Concrete pencil

By John Hill on March 13, 2008 8:59 AM |

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Concrete Pencil - lofty scribblings from Dan Bourke

THEY’VE taken away the big broken clock from behind the bar in Davy’s, and all is not right with the Wharf.

At the moment, all you’ll see where it was is a circle of lighter wall, where the clock protected the paint from all that smoke we smoked at it, in olden times.

For the past year or so, until last week, it stood at five to 11 – five minutes to time. And then, at 10.55pm on the dot every day, one of the bartenders would take the handle of a broom, open the glass face, and flick the minute hand to ten past.

It was great, to honestly catch a pub robbing you of time. I absolutely respected them for doing it out in the open.

Don’t forget, it’s what has happened every time you’ve been to a bar, because they all set the clocks 10 minutes fast to get you out the door quicker. (A younger, chippier me phoned the speaking clock from my mobile at the desperate bar of The George at London Bridge and told the sulky apron, “they want to speak to you”.)

So this stopped clock only told the right time twice a day. And I loved it.

In Canary Wharf, everything works ruthlessly. There’s a read-out in the lift telling you exactly when the trains are, exactly what the temperature is.
Every fag-butt is picked up. Every step you take is on CCTV.
Battalions of windows march endlessly to the sky.

Have you ever seen them trimming the trees? I just know there’s a tree file somewhere on the 30th floor with a record of every leaf.
Tree 7J, branch 27, leaf 10. Faded topside, split stem.
The voice of Canary Wharf is that awful fire-alert-system woman. “Please remain at your workstation”.
In such a world, we can take great comfort in finding the occasional things that don’t work. A felt-tip-pen asterix of humanity in page after page of grey type.

So the Davy’s clock, old and yellowed, built before all these leaden towers, when 6 o’clock meant knocking off time, didn’t work.

It was a face I was always happy to see, raising as it did its minute-hand eyebrow as I revived my senses with a Guinness.
You could set your soul watch by it.

I asked a barman where it had gone. “Oh, it’s not been there months,” he told me. Et tu, barkeep?
My colleague asked his colleague and got a less mysterious answer. They’ve taken it away to be fixed.
No doubt they got a visit from the pub clocks department (next door to the leaf police upstairs).

Malfunctioning machinery will not be tolerated.

We are not welcome here.