Davy Jones's Clock
Subtitle: A Welsh comedy in one act.
Series: Miller's medley -- 3/1963
Publisher: J. Garnet Miller
Published: 1963
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
First sentence: It is a bright autumn afternoon and FRED,the Lamps,a youth of about 17 or thereabouts is seated on the locker playing a mouth organ.Above the noise of the departing 1.45 goods it is possible to recognise the tune of "The Grandfather Clock"

FRED (playing) 
The grandfather clock was too big for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor.
The grandfather....

DAVY (coming up stairs) Drat that boy!
Description: The scene is the signal-box at  'Pentremawr',a lonely station on a slope of the (Brecon) Beacons between Brecon and Newport.Signalman Davy Jones has started repairing clocks as a bit of a sideline.Local widow,Liza Hargest arrives in the signal box with a bookies' clock in her shopping basket.The local policeman,P.C.Prosser has become suspicious of the level of illicit betting that has been going on in the area,and his suspicions fall on Davy Jones and Liza,especially after he discovers a betting slip that has mysteriously appeared in the signal box lamp room.
P.C.Prosser thinks he has caught Liza with the bookies clock,but the distraction of Davy Jones arriving with another clock to be repaired,allows Liza to switch the bookies clock (with the help of Potter,an evacuee from London during the war) for a cuckoo clock also under repair in the signal box.
Prosser escorts Liza to the next station to collect Sergeant Richards and a search warrant to locate the bookies clock.But on return to Davy Jones' signal box,the policemen discover the cuckoo clock,the bookies clock being miles away by then.
The betting slip belongs to the character William Morgan,despite his somewhat sactimonious attiude to gambling,which provides a nice irony at the end of the play.
Notes: Performed at the Scala Theatre,London 1957,by the Llyn Safaddan Players.Winner of awards in the British Drama League Festival 1957.
Winning play in the Dunlop Festival 1960.
Performed by the Sawston Players at the Sawston Drama Festival on 24 March 1973,and at the Cambridge Drama Festival.
Broadcasts:
BBC Radio Welsh Home Service:19 Feb 1957.
BBC Radio Home Service:3 April 1957.
BBC TV Live broadcast from Broadway Studios,Cardiff:25 March 1958.

Judging by some of the locations mentioned in the play,the writer T.C.Thomas clearly had the actual signal box at Pentir Rhiw (between Brecon and Merthyr/Newport) in mind.

CAST:
FRED,the Lamps
DAVY JONES,the 'Box
LIZA HARGEST
PROSSER,the Policeman.
POTTER,the evacuee
WILLIAM MORGAN
SERGEANT RICHARDS
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