The man who adjusts 4,000 clocks

DO you have the nerves to set some thousand clocks? May be no! But believe it or not it takes only two-and-a-half hours for Alan Midleton to adjust 4,000 timepieces!

Alan Midleton has to adjust some 4,000 historic clocks and watches at the British Horological Institute when the British Summer Time comes to an end. He painstakingly turns back the time on the whopping collection of historic clocks and watches at the British Horological Institute (BHI) in Upton, Notts.

And while many clocks adjust themselves automatically these days, it is still up to curator Alan to wind the timepieces twice a year, to move them forward or back an hour. The vast collection in BHI contains a pocket watch that once belonged to polar explorer Captain Scot and the world’s first speaking clock. The oldest part of the extraordinary group dates back to the 1640s.

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ARACHNOPHOBES should not apply for a job at Baltimore Wastewater Treatment Plant — where part of the building is blanketed by a four-acre spider web.

Experts estimate there are more than 107million eight-legged friends living there.

The entomologists sent out to the scene branded it ‘astonishing’. And their report said: “We were unprepared for the sheer scale of the spider population and the extraordinary masses of both three dimensional and sheet-like webbing that blanketed much of the facility’s cavernous interior.

“In places where the plant workers had swept aside the webbing to access equipment, the silk lay piled on the floor in rope-like clumps as thick as a fire hose.’

It continues: ‘In some areas of the plant over 95 per cent of space was filled with spider web. The webbing was so dense that it pulled eight-foot long fluorescent light fixtures out of place.”

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IT is likely that in future you don’t have to decide between an airplane, a helicopter and a car to visit your family or friends. A new concept could make good on years of ideas from science fiction, by combining all three into one device.

Arizona-based startup Krossblade wants to be the company to offer this to us in the future. It recently introduced the SkyCruiser, an electric hybrid aircraft that could switch between airplane and quadcopter modes, and also be driven like a car. The benefit of this, according to the company, is that while airplanes are fast and efficient and can cover long distances quickly; a helicopter can take off and land vertically, eliminating the need for an airfield.

Though the SkyCruiser is still in the concept phase, the company is already working on a smaller version, the SkyProwler. No price or delivery date has been set for either concept, but we are going to start studying for the driver’s test now, just in case.

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DESPERATE for a job? Here is one of its kind — kitten cuddlers. A cat rehoming centre in Newcastle has made a plea for volunteers which could lead to the entire internet downing tools and moving there – kitten cuddlers are urgently required.

There is just one, tiny, catch. Many of the cats in the Westgate Ark centre are feral or semi-feral.

Any volunteers who survive cuddling the furious, hissing balls of claws and teeth will be able to help the animals get used to human beings — known as ‘socialisation’.

Paul Black of the Westgate Ark Centre, said, “We rescue a lot of cats that need handling so that they’re nice and used to people, which makes them much more suitable for homes.”

The centre also needs help socialising older feral and semi-feral cats. Mr Black told the Independent that he hopes to expand the centre into a non-profit neutering centre for cats and dogs.