Ticking Along Nicely

My watch stopped.  So attached am I to constantly having something on my left wrist, that I contemplated wearing it anyway until it could be fixed, but I wisely decided that my new-found tardiness needed absolutely no further encouragement.  I'm sure I used to be ever so punctual, but these days I seem to be rushing everywhere - I could blame a comparative lack of knowledge of my "new" city home (yes, a year and a half in a new place still makes it new!) and how long it takes to get to places, but frankly, I live slap bang in the middle of town and nothing is more than 10-15 minutes away, so this is no excuse.  Maybe it's because I now rely on my own two feet to get me around, and am no longer a slave to the unforgiving timetables and signal failures of Transport For London, but my ability to leave the house on time has declined rapidly in recent years.  It's not that I don't care about being on time - quite the opposite, I think it's rather important, actually - I just can't seem to manage it these days.

Luckily, Bath has a clock shop, Tupra Jewellers.  They don't have a website, they're not that kind of place.  They're this kind of place:

And this kind of place:

Is anyone else in heaven when faced with walls and walls of clocks?  Cabinets and cabinets of watches?

It's that sound.  Oh, that hypnotic ticking of hundreds of different tocks.  As I sat waiting for my humble timepiece to receive it's new battery, I closed my eyes and just revelled in that most gentle of noises.  Somehow I don't own any clocks, just my little wristwatch.  If I had my way, I'd have a wall of clocks in my living room (or perhaps such a feature would best be suited to a library/dining/drawing room?) and a ticking clock in every room in the house.  It's not that I am obsessed with timekeeping, I just think there's something comforting about a clock.  I mean a proper clock, of course, not just a watch or an electronic alarm clock or (heaven forbid) a phone.  It's furniture.  The sort of thing a "home" has, but never a "house" or a "flat".  Actually,we have one clock in our flat: a jolly red retro number in the kitchen, but my housemate sets it five minutes fast (which of course we all know, so we know we are not running late, then we take our sweet time and end up being late anyway) which is not how I would set my clocks.  No.  I would phone up the Talking Clock himself to get the correct time - do it properly.

(By the way, if I sound unusually dreamy today it's because I'm listening to the Amelie soundtrack while I type.  I know it's childish of me, but I genuinely want to live and breath that film. )

Two more quick thoughts on timepieces: 

1) I wonder if a ticking clock would help with my boyfriend's tinnitus/insomnia? 

2) I always used to insist upon the chunkiest of watches (remember Pop Swatches and Baby Gs?) a habit which caused both the bones in my forearm to snap clean in two when I fell off a horse at the age of 11.