Tick Tock

[A.P. Wolf]

Time is passing us by, Robert... we missed another one:

'67A first half of the 18th century weight driven brass single-handed lantern clock Edward Cutbush, Maidstone£2,520'
At Bonhams, New Bond Street, in June this year.

I did bung in a bid for a fiver in the hope of a Christmas present for you, but they sent me a rather rude note in return.
Whoever got it, please don't tell them that they can get $25,000 for it in the USA.
Perhaps we should give up the search for the Ripper, and just buy Cutbush clocks, we'd be millionaires in no time.
And then we could invest six million dollars in examining saliva on Victorian postage stamps.
Or something like that.

[Robert Linford]

AP, I think Thomas would have liked the clock in Dad's Army - the one where the knight trundles out through the door and jobs Corporal Jones with his sword.

Robert

[A.P. Wolf]

We've got one of them clocks in the high street here, Robert, on the hour a knight comes scooting out and whacks a bell with his sword, which is all well and good, unless that is you are stood under it and a seagull is perched on the bell, which they often are, and then you get dismembered seagull all over your head.
And then a fair maiden scoots out of the other side of the clock and bludgeons a crow to death.
And they call it a tourist attraction.

[Robert Linford]

Hi AP

Ken Livingstone would like one of those to kill the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. He doesn't like pigeons - they don't pay the congestion charge.

Robert

[A.P. Wolf]

This is another I found while clearing out my electronic desk:

'Re: Lizzie Borden by beccles on 8 June 2005 8:52am On the subject of murderers and villains, this is a story that my dad tells and there is absolutely no evidence to back it up, but apparently one of my great great great grandparents claimed to have seen Jack the Ripper escaping over their garden fence in London. They used to own a Hackney carriage company on the Old Kent Road around the time of the Whitechapel murders. I expect its a load of rubbish, but its nice to have little stories like that to tell about your ancestors! I know absolutely nothing about mine!

-bec:)'

[R.J.Palmer]

When I was a teen-ager there was a manhunt in my city for an escaped convict and murderer; he had killed a deputy. I remember an old woman had called the papers to say that she had seen the man climbing over her backyard fence; but her story was dismissed with all the standard claims of 'hysteria,' etc. etc. Well, two or three weeks later, after this character was captured by the police, it was learned that he had spent the night in the old lady's tool shed!