With a beard full of sawdust and a waistcoat jingling with cogs, he spends his days coaxing life out of the village’s clocks and occasionally muttering about ‘temporal hiccups’.
No one in Thistlewick quite knows how old Archie is – mostly because he keeps resetting the calendar to whatever feels right.
Archie is a little bit steampunk. His glasses are always perched low on his nose and his trusty goggles are rarely off in case he needs to solder something. The pockets of his leather apron are always stuffed with cogs and tools and a jam tart (just in case he needs a snack)
His tea goes cold more often than not, and he claims to have invented a time machine once – but it only went back ten minutes, which was handy for topping up the kettle.
He has a booming laugh and people hear him long before they see him. Although he’s loud he has a soft side and is known for taking in stray kittens and he now owns four called Noodle Norman, Kebabs Colin, Slippery Patricia and Betty Bobblehat.
Beatrice Bloom’s Petal & Polka sits just across the cobbled lane from Archie’s Workshop. Every morning, the scent of her flowers drifts through his open window, and every afternoon she pops in with a teacup full of petals, insisting they help him focus his inner rhythm. (Tom quietly suspects she just likes the sound of ticking clocks.)
