The clock that made me hate time

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A few years ago, I stayed in a holiday home dominated by an anachronistic beast, which bellowed at me every half hour throughout the night. If it were a human, there would have been a major intervention, but because it was a grandfather clock, chiming its head off all night, I was expected to put up with it.

By the morning, I had an incredibly intense deep hatred of not just grandfather clocks, but all clocks and also time in general.

It wasn’t just one mournful chime every 30 minutes. On every half past, it did a chime for every hour. Which wasn’t so bad with the one at 1:30am, but at 11:30pm I was ready to rip out the pendulum and use it to perforate my eardrums so I’d never have to hear a chime again.

It was torturous, especially as surely you should indicate the hour on the hour.

I don’t understand why anyone would need to know the time throughout the entire night. And have such an urgent need that they had to be woken every single half hour.

I lay there in an unfamiliar bed, becoming increasingly enraged that grandfather clocks still exist in the 21^st century. It’s insanity. The time is so prevalent all around us now that usually the only body part I have to move to find out the time is my eyes. I calculated that in my home there are nine devices which display the time and none of them are clocks.

What we really don’t need now is a big towering beast with a big ‘look at what’s in my pants’ swinging pendulum shouting the time at me every 30 minutes for 24 hours a day.

I had a lot of time to ruminate on grandfather clocks during that long night. Just the name itself is a fingernail down the blackboard of my soul. What other household items have a familial name included? None. There is no Auntie Toaster. Nephew occasional table. First cousin once removed bellows.

These clocks with gigantism got their name after an American songwriter wrote a song called ‘My Grandfather’s Clock.’ He’d been staying at a hotel in County Durham and asked about a particular kind of tower clock they had. It hasn’t been noted exactly what he said, but I’m going to presume it was, “What the hell is this monstrosity that keeps me awake all night?”

He was told how the clock had had two owners. After the first owner died, the clock became inaccurate and when the second owner died, the clock stopped working altogether. Which says to me they are sentient. I knew it! They know they are torturing us. I would not be surprised if it turns out they are aliens in disguise trying to send us all mad through lack of sleep to make it easier for them to colonise Earth.

When morning finally came in this holiday home, and knowing I had nine more nights left, I told my boyfriend Tom that because of this clock I was going to have to go home.

He said, “Yes, it kept me up too, but you can turn the chimes off.”

All I wanted to do right then was marry Tom and then divorce him and have on an official document for all eternity that it was because he didn’t turn off the grandfather clock when he could have done and it woke me up every half hour all night.

What blows my mind most is that if it can be turned off and presumably has been at one point unless everyone is insane, who the hell turned it back on again?