Messing with Richard's Mind

Richard is a strange kind of bloke: a place for everything and everything in its place is his motto.

Well, it isn't really, but it could be.

He can't leave anything out at home, it has to be put away and the guys in the office can't leave anything on his desk.  In fact, Richard doesn't even let himself leave anything on his desk unless he's working on it.

You see what we mean: odd.

But he's even odder than that.  Once he was out with Renee and they parked their car where they shouldn't.  They didn't realise this but the lovely Traffic Wardens did and the car got towed away.  When they came back to where they had left the car Richard's first thought wasn't: oh dear, my car has been towed or maybe stolen.  No, it was: OMG our car's gone invisible.

Anyway, Richard has a watch.

A very nice watch it is, too.  His mum and dad bought it for his 40th birthday.  It's got hands and a knob on the side to adjust the time and date.  The watch has worked perfectly for five years, all bar one change of battery.

Yesterday (24th January) Richard knew the date was correct because he'd been signing off tax returns with customers and had checked his watch when he was asked to confirm the day.  He also knew the watch was telling the right time when he went to bed at 11.30... cos he looked at his watch.

So explain how, if you would, when he looked at his watch at 7.30am the next morning it was all to cock.

And it wasn't because the watch had simply stopped working because the battery had run out: the second hand was still merrily clicking it's way around the face.  No, it's much more sinister than that.  Here's a list of what was wrong:

• The date now said Tuesday 2nd.  (Today is Saturday)
• It had changed to the French version (i.e. it said MAR 2, instead of TUE 2)
• The time was 11.54 according to the watch, but the second had was still turning and the watch was working fine

How could this possibly be?

Richard came up with 4 theories:

1. Renee changed his watch in order to mess with his mind
2. Barney changed his watch in order to mess with this mind
3. He'd been abducted by aliens and lost 11 months and 22 days and it's actually 2015
4. An external (probably paranormal) influence had worked on his watch

Let's look at each of these theories in turn so we can really assess how odd Richard actually is.  Here we go:

1. Why?
2. Difficult, Barney has paws not hands and he doesn't have an opposable thumb
3. Renee would have probably noticed he'd been gone and would have mentioned that fact
4. Refer to 1

Okay, so Richard's theories are clearly the wild imaginings of a deranged being who has almost completed his first January working in an accountancy practice... but that doesn't alter the fact that something happened to his watch.

By the way, since he changed his watch back tot he correct settings more than 8 hours ago it's worked perfectly.

Any ideas post them on our Facebook page: the more bizarre the better... because, of course, it will mess with Richard's mind.