sky rushing watch

Reflection in a puddle under a pub table. The sheet of water is lying on a cement circle where they used to make carriage wheels when the pub was a carriage works.

From behind me a greeting voice, "good morning". I look up to see the back of a scurrying figure. It is Olive. "I'm rushing for a meeting," she says as she rushes on down Sutherland Road.

My watch-battery packs up after two and a half years. It is a Swatch and keeps perfect time, until it stops. So trusting in its accuracy am I that this morning I attempt to stop the bracket clock in the hall which appears to be a quarter of an hour fast in order to reset it. The clock is innocent and I am forced to apologise, as one does to innocent mechanisms.