The Village Clock That Is Four Minutes Fast

The clock in the tower above the village hall gained four minutes in the autumn of 1971 and was never put right. The clockmaker who might have fixed it retired that winter. The next one quoted a price that made the parish council go very quiet. And by the time anyone had found the money, the four minutes had already begun to belong to the village, in the way that a creaky stair or a stiff gate eventually belongs to a house.

Everybody knows. The bus timetable in the shelter is written to the real time, and everybody in the village adds the four minutes back without thinking, the way you automatically lift your foot higher for a step that is taller than the others. On market mornings, people with baskets glance up at the lit clock face, then at their own watches, and nod as if confirming an old friend’s habit. Visitors are the only people who ever miss the bus, and the village regards this as a fair test.

The matter has been put to a vote twice. In 1994, a motion to repair the clock was defeated by a considerable margin. In 2011, somebody proposed it again, with a full costing and a neat diagram, and it was defeated by even more. The recorded objection on both occasions was exactly the same: the clock is not wrong, it is early, and there is a great deal of difference between the two. The diagram is now framed in the village hall.

The children born since then have grown up in a place where the time on the wall is not quite the time, and nobody thinks anything of it. One of them, home from university for the holidays, was overheard explaining patiently to a visiting friend that the clock is perfectly fine, actually, and that it is the rest of the world that runs four minutes behind. The friend, who had just missed the bus, did not find this helpful.

The story is invented, but anyone who has ever set a watch or kitchen clock a few minutes fast on purpose will recognise the idea. Plenty of people do it, hoping that a clock which is slightly ahead will help them leave the house on time, even though they know perfectly well it is fast. Small, shared quirks like this, whether a clock that runs early or a door everyone knows to lift before opening, often become part of what makes a place feel like home.

So if your own town has a clock that has never quite told the right time, perhaps there is no need to fix it straight away. Learn its habits, add the minutes back and enjoy being in on the secret. There are worse things than living somewhere that is always slightly early. And if you are ever visiting a village where everyone seems to glance at the church clock and then quietly subtract a few minutes, you may want to check the bus timetable twice.