Wake up to the six o'clock clappers

The church clock was particularly loud this morning. I think someone had moved the church tower right outside my bedroom window. During the night we moved to summer time so really it was 5am when the village alarm clock went off.

It’s not crowing cockerels that gets life here going in the morning, it is the six o’clock clappers. Every day of the week, Sunday included, mass or no mass we get the usual hourly chime and then a bigger bell kicks in with over 100 rousing, resounding bongs. You can almost here the groans across the village as bare feet swing out from under the covers on to cold floors, and people stagger to the bathroom.

By 7am Annie and Marian have opened the shop, commuters are scraping ice off car windscreens and schoolchildren are assembling in their traditional locations, waiting for the school bus (boys around the bus stop and girls by the bank).

I have here in the past said that the Austrians are a calendrical folk – life's activities are arranged according to the calendar. They are also dictated to by the clock – or more accurately by the church bell. Once upon a time, workers were called in to lunch from the fields by bells housed in intricately carved belfries on the roofs of the farmhouses – they are still a feature of many old buildings today. But now the big bell takes over and at midday it booms again. work is put on hold, ski slopes and roads become quiet, hardly a soul is to be seen in the village, the shop has shut and everyone is enjoying lunch and possibly a snooze to follow.

The end of the working day at 7pm is signalled again by 100 hefty chimes – time to put up the feet and relax…except on Friday when, after a long working week, the bells begin the weekend with a jubilant volley at 3pm and there is a festive air in the village.

The only exception to this noisy routine is in the few days before Easter when the bells “go to Rome”. Well, not literally, but this is what we are told. It is really that their joyous cacophony is inappropriate at such a sombre time in the church’s calendar. The village falls silent – fortunately there is no school so there is no bus to miss, the shop doesn’t open on Good Friday anyway and businesses and banks are closed. Lunch, though, may be a little late without the church to remind the cook.

How do we manage to get out of bed on these days? Instead of bells, someone stands outside the church swinging what can only be described as a very large rattle, of the sort that used to be heard at soccer matches. It's not as insistent and easier to ignore – it might just be possible to sleep through this noise, but who can sleep in this unaccustomed silence?