Rose and pocket watch flash design

Forty-one years ago this September, Mr Pryce kept a silver pocket watch in his waistcoat and wouldn't let any of us touch it. It had belonged to his father, who signed for the trains at Crewe. Every Friday at ten to four he'd snap the lid open, look at it like a man checking a letter from home, and say, 'Time enough for one more page, Ellis.' We thought he was the dullest man alive. Then he set us drawing. Roses from the bush behind the bike sheds, leaves stripped off the sycamore, and the watch laid over the top of it all on a sheet of cartridge paper.

Our Carol drew the best rose. Nobody knew that until the spring fair, when she sold a sketch to the vicar's wife for two pounds and a jar of piccalilli. She'd spent a whole week on it with a black pen, every petal drawn twice, the beads of a chain looping across the bottom like a necklace somebody had dropped. She never said where the design came from, and went quiet whenever anyone asked.

Mr Pryce retired the summer after. At his leaving tea he gave Carol the watch chain and told her a drawing only lasts as long as somebody keeps picking up the pen. She didn't say a word. We thought it odd. Then we learnt she'd kept drawing every Friday at ten to four, for the rest of her life, in a notebook nobody else was allowed to see.

So I've brought the notebook. It's open at the last page, where the hands still point at ten to four and the rose isn't finished. Pass it along, Dennis, and mind the ink. Somebody in this room owes that rose a few petals.