Thanks for the info, Wendy. I'll start listening to some of these. There is a lot of material available.

A few months ago I started listening to a fascinating podcast series on the history of English by Kevin Stroud, an American professor of law. Altogether there are more than 180 episodes and each of them is on average an hour and a half long. It is fascinating because he not only talks about the development of the language itself, but includes a lot of detail about the physical, social and political history of each period and its influence on the language. At the moment I am learning about the influence of the Dutch language on English and the fact that about 1 % of English words are of Dutch origin. This borrowing of Dutch words, a lot of which have to do with ships and the sea, came into English (if I remember rightly) in the 15th and 16th century, around the time that the Dutch were building their own empire and starting to build colonies. There is such an enormous amount of information in the series, that I will probably listen to it several times. It is simply too much to take in in one sitting! But so interesting. Have you heard it?

I hope I can remember all that. Thanks, Wendy.

Something about the sentence kept niggling me, and I have just realised it is the order of adjectives: more natural and correct would be 'homely, old wall clock'
Adjectives generally occur in the following order in English: 🫣
Opinion (e.g., “silly,” “smart,” “pretty”)
Size (e.g., “small,” “huge,” “tall”)
Physical quality (e.g., “ragged,” “neat,” “muscular”)
Age or shape (e.g., “old,” “round,” “young”)
Color (e.g., “scarlet,” “purplish,” “graying”)

Thanks, Wendy.

Vorschlag Mark: homely wall clock that hadn't been wound for a whole generation, . . . all of it so homely and peaceful, I realised immediately that I'd actually behaved in a rather undignified manner.