Recently I was working with some PhDs near Barcelona. As you are not necessarily in my immediate social circle that might have been the first time you heard me say that.

But, if you know me on a person-to-person basis – at all – you will have heard me say that quite a lot recently.

And, you will have heard me mention that I was ‘running an interactive case study on the ethics of stem cell research, which, well yes, I wrote…’

Anyway, enough of that, I am not here to show off.

(Though if you want to know more about how good the case study is and how lovely the hotel in the mountains above the city was, or how charming and fun the 40 PhDs were, then do get in touch.)

The trip involved quite a lot of waiting around in Barcelona airport for one reason or another, and unlike the stuff above, I won’t bore you with the details.

Anyway, there is no clock in Barcelona airport.

Now an airport is somewhere where time matters, so you might think even in this day and age of watches and phones, you might have a clock that people could glance up at and be sure they hadn’t missed the time to go to the gate or missed their family’s flight arrival.

There is a fake clock in the cafe, where I spent some time waiting for a friend/colleague to arrive but, it being fake, is stuck on 9.40 – and attractive though it is, that doesn’t really cut it as a clock.

I can understand the toilets being far, far down the other end of the terminal. I can even understand that the mezzanine floor is still under construction and may have been/will be for some time.

I can even, just, understand that whilst one terminal has lots of shops and thus ways to kill time if you arrive very early for your flight, the terminal I was in has Desigual and bugger all else.

( We would not have arrived so early if the taxi driver had not decided that the half hour trip from the hotel should be done in record time of 15 minutes with near death experiences thrown in for good measure.)

But no clock?

So, I got to thinking about clocks. I had a lot of time to kill, one way or another.

Meeting under the clock at Waterloo station is one of those cliches now over-ridden with more practical solutions like meeting at a cafe on the mezzanine floor ( Barcelona airport authority please note, with no clock you should get your mezzanine floor sorted.)

And the grandfather clock belonging to our previous next door neighbours which chimed, quietly, through the walls during the night.

I have tried to get us a chiming clock for our mantlepiece, and bought two ( not the same as a grandfather clock, but nice all the same) but we can never make them work.

So, our siting room has two clocks which don’t work – though I am sure anyone with an ounce of clock experience could get them going in a minute.

But, glancing at my watch, it is now time to go and cook supper – and there are two clocks in the kitchen which work – one has bird song on the hour and an image of the bird which is singing but (please at this point see previous blog about not being a detail kind of a person) the images and song don’t quite match – we have an owl’s hoot at midday….

And for those of us of a like mind, there is the daily time keeping, just after 7pm, The Archers, after which supper will be served.