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A wall clock would be my suggestion, having inherited a couple of lovely ones myself. Even though one of them is worth quite a lot of money, it's not like a watch where using it risks easily damaging it - it's mounted high enough on the wall that any visiting kids can't reach it, and while it's not quite as convenient as modern clocks I quite enjoy winding it every couple of weeks, and remembering to put it forward/back an hour a couple of times a year. Though it did cost a few hundred pounds to get it repaired a couple of years ago (which came with a side benefit of being shown around a local clock specialist's workrooms that must've had >100 clocks, some being built by him and his intern, some being repaired, some just being clocks). And actually, I'm growing to slightly prefer the other clock which is the one my mum learned the time on as a kid - it's a cuckoo clock with two chains and removable weights, one chain needs daily pulling to power it, the other chain is usually not in use but when you hang the weight on it the cuckoo is powered and comes out / makes a noise once on the half hour, and on the hour it does as many as the value of the hour. Shame it runs about 5mins fast per day, but I'm too lazy to think about fixing it and it's a quirk that I don't mind. A similar heirloom is a painting, which again has the benefit of being enjoyed (it's on the wall I face at my home PC desk) with minimal chance of damage. I'm lucky enough that it's got some real family history to it - my great, great grandfather (or was it 3x great, I forget) had it commissioned and it shows the ship he owned, at sea. Was very relieved a couple of years ago when a relative doing family research was able to finally confirm that the ship was never used in the slave trade which had always been a worry in the back of our minds (though given the world back then, it wouldn't be a huge surprise if some of the spices it transported between various parts of the world and the UK had involved slavery / other immoral acts to acquire, but still pleased my family were never involved in nor 'owned' any slaves.) |