IT'S about time someone got around to writing a book on Sheffield's clocks and Stephen Johnson is just your man.
He clocked on to researching and compiling The Clock Watcher's Guide To Sheffield four years ago and the book is now in the shops. It should chime with many a reader.
Okay, that's enough clock puns. Local historian Stephen does a very good job with them himself.
The book is punctuated with headings such as Radio Times when he writes about the clock at Radio Sheffield, Church Times on the many clocks on churches, Bed Time for a clock on an hotel and Record Time for the clock at Don Valley Stadium.
And - you'll love this - Ooo assay, is that the time? for the one on the city's Assay Office.
Stephen, aged 56, has not had time to clock up (sorry) exactly how many he's mentioned because they include timepieces past and present. But he does know who got him started. His mum.
She refused a cuppa when she called round one day because she might have to spend a penny and the local public toilet was closed if she was caught short.
He recalls: "She went on to say 'When I was a young girl there were toilets all o'er...and clocks an' all.'"
And that sparked off the book. "I don't purposely go out and look for things to write about. It's when things are said which catch my interest," he says.
Stephen hopes his latest opus, which he subtitles Sheffield's Book of Hours, can answer the question posed by a reader in The Star in April, 1998, who wondered where all the public clocks have gone.
He's found them, from the earliest one, a primitive 13th sundial scratched on a wall at Sheffield Cathedral's Lady Chapel, to some of the latest on street information posts.
They're an echo of the clocks which used to be at the city's old tram termini.
The book's title echoes The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and Stephen has found a clock which looked remarkably like Marvin the melancholy robot at Crystal Peaks, above the lift. His caption is: "Time? Don't talk to me about time." Sadly, it's been replaced.
Clocks be there, literally, just hours and Stephen records them, as the one in the antique shop window he snapped before it was sold on.
It's full of fascinating facts. The Town Hall clock has four faces and is regulated by radio by the national atomic clock at Rugby.
It doesn't have any bells - they're electronic. And it, the one in Orchard Square and the one o'clock time signal opposite at H L Brown's at Yorkshire House don't always agree on the right time!
He points out that the clock on Sheffield University's Northgate House on West Street has been stopped for a long time, perhaps not surprising as it's the home of the department of archaeology, the city's own Time Team, for whom time stopped long ago!
"I'm not a Time Lord," jokes Stephen who apologises if he's missed a few.
And, for no extra charge, he has listed every public toilet in the city, although there's no guarantee they are open or even exist any more.
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