By Laura Grimes

“What time is it?”

I pulled out my phone and lit it up. “Nearly 8 o’clock.”

“Is it that late?”

“I’m pretty sure.” I stuck out my thumb and pointed over my shoulder behind me. “There was a clock back there.”

We were walking down the hill from this place:

That’s right. The Royal Observatory, Greenwich. As in Greenwich Mean Time. As in the clock by which all other clocks are set. The mother of all clocks. Ground Zero of all clockdom on Earth.

So what time was it? It was time for a beer.

We walked down to the Thames River and turned right. We found the Trafalgar Tavern, a favorite tippling place of Charles Dickens that was built in 1837, the same year a young lass named Victoria became Queen of England.

We ordered a couple of pints and took them outside to a bench along the walkway overlooking the river. And there, we sipped. A sternwheeler paddled down the river. Pug dogs sniffed my socks. And the sun, that great grandfather of all biological clocks, sank slowly over the London skyline and disappeared.