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Tuesday 4th July 2006

I was down in Hammersmith as I often am, about to have a coffee and do some work before heading to the health club for a swim when I spotted that the church on the roundabout is having some work done to its clock tower. Whilst this is going on they have put a big sheet over the entire structure with a cartoon drawing of the tower and its clock on it. I looked at the time on the cartoon clock. It was 11.05. I then looked at my watch and saw that the time was indeed 11.05. Although most of my brain decided that this was probably a coincidence (after all a stopped clock is still right two times a day, or once a day if itÂ’s a 24 hour clock, though most of these are digital displays and thus if they are broken the chances they show no time at all, or possibly just a flashing 88.88 which is not a feasible time on this planet, though might be correct on Mars or somesuch), there was a part of me that wondered if the design somehow incorporated a clever piece of animation which meant that the people of Hammersmith would still get to see the time, even though their clock tower was covered with a sheet. I knew this was unlikely as such technology being displayed on a big sheet would be complicated and prohibitively expensive, but 11.05 seemed an odd time to set the clock at in a drawing and it was 11.05 so maybe there was some technological magic going on somewhere.
All logic dictated that this couldnÂ’t be the case, but even so I was left discombobulated by the thought that it might be.
After my swim I looked at the drawing again and it was still 11.05., which suggests that it was just a coincidence that I happened to look at it for the first time at the exact right time. But maybe the amazing moving cartoon clock coincidentally just happened to break down at that exact minute, so whilst it was right when I looked at it, was incorrect just a couple of hours later, due to some malfunction. After all getting a cartoon clock on a sheet to actually work must be quite complicated and so you would expect technical glitches every now and again. So thereÂ’s no way we can be sure which story is the truth. I know which one I hope is right.

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