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Clock this Old Herbaceous - It's a wind-up!

Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 6:45 am
by alan refail
Our youngest granddaughter, the one who hugs cheetahs,
viewtopic.php?p=105356#p105356
is now working in the National Audit Office in London. It seems we now have a clock winder in the family :wink:

Here's an extract from the e-mail we got from her yesterday.

Audit Season has started here so I have been out of the office doing work at client locations around London. So far I have done the House of Commons audit and the Electoral Commission audit. For the House of Commons audit I got to pick up my Parliament pass so now I have access to most of Westminster. I didn’t get any time to roam around the Houses of Parliament while working there however as part of the asset existence testing I had to walk up the Elizabeth tower and make sure that Big Ben was still there. It was really fun, I got taken up by an engineer who was keen to tell me lots about the history and maintenance of the clock. Then when we got to the top he showed me the clock mechanism – which was huge – and explained how it worked. He showed me how they wind it up three times a week and asked if I wanted to have a go, so I jumped over the barrier and wound Big Ben! I don’t think they let you do that on the regular tour. We watched and listened to the bells at quarter past 1 and then went to look behind the clock faces.

Re: Clock this Old Herbaceous - It's a wind-up!

Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 7:40 am
by oldherbaceous
What a lovely story, Alan. Now you not only have a very pretty and clever Granddaughter, you also have one that any mechanical clock owner would be very pleased to know. A rare breed indeed. :)

I love the simple time adjustment on the clock, they use old pennies.

I suppose our little Church clock would seem a bit of a dissapointment to her now... but she would always be more than welcome to come and have a look......