And now we're clock-watchers.

I don't think I was ever so aware of what time it was in London until the BBC started playing with time.

First it was the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Who last year, broadcast at the same time around the world. And now we're back to 2:21 P.M. again, less than two hours away. Something is coming. Something Sherlockian.

Sitting here in Peoria on Central Standard Time (No wonder we have so many narcissists in the American midwest -- our time zone literally tells us we're in the center of the universe!), we may be six hours behind the home of Holmes, but it's getting hard to think of 8:21 A.M. as anything but 2:21 PM London time since the word started to spread yesterday in the Twitterverse of an announcement to come at that magical minute.

I've blogged about 2:21 before, because it is a magical minute, that one time twice a day that an ardent Sherlockian will take note of the moment if a digital clock is anywhere at hand. It didn't jump out at you nearly so much when the big hand was just past the "4" and the little hand a bit past the "2" on an old round clock, but seeing that "2:21" appearing if you glanced at the time . . . well, there's a spark of Sherlockian joy our predecessors from the 1940s never got to have.

And the folks behind BBC Sherlock seem to enjoy using the magic minute to stir up enthusiasm for their latest announcement -- undoubtedly the date of the next episode(s) of the show -- and while not exactly a stroke of unparalleled genius, it's pretty damn cool. One more sign that they get what it is to be a fan, and how the littlest things can be a part of Sherlockian fan-play.

2:21 P.M. in Mecca passed a while ago, now I'm waiting for 2:21 P.M. at Reichenbach Falls in twenty-one minutes. It would be fun to spend a day noting 2:21 as it occurs in sites from the Canon of Holmes -- hey, anyone wanting to steal that idea for a Twitter day, if someone hasn't done it already, feel free.

And an hour after 2:21 P.M. at Reichenbach Falls comes 2:21 at 221B.

2:21 at 221. It's a bit like the stars and planets aligning to announce the birth of some major religious figure, isn't it?

And so we wait. And watch. And enjoy the antici . . . . . . . . pation, Sherlockian-style.