In the Time of Our Lives

Chapter 1

So before this book starts, there has been one person I personally want to thank. One and only my editor, good friend and an inspiration : Paris Katherine. 

P.S.It has been a while since the person above has helped me, and now I am at the point where I can edit my own stuff, but I will be forever grateful for the first editing from them :)

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Tick-tock-tick-tock. Are you responsible for the actions that you are doing? Think, do not answer straight away. What's most correct from these - actions taken by the heart or mind? But your answer is right, don't you agree? Or do you simply decide to respond with what you have heard and think is right? Then is this your own opinion ... And now everything leads to the question: once more; Are you responsible for the actions that you're taking?

The clocks ceased to work from time to time, and the old, copper arrows of it have stopped as well. So with a sigh, I had to repair them. These clocks and watches were not the only decorations in a dusty, poorly lit room. My task was monotonous and simple - to repair strange, antique clocks and watches, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them existed during the reign of Elizabeth I. I always enjoyed taking care of them. I guess, the downfall to all this is having a normal life, since I don't think everyone does what I do; being an outsider in these sort of things was a given is what I mean. To take great care of these watches and clocks, has become my passion, hobby and work. Work that requires the utmost attention to detail and concentration.

In the old days, according to my grandfather, whom I knew nothing of since recently, our store was quite popular. Adults and children would have come from work and schools to catch the performance that grandfather arranged on Friday evenings. The performances lasted about fifteen minutes, and the program included a large round of the grandfather's house. On each wall of this house hung clocks different from each other, not only in size but in colour and eras that they came from. Not so interesting to the children as to their parents. The house had two floors, and on the second was a special room, a workshop where grandfather worked wonders, which many could not imagine. You could get into that room, only from the permission and only if you knew my grandfather. The workshop was only for selected, some say gifted students, whom grandfather decided to open the secret of the mysterious workshop. This room is strictly forbidden to disclose, and therefore I can not tell you, same as to describe what was in that room.

Over time, the buildings near our workshop began to grow in length, and their shades fell on our insignificant, old shop in which people eventually ceased to come. The business of this place died out, as many people didn't come, and my grandfather fell sick. The people wanted to hand our little workshop under construction, but no one wanted to buy an antique, decrepit shop. Didn't want to demolish it, because in such a small place it is hardly possible to build anything either. And so it stayed there abandoned and unnoticed. Only leaving a hint of a trace in the memory of those who used to come here often.

Over time, the government realized that they need clock masters, because no one knew how to repair watches and clocks, since it was a skill long lost to the common people, and of all the skillful masters the only ones left were me and my grandfather.

But I have to take a step back and explain how this all happened. So here is my story, recorded in the paper as close to what I remember as possible. Sit down with a hot cup of tea and enjoy this book, because it will be a long but I hope a pleasant ride for you.

Now, I wasn't born a master of all trades, rather, on the contrary, everything that I touched - was a 100% failure. Once I lived in a big city full of interesting events happening every day. I didn't appreciate all of it, but rather considered those events as an obligatory outcome of living in the big city. I didn't understand that it isn't about what is happening in reality of the place that you live in, but the possibility of what could have happened. You don't have to live in a big city, to see "an event". Would "an event" happen in the city more often than in the middle of a farm? Yes, it is more likely, but it doesn't decline the opportunity of it happening anywhere in the world. The word opportunity is generally an interesting concept to me. Opportunity is one of the important motivators in human life. Even understanding one's abilities, a person needs to know that there is always an opportunity to solve an impossible task. Knowing the possibility of it, but not the solution, a person will find a way, even if it didn't seem to exist at a first look. From which it follows that the opportunity concept works side by side with hope. Since if you have hope in ability to find the solution, and the "false-told" opportunity of doing it - you are more likely to succeed in anything. You see, I say this because Hope gives you an ability to start an impossible task, but a false opportunity gives you the reason to do the task. And even if you give up at first, if you truly believe it is possible to achieve, eventually, it might just turn out that you can. Knowing this, I became wiser, but this information could have been more useful to me much earlier.