SO reader Harry Bradbury wasn't winding me up, after all!

Regular customers may recall the mention on this page (April 8) of 'coffin clocks' loaned out by a St Helens firm of undertakers some decades ago.

I carried the piece from Harry, of Clinkham Wood, rather tongue in cheek, explaining that these clocks were kept ticking by dropping coins into a specially-created slot.

The idea, macabre as it may seem by today's sophisticated world of glossy insurance policies, was that the clock contents (regularly collected) would go towards the borrower's funeral expenses.

In other words, you could watch your life tick by . . .

Now, I'm reliably informed, one such clock was brought into the Star office.

Unfortunately, I was out at the time and the elderly reader treasured it too much to leave it behind for my inspection and failed to leave his name and address.

I'D be obliged if this well-meaning reader would drop me a line with his identity so that I can pick up on that rather sombre theme.

Harry Brad also enlarged on our recent Bally Ann Day theories. According to his Prescot aunt, Millie Dorcey, this term (describing the most hard-up day of the week) is a corruption of a French phrase meaning 'I have nothing' which could have been brought back by troops from the first world war.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.