Today was the start of a marathon stint at work. I agreed to do some extra days to help cover while the manager is on holiday. This was arranged about two months ago, when August appeared a long way off, and I don't think I can really have been concentrating as he ticked boxes on the staff rota, but the effect when you add the extra days to my normal working pattern is that I'll be at work for seven days out of the eight between now and next Monday inclusive. Oh well, I expect I'll cope.
My usual road to work had re-opened and the evil, tyre-destroying potholes filled in. Given they only patched the edges, and didn't resurface the entire lane, I don't entirely understand why it was shut for five days last week, but as it only inconvenienced me for one of them I don't really care. Driving home, a normally OK right hand turning was rendered unsafe by a van illegally parked in front of the used-car dealership on the Harwich road. It isn't the first time that's happened, and I really ought to complain to the council, or the police community support officer, or somebody.
(I did get organised to complain to the council about the proposed closure of the dump, and got an official reply saying that my comments have been noted and will be fully considered before a final decision is taken later in the year. I don't suppose my comments will make a blind bit of difference, but for anyone else who wants to give it a go, your man is Councillor Kevin Bentley, Cabinet Member for Economic Development, Waste and Recycling, at the Cabinet Office, PO Box 11, County Hall, Chelmsford CM1 1LX. Musing on what else they could cut instead of front line services I noticed that Colchester Borough and Braintree District Councils have just decided not to pursue the option of a joint Chief Executive or shared management. Colchester's total net revenue budget for 2010-11 is £25.67m according to their website, and Braintree's is £14m according to an Executive Leadership Case Study they published which was the quickest thing I could find on the internet. That's a combined annual budget of £40m, then. Makes you wonder how Tesco manages its annual sales of £67,573m with just the one Group Chief Executive).
Apparently yesterday was busy at work, and we did OK today for a Monday in August (I think). A kindly woman wanted ideas for plants with Pearl in the name, as a present for a friend called Pearl, and using the RHS on-line plant finder my colleague came up with a couple of camellias, which she bought. It is customary to proclaim in your Mission Statement that you wish your customers to be delighted, but I think she really was. She said we were the only nursery she used where she would get such service.
My colleague also had a good and intelligent idea for a low-cost, targeted way to market ourselves to large gardens. Having expressed my complete approval for this plan, I had to take a turn calling large gardens and asking for the names and email adresses of their head gardeners. Responses were mostly kind and helpful, one very suspicious and sniffy. I am glad my job does not normally entail cold-calling, it must be quite soul-destroying. I should be more compassionate when people cold-call me, except that they have chosen to work for boiler room scams and double glazing companies that ignore my stated wishes according to the telephone preference service.
It was very nice having a working watch, and I got a little glow each time I looked at my wrist, and saw the red strap, and red second hand ticking funkily away. Buddhists who teach that material possessions do not bring true happiness ought to try going to work and keeping track of the R4 schedule for 3 weeks with no watch, and then they would admit that some material possessions bring, if not true happiness, then quite convincing false contentment. An unfortunate side-effect of my quest for a watch has been that Google has worked out that I wanted one, but not yet clocked (ha!) that I have got one, so every other page of every newspaper site I look at now contains ads by Google for Swiss Railway watches. They'll get over it, I suppose, like the time when I was briefly pursued by ads for Denby pottery (grunge china, as a former City colleague so uncharmingly described it).
Getting into the car at 5.20pm I deduced from the fact that the news had already got on to the London riots that the world financial system had not yet gone into total meltdown. There was some not very sensible discussion of whether governments or markets were in charge, which missed the point. Markets are signalling mechanisms, and I reckon they are signalling, firstly that Standard and Poor's are utterly useless and irrelevant, and secondly that the Euro is unworkable and is not going to last.
Showing posts with label watch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label watch. Show all posts
Monday, 8 August 2011
Saturday, 6 August 2011
damn you messrs, why no send soap*
Midway through last month my watch broke, the one I wear for gardening and to work. I was annoyed at the time, as I hadn't planned on buying a new watch. (There used to be a fad, now mercifully apparently ended, for politicians, generally from the right of centre, to spend a week living on benefits, at the end of which they would proclaim that it was not that hard, if you were organised. In that week they never seemed to suffer from the failure of key capital assets, like their shoes falling apart or their watch breaking).
I read an article by Giles Coren recently and discovered that apparently it is very old-fashioned, not to say downright fuddy-duddy, to have a watch at all. Apparently young people (that use the interweb) tell the time from their smart phones, and talking to a young colleague I discovered that she never has a watch, and depends on her phone to tell the time, though she says this is because something about her causes every watch she has ever possessed to stop working. One of my other colleagues, no longer so young, never has a watch for the same reason, but relies on her own internal clock plus asking people what the time is. Actually, even my ancient non-smart Nokia 1100 has a clock on it, that keeps more or less accurate time. It's just that I don't carry the Nokia with me everywhere. That again marks me out as hopelessly out of step with modern living. When I'm at work, I shouldn't be taking personal calls anyway so I don't need it, plus my relationships don't seem to function on the basis of regular intra-day contact. If I take it into the garden with me it will probably get wet, lost or broken, so unless I'm expecting an urgent call I don't bother.
Anyway, I like watches. For daily life, mostly outdoor, I like having something light, that straps to my arm, that won't get lost and doesn't mind being got wet, that tells the time. I don't mind that it can't do texts, or phone calls, or surf the internet, play music, locate the nearest tapas bar, function as a diary, or let me play video games. Reading the Guardian (on-line) I was greatly taken with a Swiss Railway watch that kept popping up as a readers' offer. I had never previously heard of such a thing, but something about the plain round white dial and jaunty red second hand hit my rare acquisitive streak (or at least, it is not that rare but usually confined to plants, books and music). When my old watch died a Swiss Railway watch seemed the perfect candidate to replace it. Cheap plastic watches are a snare and a delusion for gardening. They mist up, and the cheapy strap breaks. A good watch, even when somewhat scratched and battered, still looks good. And it works, and is comfortable.
I read up on Swiss Railway watches, and discovered that they are based on a Swiss Railway clock, and are actually made in Switzerland (that well know bastion of cheap wage manufacturing. Remind me again why we can't make decent quality consumer goods in this country). They are Design Icons, bought by and exhibitied in Design Museums. Deal done. I wanted one. The Guardian readers' offer was twenty quid cheaper than anywhere else, and anyway, it was their idea. I ordered one on-line, and got a nice email acknowledging my order and assuring me that my card would not be debited until the watch was despatched. Guardian readers' offer goods were normally despatched withing ten working days, except for live plants which might take up to twenty-eight days. I spent two weeks without a watch, which was inconvenient at work. Unkind things get written about clock-watching shop assistants, but actually going through a whole working day never knowing what time it is, or how long until you open, or shut, or whether somebody should have gone for their lunch break by now, is jolly inconvenient. Ten working days came and went and no watch arrived. The Systems Administrator was not at all sympathetic, and said that I ought to know that readers' offers were apt to take a long time to fulfil, and it wasn't like buying things on Amazon. I said that I never bought things from readers' offers, and how long could it take to put a watch in a padded envelope. I emailed the Guardian readers' offer watch distributors, asking how long the watch would take to reach me, and went through another working watchless weekend. They replied the next week saying that the watch was out of stock, but not to worry because they woudn't charge me until it was despatched. I asked how long that would be, given that I wanted it now, immediately, on a daily basis to tell the time, not as an occassional style accessory. They replied (fairly promptly, to be fair to them) that they hoped to have new stocks in their warehouse within eight to fourteen days. I wondered if I had to add the up to ten working days to that, and why they hadn't told me when I placed the original order that the watch was out of stock, expected restocking time 3-4 weeks.
Then I cancelled the Guardian readers' offer and bought the watch from Amazon. It cost twenty quid more, and it arrived in two days. It is very nice. It has a red strap and weighs 18g and is only 8mm thick and water resistant to 30m. I don't have the least intention of diving to even one metre, let alone 30, but that should mean it doesn't steam up when I wear it in the rain. It is guaranteed for two years, and I will probably even go to a Mondaine stockist when it needs a new battery or strap.
*Taken from a model business letter in How to Run A Bassoon Factory, or Business Explained (1934) by Nigel Balchin, a now sadly overlooked writer. You can buy a used copy on Amazon. It will cost you about as much as a Swiss Railway watch.
I read an article by Giles Coren recently and discovered that apparently it is very old-fashioned, not to say downright fuddy-duddy, to have a watch at all. Apparently young people (that use the interweb) tell the time from their smart phones, and talking to a young colleague I discovered that she never has a watch, and depends on her phone to tell the time, though she says this is because something about her causes every watch she has ever possessed to stop working. One of my other colleagues, no longer so young, never has a watch for the same reason, but relies on her own internal clock plus asking people what the time is. Actually, even my ancient non-smart Nokia 1100 has a clock on it, that keeps more or less accurate time. It's just that I don't carry the Nokia with me everywhere. That again marks me out as hopelessly out of step with modern living. When I'm at work, I shouldn't be taking personal calls anyway so I don't need it, plus my relationships don't seem to function on the basis of regular intra-day contact. If I take it into the garden with me it will probably get wet, lost or broken, so unless I'm expecting an urgent call I don't bother.
Anyway, I like watches. For daily life, mostly outdoor, I like having something light, that straps to my arm, that won't get lost and doesn't mind being got wet, that tells the time. I don't mind that it can't do texts, or phone calls, or surf the internet, play music, locate the nearest tapas bar, function as a diary, or let me play video games. Reading the Guardian (on-line) I was greatly taken with a Swiss Railway watch that kept popping up as a readers' offer. I had never previously heard of such a thing, but something about the plain round white dial and jaunty red second hand hit my rare acquisitive streak (or at least, it is not that rare but usually confined to plants, books and music). When my old watch died a Swiss Railway watch seemed the perfect candidate to replace it. Cheap plastic watches are a snare and a delusion for gardening. They mist up, and the cheapy strap breaks. A good watch, even when somewhat scratched and battered, still looks good. And it works, and is comfortable.
I read up on Swiss Railway watches, and discovered that they are based on a Swiss Railway clock, and are actually made in Switzerland (that well know bastion of cheap wage manufacturing. Remind me again why we can't make decent quality consumer goods in this country). They are Design Icons, bought by and exhibitied in Design Museums. Deal done. I wanted one. The Guardian readers' offer was twenty quid cheaper than anywhere else, and anyway, it was their idea. I ordered one on-line, and got a nice email acknowledging my order and assuring me that my card would not be debited until the watch was despatched. Guardian readers' offer goods were normally despatched withing ten working days, except for live plants which might take up to twenty-eight days. I spent two weeks without a watch, which was inconvenient at work. Unkind things get written about clock-watching shop assistants, but actually going through a whole working day never knowing what time it is, or how long until you open, or shut, or whether somebody should have gone for their lunch break by now, is jolly inconvenient. Ten working days came and went and no watch arrived. The Systems Administrator was not at all sympathetic, and said that I ought to know that readers' offers were apt to take a long time to fulfil, and it wasn't like buying things on Amazon. I said that I never bought things from readers' offers, and how long could it take to put a watch in a padded envelope. I emailed the Guardian readers' offer watch distributors, asking how long the watch would take to reach me, and went through another working watchless weekend. They replied the next week saying that the watch was out of stock, but not to worry because they woudn't charge me until it was despatched. I asked how long that would be, given that I wanted it now, immediately, on a daily basis to tell the time, not as an occassional style accessory. They replied (fairly promptly, to be fair to them) that they hoped to have new stocks in their warehouse within eight to fourteen days. I wondered if I had to add the up to ten working days to that, and why they hadn't told me when I placed the original order that the watch was out of stock, expected restocking time 3-4 weeks.
Then I cancelled the Guardian readers' offer and bought the watch from Amazon. It cost twenty quid more, and it arrived in two days. It is very nice. It has a red strap and weighs 18g and is only 8mm thick and water resistant to 30m. I don't have the least intention of diving to even one metre, let alone 30, but that should mean it doesn't steam up when I wear it in the rain. It is guaranteed for two years, and I will probably even go to a Mondaine stockist when it needs a new battery or strap.
*Taken from a model business letter in How to Run A Bassoon Factory, or Business Explained (1934) by Nigel Balchin, a now sadly overlooked writer. You can buy a used copy on Amazon. It will cost you about as much as a Swiss Railway watch.
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