Big Ben Ambient Drift — 10 Hours of Magical Clock Innards, Vintage BBC & London Atmosphere

Magical Big Ben belfry ambience for fighting off procrastination or for mechanically induced focus. 10 hours of Big Ben, clock innards, musical plucks, London street ambience, and classic British broadcasting.

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If I were to quickly pitch the episode ingredients: we have a sprinkling of Big Ben, London street ambience, and a 60-year-old BBC episode I found online. Tossed together with all sorts of clocks and drifty stuff. I imagine we are amongst the bells of the belfry with an FM Radio. Enjoying whatever magical clock-mechanic sounds happen all around. (I envision the magic fits between Tinker Bell and Rube Goldberg.)

All of the above is meant for procrastination thumping sounds, get a bunch of work done!

Ok, so lately I’ve been listening to What's All This Then, a delightful podcast hosted by two British expats and a guest covering British minutiae. So like beans on toast, why British folks don’t rinse their dishes after lathering them in bubbles, et al. During a recent episode, a host mentioned that if you were to stand at the base of the Elizabeth Tower — or, as yanks know it, “Big Ben” and listen to BBC Radio 4, you will hear the live recording of the bell before the sound can travel down from the heights. Radio signals travel faster than sound waves.

And that was all I needed to spiral into a manic mini-obsession over Big Ben... Also Big Ben is just the bell?

I listened myself to BBC 4—the bell's gong plays at the top of the hour and the ringing is live.

I also learned Humpty Dumpty wasn’t a cannon(?)

I did my best to explain all of the above to my wife over dinner, including the Humpty bit, and she was like, “I thought Humpty was an egg?”

Also, I was like, “Hon — did you know A1 is not American? And they’ve got this whole other brown meat sauce!”

She's like, “This is the most boring conversation I’ve ever had.”

I reminded her that she regularly shares the contents of her dreams during meals. The night before, she recounted Six Flags opening a location in our basement and the cat got lost down there. You want to talk boring? Recounting efforts to rescue a cat out of a dream-basement tilt-a-whirl.

PS: Nerd stuff — if you guessed that I positioned the hands of the... Big Ben clock(?) to 7:30 as an homage to the late great emcee Big L (from his track Criminal Slang)—you would be correct. "If you 7:30, that mean you crazy..." And the title is referencing a super nerdy mash-up of DJ eccentrics and jazz/funk drummers.

Have a nice weekend!