Tick tock

I am really not a lover of ticking clocks.

I remember as a child sitting in large dark wooded houses with a grandfather clock sitting threateningly in corner pounding away.  As our host busied herself in the kitchen we sat primly on the couch and communicated with hushed voices, this was not a relaxing time. There was no screened device to occupy our juvenile minds, it took her a while to remember her children’s books in the spare room. So every lull in conversation was deafened by the steady tick tocking. I find these large time pieces somewhat threatening.

After the death of my grandfather the mantlepiece clock which had been a feature of their house forever landed on our sideboard. Perhaps my gran disliked it as well because it never made it to her new house.

I remember sleeping over at her place and the relentlessly ticking, big faced walnut box would keep me awake. Added to this was the regular chiming, it made a sort of hissing noise as the spring steel propelled the little hammer on to the coil of dinging metal.

I was neither consulted or delighted when it took up residence in our sitting room. There are certain noises that our brains just tune out after a while, like those who live near a railway or a busy road who don’t register it’s existence any more. The clock was like that, but sometimes it was as if the volume shot up and it was all that you could hear.

Sometimes even late at night from the other end of the house, if doors had been left open, I would hear that infernal ticking and distant chiming.

Now time has always been something that I have chased, the hours in church as a child lasted for days, but the hours of a Sunday afternoon sped by like a rocket. School was the same, hour after weary hour dragged by for those 11 years, certainly not for me were they my best years.

Eighteen months ago my watch strap broke.

This watch was a treasured gift from a dear friend who succumbed way too soon to life, if someone could have been given more years for  the fight that they possessed, it would have been him. But his body could fight no longer.

So it was a horrible day when the watch fell off, every time I would set aside money to have it repaired there would be another pressing need and so it never quite got to the top of the list. Not having a time piece strapped to my wrist has been a bit of a blessing, I was totally time obsessed, so the added effort of digging for a phone has reduced that dependency on the whole self inflicted time constraints.

Quite a few of my work colleagues are nearing that point where they will no longer be ruled by the alarm clock, it seems like a real dread to some of them, to admit that they are entering the closing chapter of life is a daunting prospect.  Others are excited,  they have a list and a plan and are eager to begin.

My watch is in the jewelers as I write this, the part arrived from Switzerland and soon it will be back on my wrist.

A lot has changed since I last wore it. That subservience to time is broken at last, days are no longer a stretching burden, years are just there to be enjoyed rather than slipping away like a diminishing pile, no matter how many there are they are mine to be enjoyed.