Clock watching…

and Johnny Ball spotting

On Thursday morning we woke up on hearing a small bang downstairs. It was 5am. The bang was followed by the sound of the dog coming upstairs to say hello. It is not unusual for the dog to be up this early but… HE OPENED THE LIVING ROOM DOOR! We are still perplexed about how this happened. David, who put the dog to bed and came up after me, says he knows he shut the door as he does every night.

The dog’s body clock is as regular/reliable as ours: we often hear him get out of his bed or jump off the sofa between 5 and 5.30am, which is when one of us gets up to make tea/coffee.

I’ve been thinking about time recently.

How do you know what time it is? Do you, like me, run on AppleTime (eg your phone or laptop) or by the clock on your oven (assuming you’ve worked out how to change it twice a year)?

Apart from small alarm clocks on either side of our bed, that we never use as alarms, and the one on the cooker (which only I know how to reset) we do not have clocks in our house.

I was cat- and housesitting for my friend Marion in leafy Crouch End a few weeks ago and I was struck by how many clocks there were in hers.

Marion has them in pretty much every room: a cuckoo in the kitchen, a carriage on the living room mantelpiece, a small one in the spare room, a digital one in her bedroom (Marion – I was opening and closing your curtains!).

I don’t recall other friends having many timepieces? Do you have clocks in your house?

It’s odd how clocks have disappeared – from people’s homes, and in public, apart from at stations and airports. Whenever I’ve been out without my phone recently it’s weird not to be sure of the time – and given the ubiquity of phones wouldn’t it seem odd to ask a stranger for the time without raising suspicion?

Seeing multiple clocks at Marion’s reminded me of something Johnny Ball said during an episode of Think of Number that has always stuck with me: A man with a watch knows the time, a man with two is never sure.

I proved Johnny right by checking Marion’s timepieces. While all approximately telling the same time there were seconds and minutes differences in what they displayed.

I always liked Think of Number and was thrilled, a few years ago, to spot Johnny Ball on the tube. As if just seeing him were not exciting enough HE WAS DOING A SUDUKO!!!!