Strapped for time
I bought a new watch a few weeks ago.
This time around I made sure that there was a good contrast between the hands and the dial. Silver hands on a silver background may be a designer’s dream but it’s fuck all use in low light. This time I chose silver hands on a black dial and it’s excellent. I can tell the time at a glance.
The one problem was the strap. It’s a sort of heavy plastic thing with a buckle. I’m sure some people may like it but I don’t. My last one had a metal bracelet with a neat quick release catch.
I made a mistake. I offered my old watch to Herself and she’s delighted with it. The only problem is that she prefers the metal bracelet to the strap and won’t let me switch them. I have tried threats of physical violence but she is adamant. Shit!
The only solution to the problem was to buy a metal bracelet separately. I found a nice one online and ordered it. Job done?
It arrived and it’s lovey. It’s very sturdy and quite heavy with a fine quick release catch. It was exactly what I was looking for. It was then I made a little discovery. My assumption that straps are interchangeable is a little mistaken. The fucking thing is just too wide to fit between the little arms each side of the watch. Bollocks!
I had two options. I could either modify the bracelet by filing a bit off each end, but I don’t really have the tools for that or I could order another one but this time one suitable for my watch.
Decisions….
I ordered a new one.
Maybe sometime I’ll buy a watch to fit the bracelet I just bought?
This is not a problem in my case. I don’t care much for wrist watches and have been using an Elgin pocket watch my father bought me in 1970 as a high school graduation gift. (As if escaping from HS wasn’t gift enough.)
I was given my first watch in ’61 and have had one ever since. I suppose it’s just part of the “uniform” now. Naturally there have been a few replacements since [though I still have the original]. The norm in our family was to get a watch on leaving school but I got mine [as a bribe?] when I went to boarding school.
It’s a feature of our arse-about-face world that you can now buy a completely reliable and accurate wrist-watch for less than £5, but a simple strap just to hold the thing on your arm can cost £10 or more.
I only want a watch to tell me the time clearly and accurately, I’m not aiming to make a fashion statement or demonstrate my tasteless wealth to fellow chavs, it’s a time-teller, that’s all. As long as it’s reliable and comfortable, I’ll pay as little as possible for the whole shebang. I may appear to be a parsimonious philistine, but I’m OK with that.
All I want in a watch is accuracy [I don’t want to have to correct it every few days] and the ability to tell the time [analog], day of the week and date. I don’t think I have ever spent more than about thirty squids on a watch. As Herself would tell you – I couldn’t give a hite about fashion….
All my working life I never needed or wore a watch. Clocks, accurate, were everywhere, and when travelling a watch would have told the wrong time anyway.
Only since retired do I find a watch useful.
However the tiny day and date indicator is impossible to quickly read, requiring the wearing of both my pair of spectacles. So it is ignored and probably is wildly off. Does anybody use this useless watch feature.
The second hand is useful for timing eggs boiling.
As for all the other dials that flash expensive watches have squeezed into the face, I believe that most owners have no idea what they are for.
The only thing I really rely on my watch for now is to tell me the day of the week. Since retiring I don’t have the obvious markers of the working week and it can become easy to get the day wrong. I know my phone will tell me but I’m just used to a wrist watch, and I only carry my phone part of the time. My current watch has a ton of features – timer, stop watch, time in other zones, telephone number memory and a load of other stuff but I woudn’t even know how to use them. They are superfluous gimicks and I ignore them.