time pieces

I have no new observations on plants or gardening techniques, because today was so damp that I gave up.  It wasn't even raining hard, just relentlessly damp.  Plus I had to go into Colchester for a haircut and to collect my watch, which was having a new strap fitted, and a pearl ear stud that was being glued back together after the pearl parted company from the post.  It's dreadful how much time it takes just trying to maintain minimal standards of fitness and grooming.  Yesterday my monthly Pilates lesson took up most of the morning, so that's more than half a day gone this week simply on having a head that does not look like a chrysanthemum, a functioning timepiece, a functioning lower back, and getting one tiddly earring fixed (though I did pick up a 2015 calendar and some concert tickets as well while I was there).  And I do not have my hair dyed, or any part of my body waxed or threaded, while my hands and feet go un-manicured, my legs un-spray tanned, and my pores un-facialed.  I have no idea how women who maintain full blown feminine beauty regimes find the time.

I have read that young people don't bother with watches.  They have so many digital devices, all of which show the time, they don't feel the need to wear an extra one on their wrists that does nothing else but.  Watches are fun, though.  I have two, and could happily buy more, if I didn't need to conserve my resources for plant supports and mulch, and went to more events where an Art Deco cocktail watch would be appropriate.  One is a Mondaine Swiss Railway watch which I saw in the Guardian and fell hopelessly in love with.  It has a red second hand with a round end, like those ping pong bat shaped paddles that platform staff use for signalling, and a red strap.  The first red strap did not last very long, crumbling dangerously where it bends to go through the buckle, and I ordered a replacement genuine Mondaine strap on line, which the Systems Administrator fitted, since there isn't a Mondaine stockist in Colchester.  The replacement strap broke down equally quickly.  I refused to keep buying straps that were not up to the job of being buckled, and took the watch to the repair counter in Williams and Griffin last week to buy a plain red strap.  The only ones they had in stock were embossed with a snakeskin pattern or had stitching round the edges, but they ordered me one and called a few days ago to say that it was ready.

Watch straps are horribly expensive, as are batteries, and I can see why the SA pursues a different strategy, which is to buy a very cheap plain watch and replace the whole thing when the battery or the strap fails.  It would be more economical.  But I love the Mondaine.  It was originally bought to wear to work, but I no longer work in the plant centre, and have decided it is too nice to wear gardening, so it is now an out-and-about, day wear sort of watch.

My other watch is definitely not for gardening or life as a plant centre assistant, being a gold Accurist that was a present from the SA years ago.  It is small, slim from front to back, and very plain, with a circular face, arabic rather than roman numerals, and no second hand, and I am extremely fond of it.  Apart from its sentimental value it is so fabulously plain, a design classic.  It only ever gets a matt black leather strap, no snakeskin, no stitching, no shiny patent.  Almost as soon as I'd dropped the Mondaine off, the Accurist began to lose time, a sign that the battery was going.  Not everywhere will tackle battery changes in gold watches, the body of the watch being softer than normal and liable to buckle if ineptly handled, and I once beat a hasty retreat from a Colchester jewellers whose assistant said she'd 'give it a go'.  The watch repair desk at Williams and Griffin inspires confidence, as indeed does the whole of Williams and Griffin, and I left the Accurist there for half an hour on the basis that they would look at it, change the battery on the spot if they could, and send it away if the back was a type they weren't equipped to remove.  The woman on the desk noted as she wrote out my receipt that the glass was scratched, as they always do so that I couldn't claim they'd done it, but her offer was that they'd be able to change the glass sometime, if I wanted to.

I left that until after Christmas, having already spent as much refurbishing my minimal collection of watches as the SA will probably ever spend on replacement internet watches in the rest of his life.  But it's a nice thought and I will probably get round to it sometime.  We all have our personal standards.  I am perfectly happy to have salt and pepper hair and un-threaded eyebrows, but I am particular about watches.