Wheeling them in, the yard gate at half-mast with its ticking hinge, the tin bucket with a hairnet of webs, the privy door ajar, the path gloved with moss ploughed by metal through a scalped tyre - in the shadows of the hood, in the ripped silk of the rocking, buckled pram, none of the dead clocks moving.
And carrying them in to a kitchen table, a near-lifetime’s Woodies coating each cough, he will tickle them awake; will hold like primitive headphones the tinkling shells to each ear, select and apply unfailingly the right tool to the right cog and with movements as unpredictable as the pram’s will wind and counter-wind the scrap to metronomic life.
And at the pub, at the Grey Horse or Houldsworth, furtive as unpaid tax, Rolex and Timex and brands beneath naming will change hands for the price of a bevy, a fish supper or a down payment on early retirement on a horse called Clockwork running in the three-thirty at Aintree.