Just as the clock ticks at home, it doesn’t tick anywhere. But for Arend Schonewille from Hollandscheveld, nothing has happened in the past few hours. To adjust his three hundred clocks to winter time, he stopped them all.
“It was very quiet here,” says Schonewille on Sunday morning as he starts the clocks running again one by one. “If you’re used to this ticking, then the silence won’t bother you.” He stopped most of the clocks just after half past ten yesterday. “And then today I’ll turn them back on at eleven o’clock.”
The clock collector has many more clocks in and around his home in Hollandscheveld. A few hundred clocks stand still day and night to avoid damaging the timepiece. And that makes a difference, because he doesn’t have to change those clocks either.
Some clocks still need to be wound up, others have two o’clock and therefore have to go around many times before they reach eleven o’clock again. Because Schonewille cannot literally turn the clock back an hour. “No, they will break. There is a mechanism in it and it can only go forward.”
Another option is not to stop the clocks at all, but to turn them forward eleven hours. “But then I have a whole day’s work, now half a day,” he says laughing. “And you see how much work it is. Because if I have to set them several hours ahead, I have to let them strike the half and full hours every time, otherwise everything is confused.”
One by one the clocks start ticking again and they take turns striking eleven times. “Nice, isn’t it?”, Schonewille beams. “I don’t think it’s necessary to abolish summer time. I also think it’s way too nice in the summer to sit outside for a long time.” And spending hours trying to get those clocks running on time again is absolutely no punishment for the Hollandschevelder.