The Pocket Watch

The pocket watch pictured here was my father's and that is him in the photo.

A basic, workingman's Ingersol. I inherited it. Whilst in Edinburgh in the 1960s I decided to put my image against the dial under the hands. I crudely marked the underside of the plastic cover with the hours.

The photo of me was taken as I jumped off the wall, by the side of the Water of Leith, on Warriston Road which leads to Edinburgh Cemetery, a favourite haunt.

So far, this is a very ordinary item of memorabilia. We have to fast forward to the 70s when we were living in York to get to the interesting bit, the reason for this blip.

One evening I was sitting with a friend in our armchairs in our front room. I happened to talk about my father in some context and moved on to other things. The evening drew to a close and I was eventually in the sitting room on my own.

Just as I was getting ready to go to bed I heard a ticking sound. There weren't any time pieces in the room so I was stumped as to its source. I scoured the room, checking in, on and under everything obvious until I decided I had to be more thorough.

I had to get on my hands and knees. The sound was definitely closer to the floor. I crawled around the room and ended up by one of the armchairs. The sound was low down and definitely coming from it. It dawned on me that whatever was ticking was inside the chair. I couldn't retrieve whatever it was by forcing my hand downwards so I tapped at the coarse cover on the bottom of the chair. I could feel something there. I eased away a section of the cover to create an opening and out popped .... this very pocket watch!

It had been lost for some considerable time (without me realising it) and on the very evening I had mentioned my father to someone it had started ticking! I was absolutely astounded.

Without things happening the way they did we would have eventually got rid of the armchair and the pocket watch with it. It had spoken out to me and I've got it still

With thanks to just be for the idea for this blip.