The problem wasn’t so much that he gave me the clock. The problem was that he gave me the clock eight years ago — having painstakingly made it himself from a mechanism and something he printed out on his computer — and that, instead of 1 to 12, the numbers read 20 to 32. The problem is that I am now 32.
But is my life in trouble because I have, as yet, failed to produce an heir, or is it the fact that my father, in order to emphasise what was after all only half a joke, embellished the clock’s face with the italicised words “Steffilein’s Biological Clock — it’s Ticking!”? Maybe it’s the exclamation mark.
Perhaps it’s because he holds any opinion at all about my inamoratos or that I don’t really mind when he takes me out to lunch to point out that the latest “looks like a refugee”.
It is my father’s habit at these meetings to reiterate his key points. No phoneys, no homeless people, no toyboys. A few years ago he said: “Never get divorced. It will destroy you.” The catch was that not marrying would also “destroy you”.
Friends of mine who like to think of themselves as enlightened are appalled. These are mainly women who defend their moral right to prick holes in condoms. My own mother — not one of these women — merely covered her eyes when I unwrapped the clock that December in 1998.
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I laughed my head off. The gift, I thought, showed originality, humour and realism as well as an iron will to extend the family line. Looking at my clock now, I realise that its face is peeling off. I shall have to ask my father to make me another, factoring in advances in IVF technology. The only way I’ll know for sure that my life’s in trouble will be if he refuses.