Clocks

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

According to my mom, the first word I ever spoke was 'clock'. Well that is hardly surprising for when we came out of our little terraced house in Birmingham and looked down the road, there in the distance was the clock tower of the University of Birmingham. I guess she just pointed and said, 'clock' and I picked up on that.

But the fascination has been with me all my life; I love them, well mechanical ones. I think I was about 8 when I tried to take one of them pendulum clocks to bits to see how it worked. It was lovely, all brass gears and things. Don't know what happened but I did something with a screwdriver and all the cogs whizzed round and my finger got trapped against the frame. I squealed and my dad had to use a screwdriver to force things back to free me.

Then say when I was about 13 or 14, I got my first watch, well that's a mini clock. So I had the back off and set about dismantling it to see how it worked. It went quite well but suddenly, the whole thing exploded and cogs and springs went flying across the bedroom. Well I kept it quiet for a while but my dad eventually noticed that I was not wearing it and asked why. So I told him and, although, I can't remember what he said, I guess it was something like, 'Tough shit!'

But there is something about clocks, well, those with Roman numerals, which many people miss. The Roman figure for 4 on a proper clock is IIII not IV. It makes perfect sense when you look at such a clock or watch.

When Honda came to the UK, they chose my company to make the heater control for the Accord - and that had a 4 position fan speed switch for which they wanted to use Roman numeral indicators. They wanted to use IV so I patiently explained that a IIII would be better on a dial. They never listened. No matter