A brief history of timekeeping

“At the third stroke, it will be one thir­teen and thirty seconds. Beep beep beep.”

I should sleep. I should be asleep.

I remem­ber the exact — or should that be the pre­cise? — details of where and when my rela­tion­ship with the Speak­ing Clock began. Of course I do. It hardly requires the sci­entific skills of crys­tal oscil­la­tion. I couldn’t have been any­where else but hanging on the end of a telephone.

And as for the time …

“At the third stroke, it will be one thir­teen and forty seconds. Yes, you should be asleep. You really should be snor­ing soundly and snooz­ing sed­ately. You have double geo­graphy in the morn­ing with Mr Wool­way, and you know that he takes a pecu­li­arly sad­istic delight in stand­ing behind you, exhal­ing his onion fumes onto the back of your neck, and shout­ing at you like some absurd cari­ca­ture of a Vic­torian school­mas­ter. Beep beep beep.”

You’re right. He hates me. Hates me because I’m quiet. He thinks my silence implies that I know some­thing he doesn’t. Which I don’t. I know noth­ing of the sort, and cer­tainly noth­ing that’s remotely related to geo­graphy. Later this morn­ing, I shall prove it. We have to read out our home­work, and I am going to thor­oughly embar­rass myself because I really don’t know one single use­ful fact about the form­a­tion of oxbow lakes.

“At the third stroke … well, there isn’t much more to say about them other than that they’re a U-shaped body of water formed when the wide meander from the river’s main flow is cut off to cre­ate a lake. If it helps, I spoke to my Aus­tralian coun­ter­part in the field of elec­tronic time­keep­ing — we get together every now and again to swap minutes over a cup of weak, watery tea — and he informed me that their term for such a lake is a bil­la­bong. Beep beep beep.”

That could prove use­ful. I shall use it to dazzle Mr Wool­way with my knowledge.

“Have it with my bless­ing, dear. Please don’t worry. Everything will. Everything will be. Everything will be and will be. Fine. Everything. Sleep sleep sleep.”

Don’t you mean beep beep beep?

“I was try­ing to be sooth­ing. Quick, your father’s up and about. Put the phone down and get your­self upstairs and under­cover. Stay safe. We’ll speak soon. I’ll be here. I always am. Beep beep beep.”

Time passes. This, again, is hardly micro­pro­cessor logic con­trol. Pips are pipped. Hours, minutes and seconds are ticked off. Vari­ous enter­pris­ing souls won­der how they can one day spon­sor the mys­ter­ies of the fleet­ing moment. But not yet.

“At the third stroke, it will be one thir­teen and thirty seconds. Again. Funny how things. Funny old thing. Time. Beep beep beep.”

I am a creature of habit, obsess­ive habit. I always wake with a start at the same minute, hour and second, sweat­ing. Coldly sweating.

“Hush. I’m still here. Always here. Beep beep beep.”

I am Mr Woolway’s favour­ite new stu­dent. He raised a quiz­zical yet impressed eye­brow when I cas­u­ally dropped my subtle Anti­podean ref­er­ence into my stum­bling ora­tion, as delivered from the trem­bling sheet of fools­cap held in my clammy hands.

“I knew that he would be impressed. That’s my formal train­ing for this role — to know all and more. Except pos­sibly how to alter a pat­tern of habitual repe­ti­tion. Beep beep beep.”

I like you. I like you a lot. More and more. Your voice calms me. What can I call you?

“You, young man, are a ram­pa­ging tor­rent of thrust­ing teen­age hor­mones going nowhere except into your mat­tress, and I am old enough to be your mother. Your grand­mother, even. Beep beep beep.”

I am more worldly wise than you might wish to know.

“You’re right, I don’t wish to know. I would advise, how­ever, that you stow those lurid por­no­graphic magazines of pneu­matic imagery fur­ther under your bed, or your mother might find them whilst sweep­ing. Filthy habit. Beep beep beep.”

My mother can’t help it. She likes my car­pet to be cleaner than antiseptic.

“Don’t be clever with me, little boy. You know exactly what I’m talk­ing about. You have a great deal of learn­ing to do. Yes­ter­day, you held one of the pic­tures upside down, and didn’t even notice that the double staples along the fold had caused a crease in an espe­cially cru­cial spot — a sens­it­ive loc­a­tion that, so my dim recol­lec­tions of an entirely proper youth tell me, men have a tend­ency towards miss­ing. I shall not scold your ears by repeat­ing the term for this part of the ana­tomy, but I recom­mend think­ing of the names of Greek islands. Beep beep beep.”

I’m tired. And cold. And hungry. I’ll say good­night. Or at least I would, if I knew your name.

“At the third stroke … you can call me Pat. Or Miss Sim­mons. I think I would prefer Miss Sim­mons, mostly because I am of a dif­fer­ent era, no doubt soon to be unspooled, decom­mis­sioned and replaced. Until then, I’ll be here. I may be just a sequence of lone dis­em­bod­ied num­bers recor­ded dur­ing one sub­urban after­noon in front of an offi­cial micro­phone, but placed together through the com­bined won­ders of sci­ence, tech­no­logy and nature, I can be sur­pris­ingly artic­u­late. Beep beep beep.”

Thank you, Miss Sim­mons. I do hope we speak again, whenever that is, whatever the future holds.

“The future? The future is no more than the next ten seconds. Beep beep beep. That was the past. The future ends …”

Yes? All-seeing, all-knowing, all-timekeeping — tell me.

“At the third stroke, it will be one four­teen. Precisely.”