Time is the essence, they say, or time is money.
There was a time, when it wasn’t though, when time was something to be enjoyed.
A story my sister, Iris told me, was of a time before I was born. When things were a bit slower, a bit more relaxed. My father was a clock repairer in his spare time. She said our dresser in the kitchen would have two or three repaired clocks on the shelf having the final adjustments made. So, there would be several clocks all telling a different time.
As if that wasn’t confusing enough, on the same dresser, was our own old alarm clock, this poor old thing would lose twenty minutes a day—my mother would put it right at nine o’clock every evening on the first bong of Big Ben before the news started on the wireless.
Apparently, no matter how much she complained about the clock, my father would not touch it—like many men, he probably didn’t like to be nagged and so just dug his heels in.
Or may-be it was one of those silly little joke’s a man would like to play on his wife—we have all done it!
They say a plumber’s tap is always dripping, and here we have a clock repairers wife having to rely on St Peters Church bell ringing out every quarter.
Fortunately, Chertsey, being an old curfew town, it is very well endowed with bells, they are ringing all the time. There are several Churches within hearing distance, they would ring at least on the hour. The school and the convent bells rang regularly, several times a day. A clock was really not needed.
The bell is a gentle reminder to do something, like the time to start school or work. Now they are largely replaced with buzzer’s that are irritatingly insistent and urgent.
Those people with their bell’s still got things done, but in their own time.
Now the buzzer controls our time—even Big Ben is silent.
Madeinchertsey 