Tick�tock�tick�tock�
9:04 p.m.
In one store, tcklyrpharsn�s favourite store in fact, Little Princess and I both bought bustiers (black for her, navy blue for me) as they were on sale for $9.99. Even if I only wear it once in the privacy of my own boudoir, it will have been worth it. We also traipsed around a bit, admiring merchandise on display, and I met two women I rarely see but whom I like a lot. We lunched at the little caf� just to the right of the main entrance, a step up from the food court, and came away reeking from cigarette smoke (they still allow it in certain places, although it is supposed to be banished from the mall in general).
I was also supposed to buy a gift for the surprise 60th birthday party of a dear friend of ours being held in Montreal next week, but I was getting very tired and everything that was really nice was too expensive, and everything I could afford was too tacky. Maybe after Christmas (which means braving the crowds yet again) I can find something at a price that doesn�t make me gag.
Last night, just as we were finishing dinner (barbecued jerk mahi-mahi) the horloger arrived and reinstalled the cleaned and oiled works of my grandfather�s grandfather clock in the living room so that we now have the friendly tick tock and hourly chiming of the time. The clock was payment received for services rendered (I think it had to do with collection of rents, or something) and my grandfather tried to sell it, but was unsuccessful. My mother did the research and found that it was built in England around 1735 (Bach was still writing music then, just think about it) and of course every part is hand made. The most interesting thing about it is that the mechanism is very simple in that only one weight drives the hour and minute hands as well as the chime. Most clocks have two and three weights for that.
When I was little, my grandfather would always say that it was Elgan�s clock, and after he died my mother (the sole heir) took it into her house, but as my father found the chime rather loud, it remained silent (that was in 1968). When Hubby and I built our present house in 1990, my mother insisted that I take my clock, so we moved it along with my great-aunt�s two gumwood bookcases, my grandmother�s china cabinet, my grandfather�s old oak desk and a rug I bought when I was in university. A local watchmaker fixed it up, but it stopped ticking after about a year and we never bothered trying to get it going again. So I am very happy now to have its comforting tick in the house once more.
I read another book in the past couple of days, The RiddIe of the Wren by Canadian fantasy author CharIes de Lint. This is an earlier book of his, pre-dating his �urban fantasy� phase and I found it charming. I actually did nothing (besides a load of laundry) else today, which was a welcome change from my usual routine. This is what I like about the holidays.
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