Do you know when you have a certain image of something in your head? Perhaps you have only talked to a person on the phone or through online communication and you conjure up an image of what they look like; and then when you meet them you are completely thrown off because they look nothing like you envisioned them. Or perhaps you imagine what a house looks like on the inside having only seen its exterior year after year – passing it on the way to work – but then when you are invited inside it bears absolutely no resemblance to what you had created in your head.

This is what I thought about clocks to a smaller degree. “Clocks?” you say. “Everyone knows what clocks look like.” But what I’m talking about is the image of what clocks would look like in my home. I have been bucking convention since I was a small child; if it matched I wouldn’t wear it, if it was the way everyone else was going I went the other way, if it smacked of tradition I turned my head; I was never, according to my own beliefs, going to fit into the mold.

Today, I am a wife and mother and while I’m not Betty Crocker by any means I have settled into what is essentially a more conventional type of life. And I’m okay with it; in fact I love it. But when my aunt told me she was sending me a mantel clock for our new home all I could think of was the traditional, old-fashioned clock image I had in my head. But what arrived was something completely different and completely personal and it began my love affair with clocks of all varieties; something that was easily satisfied online as I’ll explain in the next post.