Knockbarragh Time - 'We were always talking about the time'

Peter ‘the Champion’ had downsized to one room, a goat, a terrier dog, and a few hens. His light was a wick in a syrup tin of paraffin oil.

Not only did his door not have a lock, it didn’t even have a latch. Like manys another; his house was ‘preserved through neglect’. And yet he had a good pocket watch and he liked it to be on precise time.

Our other neighbour Peter ‘Sprickelty’ also had a pocket watch. It was his habit to solemnly take it out, open the case, study the big hand and the wee hand and then turning the face to me say, “would you believe its that time?”

It was a gesture to provoke “Good heavens half past three” or words to that effect, I could never quite fathom why ‘Sprickelty’ done that.

We were always talking about the time. Out in the fields, in the cart-house, neighbours asking as they passed. “What time is it? Have you got the right time? Run into the house and look at the clock?”

No eighteenth century mariner calculating his position was as obsessed with the chronometer as we were. (At sea; latitude was easy to discover e.g. angle of the Pole Star above the horizon; but for longitude the mariner had to carry a timepiece of minute accuracy set at noon at the home port.

(It was in 1770 that John Harrison built such a timekeeper to win a £23,065 prize.)

In our country bailiwick we all had big silver pocket watches for work and some had ornate gold timepieces for dress occasions. Every home had a couple of clocks. Cuckoo clocks and substantial tin ones with alarms on the top.

There was a positive rash of sand timers, although every woman intuitively knew the time it took to boil an egg.

We were further informed with the angelus bell ringing three times a day, a ritual so important that the sacristan had two back up volunteers.

Lady Ross of Bladensburg had the idea of a memorial to King Edward the Seventh that took the form of a superior clock to be installed in the tower of the Kilbroney Parish Church in Rostrevor Square.

And on top of all that we were within sight and sound of the railway station in Warrenpoint and had a mental timetable of the trains.

A number of local men fixed clocks and watches. There was much talk of main springs, hair springs, jewels and movements.

Returned Yanks spoke of time zones in America, and we being a mere stones throw from the border, had during the Second World War, dealt with an hour time difference between us and the ‘South’.

Well into the twentieth century Dublin had a Mean time 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind London. I read somewhere Donegal had a time zone even beyond that.

As we worked our farms, living by the rhythms of the sun, the moon, and the seasons, I can’t for the life of me think why we needed to know the precise time. And why did we need to know it so often?

In reality our only regimentation was when on Sunday we went to Chapel or Church. Time was a bazaar area of our lives. We seemed to use all the instrumentation that we had to bamboozle it.

To this end every clock in the house was to some degree fast, the one on the dresser twenty minutes, the one in the back window half an hour.

There was a rationale that when we saw how much of the day had past we’d buck-up and get on with our work.

Then there was the matter of British Summer Time. For some reason we’d allow as much as a month to elapse before we’d put the clocks back, or, put the clocks forward.

This meant that the simple query “what time is it?”, had to be further defined with, “oul time or new time” and “how much is that clock fast”.

To calculate the right time took if not an almanac, at least an agile mind.

And still for all our preoccupation with time, on that October Sunday morning after the clock going back, it was quite normal to see several men and women meeting the congregation coming out of their place of worship --- they being an hour too late; but as bad as that was; it wasn’t as bad as being an hour too early in the spring.

There was at --- the time --- scare mongering about a time difference between The Republic and The North due to Brexit.

I’m afraid it didn’t mean much to me because due to a bit of mechanical work the clock in my car is an hour and fifteen minutes slow.

I could read the manual or have the mechanic fix it but I’m happy enough to leave it as it is.

To make the calculation every time I look at the clock. I’m comfortable with that, its second nature, sure its only ‘Knockbarragh Time’ to me.

P.S. In his diary May 1665 Samuel Pepys chides himself for constantly checking his pocket watch---‘seeing what o’clock it is one hundred times.’ And vows to carry it no more.