? A name that clearly describes what they are, and is broad enough to accommodate the whole range, from the ornately decorated intricate cases of some of the best London makers, to the more humble 30 hour pine or rough oak cottage clocks in the provinces. They were all happily longcase clocks – and proud of it.

Lobbying for the Grandfather clock

Time passes and the story moves on to 1874 when one Henry Clay Work, a self-taught musician and lyricist, checked in to the George Hotel in Piercebridge, North Yorkshire. By one of those odd coincidences of history, Work hailed from Connecticut, one of the clock-making centres of the US. Perhaps that is why he was struck by the elegant longcase clock which imposed itself in the lobby of the unassuming George Hotel.

The tale goes like this. The clock wasn’t working. It had stopped at 11.05 (although to people then and to traditionalist like me now, please read that as five past eleven). Being American, he asked why. The landlord explained. The clock had belonged to the previous owners of the inn, the Jenkins brothers. Apparently it had been bought on the day of the birth of the older of the brothers and had kept perfect time for decades. When the first sibling died, the clock faltered and slowed; at the very moment the second brother died it stopped, and had not moved forward a second since.

Call me old-fashioned, but this sounds unlikely. Prosaically, I think the more likely explanation is that the then owner didn’t want to spend the money to have the clock repaired (while we are stereotyping, I should point out that the inn is in Yorkshire) and he needed a good story for a weary and gullible overseas tourist.

Hit in the making

As chance would have it, this proved just too good an opportunity for an enterprising songwriter who was a little down on his luck. Some say he spent four years writing his best-remembered hit – My Grandfather’s Clock – which was published in 1876 and became an instant classic, selling around one million copies and netting its creator a colossal $4000. The name grandfather clock entered common parlance and stayed there.

(Note another anomaly in the story here – started in 1874, it took four years to write and was published in 1876. So often, when folklore meets history, time is fluid.)

So, so-called grandfather clocks came into existence two centuries after they were actually invented as longcase clocks. And almost 150 years later the name created by a balladeer still dominates on both sides of the Atlantic.

Except that, for some of us, the name grandfather clock still feels uncomfortable.

They deserve better

eight day longcase clock. Thomas Mawes, Derby As I look at the elegance of my daughter’s eight day longcase clock, made by the famous Thomas Mawkes of Derby, or as I wind my own simple 30 hour oak longcase clock by Yorkshire maker Neddey Wells of Shepley, the trite sentimentality of a Victorian era ballad doesn’t do either of them justice. They were both in existence a hundred years before Henry penned his ditty. They deserve better.

You call them grandfather clocks if you like. I’m sticking to calling them longcase clocks, the name by which they were called when they were made, a century before Henry Clay Work’s stagecoach pulled up at the doors of the George Inn in Piercebridge and time changed forever.

With acknowledgement to bethnotes.com for the sheet music image and Mark Clark for the use of the grandfather clock image from his excellent Castles Made of Sand blog

And thanks to Sophie for supplying the picture of her gorgeous Thomas Mawkes eight day longcase clock.

Remember that first time holding hands – how time stopped?

I do. It was Tyneside, a bitter cold Autumn afternoon, the wind driving horizontally off the North Sea. We were first year undergraduates on the same course and heading out to the shops together for cheap coffee and chocolate digestives. She was beautiful, confident, widely fancied, way out of my league.

“My hands are cold,” she said. “Can I share your donkey jacket pocket?” Where my hands were already dug deep. I felt her gentle first touch, then her fingers intertwine with mine and purposefully, firmly grip. And time stopped. 45 years may have passed, but I still remember the moment as if it was yesterday.

Hands intertwine. And it is one reason why a clock, and time, stops.

Do the hands hold the key?

There are others. Quite simply, it could be that the clock needs winding (no need for a blog post on that one – the solution is quite simple, even for the absolute novice!). Maybe the movement is out of balance and the clock lacks the power needed to maintain its uneven tick and tock. That takes a little more sorting.

But first, look closely at the hands. Has the clock stopped with the hands together – say at ten to ten, or around quarter past three for example? You may see that they are tangled, that the minute hand is catching on the hour hand. And that could be the problem.

With patience and care it is easily rectified.

Three things to consider

On many clocks the hour hand is on a sleeve which can be pushed back towards the face of the clock to keep distance between it and the fixed in place minute hand. Try this gently, but be careful not to push too far – you don’t want the hour hand to catch on the face or dial of the clock from its new more deeply seated position.

Alternatively, you can gently remove the minute hand (it will be held in place with a small hand-turned nut or with a pin (if it is a pin, remember it will be tapered so will only come out, one way, and go back in likewise – it is a delicate operation, use good tweezers). Note where the hand is pointing before you remove it. On striking and chiming clocks it is important, for synchronicity, to put it back in the same position. Place an appropriate small washer on the cannon pinion onto which the hands are located, between the hour and the minute hand, to create distance. Carefully replace the minute hand in the same place from which you removed it.

But if the hands are both firm in their location – there isn’t much play on the minute hand – it may be simply a matter of slightly bending the minute hand from the top, gently away from the hour hand. Think carefully before you do this. There isn’t much leeway between achieving your goal and snapping the delicate hand.

Whichever method you choose, once you have done it, gently push the minute hand, (clockwise only and pausing before each strike or chime sequence then letting each sequence play out before moving on) around a twelve hour cycle to check that the hands are at no point catching.

Job done. Time can resume its inexorable passage. Although for me, time still stops exquisitely each time my wife and I hold hands.

Telling Times

Would this venture ever have seen the light of day had it not been for Coronavirus and the whole notion of lockdown?

Because the fact is – and it is an irony – even horologists never have enough time. The world races on, things need doing. There are restaurants to visit, friends to meet, holidays to take, families to entertain and be entertained by.

shiny bathrooms…

Impose lockdown, and the world slows down. And suddenly there is the time to do those things you enthusiastically put off. Gardens have never been tidier. DIY jobs have never been so warmly embraced. Bathrooms have never looked shinier.

Don’t get me wrong. I am recognising the huge privilege I enjoy here – comfortable home, no pressing financial issues, a garden to relax in, no young children to keep amused. Don’t believe the politicians who say we are all in this together. The pandemic has thrown a searing spotlight on the inequalities in society.

…and broken promises

But in between all the other stuff that has needed doing, a decade of failing to fulfil my retirement promise has finally come to an end.

On quitting work full-time I pledged to create a self-financing hobby and indulge my lifelong passion for clocks. I would buy clocks, I would refresh them, then I would sell them in order to buy some more.

I managed the first two bits of that easily. But parting with clocks is a tougher call altogether. And that reluctance has prevented me from creating the platform to do so. Time, or lack of it, has provided the perfect excuse. Until now.

The gift of time

Lockdown* has gifted the time to address part three of the promise I made to myself. It is one of several constructive ways I have used the enforced spell of seclusion and slow-down.

In these telling times, I hope you too have found, amidst the new pressures and stresses of a changed world, the time to be constructive and to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition, however modest.

If not, perhaps now’s the time.

*I should mention here that not just lockdown, but an IT literate friend called Graham (I think it is compulsory to be called Graham if you are in IT. A bit like it is obligatory to be called Gavin if you are a male graphic designer) played a major part in bringing this site to fruition – for which I am hugely grateful.