Clocks
I've got to say I was initially going to write this blog as a sort of update of my current living situation, but having made one of my many regular visits to see my Nan the other day, I thought of a much better topic instead: clocks.
You see, if ever you happen to perchance visit my Nan's house, the first thing that normally strikes you as a casual observer is the sheer amount of clocks in the place. Now let me get this straight: my Nan is not one of those strange old people that you sometimes see on daytime tv that have an obsession with collecting clocks. You know the types - you see them on programmes such as 'Cash in the Attic' all the time where they from time to time decide to get rid of a few grandfather, or perhaps carriage clocks from a house teeming at the brim with wall-to-wall clocks. No indeed, she is not one of those strange old people interested in collecting clocks per se, for her obsession is actually slightly stranger than that.
She is not obsessed with collecting clocks: she is obsessed with knowing the time.
What perhaps makes this obsession even stranger, is that she has no reason at all to ever need to know the time. She doesn't go anywhere; she doesn't have appointments she has to keep; she doesn't have medications she has to take (that's another story...): she just plain and simple has an obsession with knowing the time.
Now it's actually become something of a joke in the Ryder-clan that whenever you happen to be round my Nan's house and all her numerous clocks tick at the same time, the house shakes. There are clocks everywhere you see, for my Nan likes to have a clock on the wall of every direction she might be facing at any given time so she doesn't have to turn her head to see a clock. Why she has to do this, none of us are quite sure. Her life is dictated by the television schedule, and so you'd think she could tell the time by the television programme she happens to be watching, but no, she apparently always needs a clock with her.
'So why not just wear a watch?' I hear you asking. To be fair, I've asked this very same question numerous times, every time to be answered in very unsatisfactory terms which I can boil down to her not liking having to look down at her wrist to see the time.
Her obsession even goes to the lengths that if ever anyone ever comes round for a cup of tea and sits in the garden with her, she has to take out one of her clocks with her so she can still see the time. And it's not even a small clock either - it's always one of those massive cheap plastic things you used to be able to buy from Woolworths or the like that no one ever buys because they're massive, they're cheap, they don't keep the time very well, and all 'normal' people don't have looking-at-the-watch-on-their-wrist issues.
And it get's even better... We come now to the reason I was inspired to write this blog in the first place...
She even has a clock in her shed.
Oh, but this isn't any old shed, no. It's barely large enough to be even considered a shed. Imagine if you will a space something like ten feet wide and perhaps only two and a half feet deep that's so small the door has to open outwards just so you can get in it to put things in it. Not, you will no doubt appreciate, the sort of place my Nan would spend any of her time (if she ever goes outside at all that is...) So why, oh why then, is there the worlds largest, tackiest clock hung on the wall opposite the door, two and a half feet from the entrance, taking up perhaps more of the shed-space than any of the other shed contents?! To tell the truth it absolutely baffles me something chronic. Every time I visit my Nan - normally to check she isn't trying to feed any more frogs bread and lettuce or to wind her up about her clocks, her frogs, her hearing or the size of her dustbin - I end up investigating her sheds and invariably end up being reminded of the most unnecessary clock in the world. It's a clock, in a tiny, tiny shed, that rarely gets opened by its watch-wearing owner who has a million and one other clocks to look at who felt the need to put up the clock for the sole reason that she needs to see the time when she's in the shed.
YOU CAN'T EVEN GET IN THE SHED IT'S THAT SMALL!
Will she be told? Of course not. She's 78, and if ever you met her you would probably have to leave on account of her stubborness and her very strange ways. She'll either make you laugh or make you cry. Having said that, I wouldn't change her for the world. She may be - as I often tell her - 'a very funny old lady', but I guess she's our 'very funny old lady' and we've all got to put up with her funny ways, be it feeding frogs on bread and lettuce, or calling me every name under the sun - David, Eddie, Adam or even once, Emma. I really do despair sometimes!
Until next time...