Back In Time

There is this pinewood wall clock I bought at a flea market the other day, Christmas and all, in the hope of adding décor to a vastly blank part of my living room wall. I never bought it for the time, I mean; no one really looks at a living room clock for time anyway, it was a collector’s item, an antique I could easily pass off to my visitors as having been handed down from my grandfather, well, deep down though, I thought it may have been sneaked out from some sanctuary of worship, or a castle. The seller, a fast talking street smart sort of guy would easily have taken credit for that. I gave him cash.

So I spend the evening polishing, then mounting it and generally rearranging the furniture to give a little more ambience to it. A small piece of furniture, and what a dramatic presence! It gives it a sort of aristocratic, well, not quite, maybe old school?... no, maybe not, that term is befitting to music don’t you think?… by the way, does music from the 40’s and 50’s qualify? …and now that that we are in a new decade, how will we refer to the music from the last one? … It is still not yet old school but …music from the 00’s doesn’t quite ring… may I suggest millennia? or something along those lines? I think…. I'm drifting .....Holy Christ!!!! …Something appears to be very wrong with this clock.

Not noticeably at first, but then, when you are only used to quick glances of analog clocks, you only look at the position of the hand that matters for the moment. If you are in a pub, your eyes will always settle on the slowest of them all, for various reasons of course. On a normal day, you play between the minute and the hour hands and if you are the type that waits for your date outside a restaurant, the second hand keeps you company… I have all evening to this priceless piece and gradually, I notice the minute hand had barely moved a notch in ten minutes! The hour hand, on the other hand… seemed to be on steroids! …gliding off in a direction not normally associated with clockwise!

As I watch in amazement, it dawns on me that the hands were gliding, not jumping to, as I would expect from an analog clock. In cold silence I realize there was no “tick tock” sound either! I must have fallen prey to a very stupid prank. The sudden blaring polyphonic shrill erases all doubt, emerging from the woodwork, it announces the departure of perhaps another day in its relentless march backwards. I realize that I had bought a cheap analogue screen digital clock encased in pine.

I head back the next day with it, I had to return it. I don’t expect to find the smoothie but I’m in luck, fake antique business must be very good. He only has a few more left. He gives me the “goods once sold” look as I furiously thrust it into his hands, pauses for a moment then opens the back panel, to unclamp the battery. He licks it, nods and places it back. The clock boots up with another one of the hounding shrills and miraculously, the hands come to their rightful senses and glide forth.

“This clock is okay boss”… he thrusts it back and jumps to the next customer, I stand there for a moment then slowly trudge home knowing after all, I never really bought it for the time.