"OVER the centuries, Time has dripped in water-clocks and whispered in hour-glasses, ticked in watches and boomed sonorously from bell-towers. Romantics heard it in the roar of avalanches, the creak of glaciers, the crackle of fire in timber and the long susurration of waves on the shore. But for many people in Britain for much of the 20th century, indulging the national weakness for exact timekeeping, Time spoke from the other end of a telephone line. His number could be dialled; and from a room presumed full of chittering and whirring timepieces, Time would inform them that “At the third stroke, the time, sponsored by Accurist, will be ten twenty-seven and fifty seconds...
His tones as Time were warm, mature, velvety and clear. They suggested that he had, by day, a cup of tea to hand, by night a mug of steaming cocoa, and at all times a slice of the sort of cake that is stuffed with brandy-soused raisins. In fact, the secret of his mellifluousness was a teaspoonful of Worcester sauce. His voice was hearty, befitting a man who cooked up steak-and-kidney pie, liked a pint and had the waistline to prove it; but with a note of Saturnine wistfulness, reflecting the dreamer who loved to watch the changing light of day through the variously coloured bottles of washing-up liquid on his kitchen window sill...
The job required consummate accuracy, and he had it. This was a man who liked everything arranged just so: notepads aligned on the table, ornaments in their places, a shaken-but-not-stirred Martini every night at 6pm on the dot. He recorded the speaking clock’s 86 separate words in a single take of 50 minutes; though someone forgot to include “o’clock”, obliging him to drive up again to London the next day. “O’clock” was followed by “precisely”, delivered with especial fondness and exactitude; for indeed the time he announced, measured by an atomic clock at the National Physical Laboratory, was accurate to within five milliseconds, more reliable even than computers and mobile phones. In the 21st century Mr Cobby still set right 30m callers a year."
The idea of Time pouring a martini, I love it!
