“Hugo was good with clocks, too. The talent ran in the family. Hugo’s father had always brought home broken clocks for his son to play with, and by the time he was six, Hugo was able to fix just about anything.”
“Thursday morning. I usually let my Mum wake me up but today I have set my alarm for seven. Even from under my duvet, I can hear it bleating on the other side of my room. I hid it inside my plastic crate for faulty joysticks so that I would have to get out of bed, walk across the room, yank it out of the box by its lead and, only then, jab the snooze button. This was a tactical manoeuvre by my previous self. He can be very cruel.”
“ ‘Frog is late,’ said Toad. Toad looked at his clock. He remembered it was broken. The hands of the clock did not move. Toad opened the front door. He looked out into the night. Frog was not there. ‘I am worried,’ said Toad.”
“Toad opened his present from Frog. It was a beautiful new clock. The two friends sat by the fire. The hands of the clock moved to show the hours of a merry Christmas Eve.”
“CRASH went the bottles, BEE-BEEP went the clock, RO-RO-RO-RO went the dogs on the block. On went the lights, BANG went the door and out came the family, one, two, three, four.”
“They did run as fast as they could, but time ran faster, and before they were half-way to school the town clock struck nine, and all hope was over. This vexed Katy very much; for, though often late, she was always eager to be early.”
“Miss Grizzel stood perfectly still, looking up at the clock; Griselda beside her, in breathless expectation. Presently there came a sort of distant rumbling. Something was going to happen. Suddenly two little doors that were above the clock face, which Griselda had not known were there, sprang open with a burst and out flew a cuckoo, flapped his wings, and uttered his pretty cry, ‘cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!’ ”
“For crowing there was not his equal in all the land. His voice was merrier than the merry organ that plays in the church, and his crowing from his resting place was more trustworthy than a clock.”
“I was winding it up one night, when suddenly it gave a little gasp and a long sigh, like a soul departing from the body; and it wouldn’t go after that. Sometimes, from force of habit, I take it out at night and start to wind it. Then I miss its genial tick, and I feel as if I am looking at the face of a dead friend.”
“The stillness had become an expectant one; the house seemed to hold is breath; the darkness pressed up to him, pressing him with a question: Come on, Tom, the clock has struck thirteen- what are you going to do about it?”
“And then at last she loosened the right screw! Whizz! Bang! the spring flew out with a whirr and hit the low ceiling. Screws and cog wheels flew in every direction. It was like an explosion.”
“Even the hands of his watch and the hands of all the thirteen clocks were frozen. They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle.”
“Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold.”