The Speaking Clock

What it looks like, and what it does

A beige push-button phone on a hallway table. A handset with a worn patch. An LED display reading four minutes ahead. Behind it a calendar whose dates are written in the same hand in different centuries.

Answers on the second ring. Repeats the time once. Hangs up before the caller does.

What is known

Dial 123 and a woman's voice says, “At the third stroke it will be…” and gives a time four minutes ahead. The telephone company calls it a fault and has not been able to find it.

Callers who act on it arrive at appointments with four minutes to spare, and have seen things in those minutes: an accident avoided, a word said to someone leaving, a door left on the latch. It has never given the wrong time for what it is.

What it can do

• Announces a time four minutes ahead of the real one
• Gives a caller four minutes of foresight, if they act on it

Where it stops

• Four minutes only; the gap does not widen
• Does not answer calls made from a mobile phone

An encounter

Bello dialled for the time out of habit. The woman said it was six o'clock. He looked at his watch: 17:56. He drove the long way home and was at his daughter's school gate as the doors opened, instead of the end of the road. A lorry had just gone through the place where he would have been.

Oluwaseun Bello, taxi driver, A hall table in a house on Garrick Street, 17:56 by the kitchen clock

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Recordings of the line show a constant offset of 238 to 242 seconds over twelve years.
• rumor: That the line has a second number, that fewer people know.
• interpretation: It may be the world, trying to give people a little time to arrive.

Still unresolved

Sometimes, in the pause before the stroke, callers hear a second voice say “now.” The line then goes dead for a full minute.

Where it has been recorded

• Garrick Street (confirmed) — Recorded by Oluwaseun Bello, taxi driver.

Connected entities

• Hourbehind — Both give a few minutes' advance on the world. One is a place and one a line. Neither has explained the sum.