You reach into your pocket to take out your watch, to find that the time is 3:52pm, but also to find that watch’s stopclock has been started in your pocket, and that it’s been running for about forty-five minutes, still counting. You follow the hands as they continue their circuit. You think back to forty-five minutes ago. At that point you were still having lunch with Alice, a long lunch, longer than intended, because there was much to catch up on, and your mutual disinclination to curtail the encounter called for another cake, a second coffee, a chocolate wafer, until eventually she had to leave lest she fail to catch her bus. The watch must have been started accidentally, in your pocket, perhaps as you leant over the table to share your eclair. Maybe that was the start of something, you think: perhaps this is the forty-fifth minute of your future. It would be imprudent to interrupt it. You leave the clock running.