Cuckoo Clocks

Here's something with neither a beginning nor an end but it's been on my mind today.

I'm usually a late sleeper and our neighbours are awake very early in the morning and with two kids in the house and all the opening of shutters and doors and setting off for work my last hour in bed is not always quiet. But it doesn't worry me, somehow in villages community noise is normal part of the scene. First the cock crowing, then the dogs barking, then the rest of us.

One thing I always hear from their house though is a cuckoo clock sounding off at six. The rest of the day I seldom notice it but that cuckoo is a kind of alarm for me if I'm not awake already.

I've not come across many cuckoo clocks in my life. They get a star mention in the movie "The Third Man" of course. And someone - somewhere - that I know or knew has one but I just can't recall it (Hey guys! If it is you put me out of my misery please!)

But one little story keeps coming into my mind. I wonder if my mother remembers about it? I'll have to ring her.

Way back when I was small my grandfather was a great watch and clock repairer - it was not just a hobby but a second income for him. And in a cardoard box on a shelf in his tiny workshop were the 'bits' - the 'remains' - of a cuckoo clock. I'd play with them sometimes. There were two small bellows - the 'cuck' and the 'coo' - the usual selection of cogs and a small wooden Swiss chalet style clock face.

This clock had met it's end it seems when my grandmother, who could be pretty moody and unpredictable, hurled it to the floor. Maybe it was dumb enough to 'cukcoo' just as she blew up about something. But there is my question about this - how come it got broken? Was it just that it drove her nuts or is there any truth in another little memory? Somehow I have the idea that someone she didn't like bought me this clock in Switzerland when I was a toddler. But who would we know that went to Switzerland - it might as well have been the moon for us back in 1950.

Oh well - I only mention it because it pops into my head every time I hear the one over the road. But interestingly I realise that, amongst all my boxes of bits that now live in Lancashire, I've hoarded that cheap little wooden Swiss chalet style clock face my whole life. There must be a reason.