For different reasons my wife and I like clocks. For me it's a memory of my paternal gran and grampa's house, where every quarter hour was marked by a tintinnabulation of chimes. For my wife? Well, you'd have to ask her. Anyhoo, we've always had a lot of clocks; every room in our house has at least two. Fifteen in a four room house.
The problem is that they [the clocks] get out of sync; Like my gran and grampa's clocks did—I well remember the day when we were 'treated' to a whole hour of ding-dang-ding-dong at distressingly irregular intervals. Coco [my brother] and I were border-line deranged by this, our grandparents seemed unmoved.
Aside from not knowing what the actual time is there's the ticking, "tick, tick, tock, tick, tock, tock...". Annoys.
So when, recently, we had a few pence to rub together we decided that we needed a big clock, a ruling clock, the one clock to rule them all. Here is what we purchased. It isn't on the wall yet, it sits in the corner, worshiped, keeping perfect time. The other clocks have had their batteries removed or have been otherwise disabled. We still have our personal alarms because we may be away from the one clock....
Having a ruling clock I've noticed that I'm enslaved by time, it rules my life; everything I do has a deadline. This feels inhuman. I wake up precisely before my shifts, when I open an eye I know what time it is by the light and the noise.
Why does the one clock rule us?
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I love the idea of 'One clock to rule them all'. I imagine your place looks a bit like this then http://www.wfbruce.co.uk/New comment
I love the ticking of our clock and the chimes and bongs. It is part and parcel of our home and if I wake in the night instead of having to stick my arm out into the chilly night air to inspect my bedside alarm I just listen for the downstairs clock. Every clock and watch in our house deviates, often because they've been knocked over and the batteries are out of position. So our 'one clock' is the front room wall clock that is allegedly controlled by radio signal (except on hour changing day when it is an hour out all day for some reason) The only clock I hate in our house is the cuckoo clock. We asked a mate to pick up a cuckoo clock for us as he was going abroad to Austria. He brought back one that plays nursery rhymes as well as cuckoos - I was glad when the batteries did something nasty to the contacts and it died - but the blasted thing is still on our wall years later and I don't know why, procrastination I guess. You know what I'm taking it down now and shoving it in a cupboard!