A Season For a Skylight

I have always loved clocks. Their peaceful ticking creates such a sense of reliability and routine, without wishing to be a slave to them. I keep three of them beside my bed just to listen to their varied rhythm.

 The days between Christmas and New Year have always had a reflective quality for me. When I lived in Aberdeen, I would rise with my family to our roots in the Highlands like so much yeast. The time we spent at my Granny’s in Dingwall was always limited and precious, no more than two or three days. The winter light during the day was concise and to the point, as the dark roamed abroad in its extended version.

 In the evening, with the limited bedroom space at Granny’s, I would often sleep in her loft. I enjoyed the whole procedure, producing a wooden pole like a boathook and pulling down the trapdoor. Up the steps to the blessed isolation of the loft, a little like a tower, more of the Interpreter’s House to me than Doubting Castle. My bed was warm, and there were clocks aplenty, the year audibly departing on a pendulum. I would drift to sleep reading.

 The next morning I would wake, the light slanting through the skylight above, brightening the face of one of the clocks. The smell of bacon was already frying downstairs, a murmuring tide of relatives below. I would lie and think about the year ending, and how little time we all have to get things done. Opposite me there was a bookcase filled with animal stories. There were rows of unfinished pink knitting on top.

 The New Year would come so soon, the old one would die and no-one could stop it. Progress of a kind was quite inexorable. I thought of the Romans measuring time, marching on into history, surviving in their numerals on the clocks. If I stood on a chair, I could see out to the hills through the skylight. I almost hoped I could see my breath fogging in the little room. Pictures of relatives dead and alive, including myself, hung on the walls.

 I was often reluctant to leave the fortress of solitude, however well I related to my family. Once I had gone down to breakfast, the atmosphere would be lost: I had to turn my thoughts outward into catching up, arranging presents, looking forward to meeting more relatives. These were all delightful activities too, but I have always been rather solitary. After all the random and varied events of a family gathering, the “tower” would still be there the following night. I could raise the “drawbridge” of the ladder and be self-contained for the night.
 Sometimes we left Dingwall on the last day of the old year, which I found especially thought-provoking. There came an end to the short time we had to catch up on family activities, to look behind and ahead. The only certainty was that the New Year would become old, and next year the clocks would all be unanimous in their verdict, their hands resting like axes on the verge of midnight.