Clock Tower Repaired, Agrees To Go On Being Wrong

Repairs to the Market House clock tower at Princes Risborough have been approved, which means the leak is stopped, the soft timber comes out, good oak goes in, and the clock carries on being wrong in a drier and more dignified manner.

The hands have not moved since a storm some years back, when somebody ran a cable from the tower down the length of the market square and drove a stainless steel car with upward-opening doors at the far end of it at a speed the square was never designed for. Witnesses at the time described a flash of light, after which the car, with the youth apparently still inside it, was simply no longer there. The parish has filed this under not our department and will not be reopening it.

Since Tuesday a man in a white coat and goggles has been under the scaffolding with a cable of his own, measuring the drop from the hands to the pavement and insisting the strike must land on the clock at the exact second, not a moment either side. He is asked every morning to move his car, and every morning he explains, patiently, that this is the single most important parking dispute in the history of the known world. The warden has started agreeing with him just to get through it.

A retired joiner from Haddenham who drives over to look at other people's scaffolding said the oak was the correct decision. "Fix the roof, keep the wrong time dry," he said, which is the most Buckinghamshire sentence this paper has printed all year.

This newspaper has a wall clock that has said half past four since April, and rather than deal with it we have decided that is simply when we work. So the oak goes in, the water goes wherever water decides to go, and the next time there is thunder over the market square the whole town will be at its windows, watching a clock that cannot tell them when, waiting for it anyway.