I'm not sure at what point I first noticed it. If I retraced my steps I might have made a note of it, where I was and the time.
It's ironic looking back because I've always been fascinated by it - by time I mean. So much so in fact, that Elvie thinks I'm mad.
She says: "You're cuckoo, Dazz".
But I think she's being unfair. I'm no madder than any other collector and I bet I'm not the only person in the world whose particular obsession is clocks. I've only got about three hundred of them anyway. If you don't count the watches.
The thing with collections is that you never know at what critical point you are at the point where you could be considered 'mad'. What critical mass.
I once saw a show where a man had collected his bellybutton lint, enough to fill a jar. Was he mad because he collected something that many people might find disgusting. Or was he mad because he collected so much of it?
Personally, I think it's all perfectly in order than anyone should collect clocks.
I have them stashed all through our house, which does create problems with Elvie because this is not a big place. It's just a single story weatherboard, post-war I think. A three-bedder although the third bedroom is used to stash Elvie's wheelchair and all the other rubbish we can't seem to find a place for.
My most prized possession is the grandfather clock. I've only got one of them, which, again, proves I'm not mad because if I was, surely I'd have more than one.
It's a special sort of clock, though, a one-off. I found it at Recycle Land. It was in pieces - I think someone had kicked in the cabinet - but I managed to glue them back together. It took me ages and Elvie was not impressed because I had to take the car out of the garage so I could work on it. I mean, a grandfather clock isn't the sort of thing you can put together on an ordinary table, is it? You need space and the garage was the best place to lay it out.
There were times I tell you when I felt like I was a mortuarian, that grandfather clock and its broken body laid out on an old curtain that I laid on the floor, over the oil stains and everything, cold as a corpse. But at least the actual clock bit was in good working order. The old thing still had a heart beat.
I've got clocks of all sizes but once, I told a girl I met I had a big clock and she slapped me. You have to be careful when you talk about clocks.
Elvie says the ticking drives her mad. She says I drive her made. But I say, "Everything drives you mad, you silly old woman."
I shouldn't be disrespectful because, after all, this is the woman who gee birth to me. But after all these years, we get on each other's nerves sometimes.
Now we're stuck with each other, though. Elvie's lost a foot, thanks to 'the beatis'. She calls it here 'dire beatis'. Like bad music. And she can barely get out of her chair these days.
As for me, I've never married. Well, no one would have me, even with my big clock.
I could have moved out. I'm not that badly off, especially since my website took off. I could easily have my own place. But at first I didn't go because I was terrified of living of my own. Then I didn't' go because Elvie was terrified of being alone. Now we are sick of the sight of each other and we'd love to be alone but neither of us really have a choice.
It's a kind of checkmate but no one knows who had trumped whom. We've paralysed ourselves by our own bad mve, really. Poor strategy, that what it all comes down to. Elvie with her habits that have turned the music bad, and me? Well, I thought it was a stupid fear. I knew it was irrational. I thought I would die if I was on my own.
Then I started to get sick. I felt tired all the time and my hair started to fall out. I saw the doctor and was told I had a stress-related illness. Which was crazy as looking at my life, you'd be hard pressed to notice any stress.
And I guess it was after that, at that point, that I noticed it. You may say I was imagining things but I'm sincere. THings were happening around me that seemed to reflect my physical condition.
No, I don't mean in that metaphorical bullshit way it is in a movie or one of those dreary poems.
This wasn't a synonym or an allegory. It was real. At least to me.
As my lethargy got worse and I found it increasingly difficult to get out of bed, things started to fade and wilt.
The flowers I like to tend in our little garden died. The birds that frequent our house flew away, even the sparrows.
The things that weren't up to it, completely keeled over. Like the clocks, the ones with the cheap batteries, all ran out of puff almost simultaneously.
Everything with a life in it seemed to slow down and pass away.
I was freaked out by it. I missed the birds and I couldn't work out why, even though they were in season, the marigolds shrivelled up.
I wondered if death was coming.
I wondered if I really was going mad.
That was until the day of the burning tree.
