I have been working on the above (and below) illustrated clock , and today we took it back to its owner (and its home). Having delivered it, and eventually reinstalled it, we (the clock owner, Ann and meself) were having a coffee, and chatting; and came up with the facts that I have been attending to its needs, and doing any necessary repairs for over forty years now. It is a great favourite of mine . It is a very English clock. It is an oak cased thirty hour, long cased clock with a single hand and an alarum train that, when used, sounds like an old fashioned fire engine coming along over the cobbles. However, I have now retired on medical advice, so will (in all probability) not be seeing much of the clock in the future. Its owner issued us with a general invitation to call on her, and take coffee with her whenever we are in her area. She then went on to say that we could do any necessary adjustments to the clock on these visits. I'm not at all sure that she took the retirement bit in, and even if she did, she didn't seem to take it too seriously, I'm afraid. But Ann nearly always answers the 'phone as I can't really hear it (well not until I put the loudspeaker on, and not always then), so I'll have to leave Ann to persuade our friend that I really have retired. Oh well - we'll see.
3 comments:
Oh dear, that's not very tactful of her. I'm sure you'd all love to see each other for the sake of old friendship, but it's not fair to put you under a bit of pressure that way.
I promise that whenever you visit here, welcome as you are to take a fond glance at my Dutch clock, you won't be asked to adjust it!
Thank you Zoe. That nice Dutch clock of yours always seems to me to be a good mixture of the best of two good worlds - the decorative artistry of Dutch furnishing and folk art, and the horology of an eight day English (style) movement. It's a lovely and unusual item. I don't mean to say that it's a marriage (if so it's a very happy one, anyway) but that someone, nearly two centuries ago now, took the best ideas of two countries and made a lovely blend of them. It's nice that you (very rightly) treasure it.
It's very useful that it goes for a week rather than the 30 hour that it would have originally. The chances of remembering to wind it daily aren't high. It has gone beautifully ever since you set it going - I've tweaked it a few times and now it loses a minute or two at most per week, easy to put right. I wound it up and stopped it before we went away last week and I've been prompted to set an alarm clock to remind me to set it going again in an hour's time.
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