My grandfather’s fob watch, a present from his father, ticked away all the years and events of the first half of the twentieth century – marriages and births and deaths and wars and emigration and illness and disappointment and much joy. But since he died, in 1953, of a horrible illness, a young man of 62, the watch has sat, silent and still, as 65 years of his grandson’s marriage and births and deaths and displacement and illness and disappointment and much joy has washed over it.
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