Mondays are generally turning into a day when I spend the whole day using the facilities of the Council.  I have several semi-regular meetings spread out over the day, including a catch up with my ward-colleague (a luxury after three-and-a-half years as the only Lib Dem in a ward), various sub committees and private briefings and so on. 

The meetings are spaced fairly evenly through the day, and though there are long gaps between them, if I went home each time, I’d spend most of the day travelling.  I can be more productive by settling down to work in the Council.

So, I’ve spent the day in the building directly under the bells of the clock.  Which have been wrong all day.

It’s quite unsettling.  It took me quite a while to figure out how it was wrong.  Mostly when you hear the clock, it prompts you to check your watch to see what time it is.  The times you’d sit and listen to the bongs to figure out the time are few and far between.

So, there were two sets of problems going on today.  I spotted the problem with the quarter-hour chimes quite quickly – they were quarter of an hour ahead of the real time, so at a quarter-past the the hour, they’d chime half past.  This meant that on the hour, you get the quarter-past, followed by a very long pause, followed by the hour bell. 

I’m guessing the Council House clock has two separate systems for the hour and the quarter hour chimes. In most clocks like this, certainly in the one in Leominster Priory that I used to wind from time to time, there is more than one separate mechanism controlling the various different bits.  The Priory has three separate systems that a) chime the hour, b) chime the quarter hour and c) play a different, long-forgotten hymn tune for each day of the week every four hours from 1am.  They are all tied to the same clock, but the striking mechanisms wind down at different rates, so sometimes if the clock winder doesn’t get his timing right, you get hour strikes and no quarters, or hymn tunes and no hour strikes, etc. 

It wasn’t until 1pm when the clock struck 12 that I realised that in addition to the quarter chime being wrong, the clock was also striking GMT during the BST months.  I’m pretty sure it doesn’t usually do that.

I do hope no-one has been relying on the clock today.  They’d have been greatly confused!