Our bed has a little shelf on it, above our heads, where we put water, books, mugs of tea and our alarm clock. Unfortunately there's a little gap between the back of the shelf and the wall and so things, especially our alarm clock, regularly fall off. Usually it's just a case of the battery cover coming off, no big deal, but occasionally it completely disintegrates and has to be put back together. This morning, when Kate got at 6.40am to get ready for work was one such occasion. As I reset the alarm to wake me up at 8.30am I knocked it off the back. Crash. It flew apart. I managed to get it back together again and having just reset the alarm I knew what time it was - 6.45am - and reset the time accordingly.
I struggled to get back to sleep and in the end gave up, made myself a cup of tea, got back into bed and read for a bit. After a chapter I checked the time. 4.50am. What?! I 'd sworn I'd reset it. It occurred to me that having being half-asleep earlier I'd muddled up the clocks hands (big & little). With no other clock in the bedroom I'd have to get up and reset it from the kitchen clock.
I got distracted by various things so it was 10.37am when I got around to resetting in. The alarm clock, now on our desk, read 5.50am. I picked it up, held the dial, prepared to reset it and locked again at the face. It now read 10.35am. What?! I was pretty spooked. Either I was going crazy or the clock was haunted. I put the clock down again. It now read 4.30am. Huh!?! Ok, maybe I'm just too tired and I imagined that the clock said the correct time, my mind predicting what it wanted to see. I picked up the clock again. It now said 10.40am. I put the clock down very slowly. As the clock tilted, gravity took hold of the hands and swung them down to 4.30am. Phew! I wasn't going nuts.
The mechanism holding the clock hands in place had finally succumbed to years of being knocked onto the floor. I was relieved; I thought I was the one going cuckoo.
Shame though - that £2 clock has been Kate's for a long time and has served us faithfully all round Europe. It's practically an heirloom! Or at least, getting on for an antique.
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Clocks often have minds of their own, the one on my headboard likes to jump from a.m. to p.m. or vice versa without warning. Which means I will return to my room after dinner and it will be trying to wake me up...spooky indeed, I think we might have a clock conspiracy on our hands.
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