Count Clockula Lives! – an OCD confession

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No, not the latest timepiece from Transylvania, but a cheap trick to get you to read this far!

In many places, the clocks have just been altered – back an hour – and it got me thinking about the process of changing the times of ALL the timepieces in a typical 21st century household – and (ironically), how long the process takes. When I was a boy, back in the 70s, it was a simple case of ‘the one on the mantelpiece’ and ‘the one in the bedroom’ but that belongs to a bygone era, as we now share our lives with so many electronic gadgets.

Being ever-so-slightly OCD (and a gadget-lover), it’s important to me that ALL the devices that show the time show the SAME time, so I made a list of those that need changing – just in case I forgot one! (that would be soooooooo wrong!!) – and I was surprised at the result. 10?, 20?, 30?

Then, just when I thought I’d got them all, I found a ‘clock’ in the most of obscure of places – our electric toothbrush! Yes, the toothbrush! Why? I can understand that it might need a timer, but does it really need a CLOCK as well. I can’t recall the last time I thought: ‘I wonder what the time is? – I must check my toothbrush’.

Anyway, back to clock-counting. With iPODs, digital cameras, cars, portable sat-navs, time-switches, phones, central heating, microwaves and VCRs (remember those? for younger readers, it’s a device, the size of two Sky-boxes for recording TV programmes, limited a total of three hours recording, and relying on brick-shaped tapes, the size of a err, brick!), the clock list grows each year. In all, here I counted a total of 32 devices!

32?

32??

Luckily a few of these, update themselves automagically, but try remembering which ones they are. This results (in this house anyway) in changing them once just before bedtime, only to find the following morning that they’re still an hour out, because they’ve auto-updated the updated time! Doh!

So, how did you get on? What’s the total number of timepieces in YOUR house? – and where’s the most obscure place you’ve found a ‘clock’?

I must get out more!

…or be kept in!!!!