[00:00:00] interviewer: Tell me about this one.
[00:00:02] narrator: That's my father's watch. It's a Smiths, nothing special, you wouldn't get £20 for it. He worked underground at South Crofty till his chest went, and every January he took that watch to Mr Rowe's pawn shop on 4th Street, and every April he fetched it back. I thought that was what you did with a watch. I thought everybody's father's watch spent the winter at the shop.
[00:00:26] interviewer: Did he always get it back?
[00:00:30] narrator: All but once, the winter of 63, the bad one, the mine laid men off and April came and he hadn't got it.
[00:00:37] narrator: He started walking home the long way so he wouldn't have to go past the window.
[00:00:42] narrator: I was 15.
[00:00:43] narrator: I went in to Mr. Rowe and asked him what was owed, and he looked at me a good while,
[00:00:48] narrator: and he said I could sweep his floor on Saturdays till it was paid.
[00:00:52] narrator: It took me 11 weeks.
[00:00:54] narrator: I never told my father how I got it.
[00:00:56] narrator: I put it by his plate on a Sunday morning.
[00:00:59] narrator: He picked it up, he wound it, and he put it on.
[00:01:02] narrator: He looked at me the once, and then he ate his breakfast.
[00:01:06] narrator: He never said a word about it, not then, and not ever.
[00:01:09] narrator: That was the nearest I came to being told I was loved, and I've thought about it most days since.
[00:01:16] interviewer: Does it still work?
[00:01:18] narrator: It loses about eleven minutes a day.
[00:01:21] narrator: Funny that.
[00:01:22] narrator: Eleven, I could have it seen too.
[00:01:24] narrator: There's a man in Truro who offered.
[00:01:27] narrator: but here's the rule and you can tell them I said so. Whoever's got it, you wind it on a Sunday.
[00:01:33] narrator: It doesn't have to be right. It only has to be going.
[00:01:37] interviewer: What was he like, your father?
[00:01:40] narrator: Quiet hands like shovels. He sang in the chapel on Sundays
[00:01:45] narrator: and that was the only time you'd hear what he had in him.
