York is fast becoming the city where time - or at least the clocks - stood still.

We watched the city centre's clocks between 11am and noon yesterday.

And in a worrying sign of the chimes, several were hopelessly inaccurate. In fact, they had simply stopped.

Clock this:

One of the clocks above the "splash palace" public toilets in Parliament Street said it was 7.55.

The clock at Brubakers bar in Blossom Street said it was 9.10.

St Denys' Church clock in Walmgate said it was 7.00.

Dodsworths Decorators clocks in Micklegate said it was 6.20 or 5.35, depending on which one you were looking at.

M W Doran clockmakers' clock in Walmgate said it was 9.20 - but at least this had the excuse that the shop had closed down.

Down at York Railway Station, there was a different problem. While most of the clocks were accurate, the big one outside was three to four minutes slow.

This means that travellers running to catch a train might think they have a couple of minutes to spare, when in fact their train was already pulling out of the station.

GNER thanked the Evening Press for bringing its attention to the slow clock, apologised for anyone inconvenienced, and said it had reported the fault to its contractor to ensure the clock was accurate in future.

City of York Council said it was aware of the toilet clock problem and was dealing with it.

A spokeswoman for Dodsworths quipped that its clocks were working - but just in a different timescale to everyone else.

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