Written to the prompt C is for Clock
Why Grandad Never Wore A Watch
The front of the matchbox had a red background, with blue and white detailing in the corners, and in the middle was a white oval showing a blue drawing of a steam ship, which, curiously, also had rigging for sails. My grandad said it was a Victorian battleship called HMS Devastation, and he told me he’d been its captain during the First World War. Grandma told me not to take any notice as Grandad hadn’t even been born until the First War had been over for ten years.
I remember the matchbox had a joke on the back – one about a hyena swallowing Oxo cubes and making a laughing stock of himself.
But the most interesting thing about the matchbox was that it was home to Grandad’s pet insect, Clive. He was just over half an inch long, with wings that covered his entire body, although I never saw him fly. The same colour as my grandad’s tan brogue shoes, with two darker lines running down his back, Clive had six jagged, angular legs. Two long antennae sprouted from his head in a V formation.
When I was little, Grandad would tell me about how he’d found Clive in the Theatre Royal in Great Yarmouth. Grandad had been a ventriloquist, travelling all over the country during the heyday of variety theatre, and Clive had been on the same bill as part of an insect circus, where all sorts of beetles and bugs did tricks: pulled tiny carts, rode miniature bicycles and tottered almost invisibly along high wires.
The insect circus owner was retiring, and so, after the last show, when the insects were going to be dispersed, Grandad took Clive and gave him a new home, feeding him on chips and honey, dried peas and moustache clippings.
Grandad carried him about in that matchbox for years, because Clive was no ordinary beetle. Whenever I visited Grandad, I’d ask him to let Clive out to do his party trick.
It didn’t involve carts or bicycles, or high wires. All I had to do was ask him a question.
‘What time is it, Clive?’
And Clive would tell me what the time was. And he was right! Every single time he was right! ‘Twenty past three,’ he’d say, or ‘Quarter to seven.’ Whatever time it was, he would tell you and he’d be right.
I could not work out how he did it.
Clive was the reason my Grandad never wore a watch. He said he didn’t need one because Clive would always tell him the time. After all, he was a clockroach.
© Carol Carman 2025
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