In my capacity as Lady Margaret, dowager and generous patron of the arts, I recently had to co-host a walking tour of Bath for a council- organised conference of conference organisers.

One half of the delegates were taken on a tour of the city's more Bohemian attractions. Lady M's route was posher and took in a luxury chocolatier and some elegant stores.

One of her planned stops was under the H Samuel's clock in Union Street. Like many similar clocks across the nation, it hasn't worked for ages. This version has been at 3.20 for many a month and her ladyship wanted to point out that it was always tea time in Bath.

Now a stopped clock is not a particularly good advertisement for jewellers you might think. The owners obviously thought so too, for after Lady M had arranged her party in a circle outside the shop, she did a double take. The clock had gone and just four little sawn off pieces of bracket remained. A good joke ruined.

Use of hacksaw indicates that the clock hasn't simply been taken away for repairs. But if the owners have scrapped it, along perhaps with those in other towns, they might like to think again. These clocks, stopped or not, are a well-loved feature of many a town centre. One only has to go online to prove it, for on auction sites there are identical examples on sale for upwards of £6,000. And that's for broken ones.

Proper, grand public clocks are nice things to have in towns. Shamefully, the one on the railway station seems to have completely given up, and the pathetic examples in the glittering new bus station were surely purchased from a pound shop on Weston seafront.

Bath is now rather lacking in the clock department. Not so a small Japanese town I visited on tour with Natural Theatre Company. There, every morning, a splendid example of the horologist's art rose majestically out of the pavement, chiming madly as it grew taller and taller, while the staff of all the shops in the street assembled on their thresholds, bowing respectfully towards it. This ritual was repeated at closing time. Yes, they do a very good clock in Japan.