WHICH WATCH

My mother took her watch in to have its battery changed a few weeks ago and somehow, in the process of collecting it and getting it home managed to lose the back off it and, if I understand her description of events correctly, all the innards as well. This is not quite as unusual incident as it might appear because, with her failing eyesight and general lack of concentration upon such things as clasps and suchlike, I am forever  invoking the spirit of Great Uncle Sherlock during my visits and hunting around on her carpets for missing earrings, bracelets and necklaces which seem to catch on clothing and get torn off perhaps because they are incorrectly fastened, or maybe because they are not quite of the quality that she likes to think they are.

I rang her up a few days ago because she hadn’t felt at all well over the weekend and so I thought I should, but the conversation was all about watches. She had taken the remaining pieces of hers to a local jeweller’s shop to try and get the replacement parts and, even though I already was pretty sure that finding an exact match was highly unlikely, was disappointed that they had failed her. Interestingly, the rewriting of history was already well in hand as it was now with absolute certainty that she told me that “that damned shop” had lost the back off it, although personally I still doubt that they would hand it back to her in that state, I guess we all believe what we choose to believe in the end.

She had sold the remaining watch to the jeweller for the value of the gold (about £45) and then had a number of new watch options presented to her, all of which were around the £1000 mark and deemed rather more expensive than her limited means would allow. Interestingly, and without so much as a beat, I was immediately informed that if I was going to buy her a watch for Christmas, then I could have the £45 towards it. Despite the offer, as someone who has never spent more than forty quid on a watch in his life, this seemed just a tad presumptive to be honest, and I felt that I had to point out in no uncertain terms that the chances of me paying upwards of £1000 on her Christmas present was pretty unlikely. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever spent even half that on the whole of my Christmas ever, not even in my more “lavish” years, and this year I was rather hoping to get away with cutting back a little.

Still, my mother always seems to assume that I’m loaded, no matter how much I try to explain the awful truth of my own shortcomings and general failure to be a successful human being in those monetary terms, but it’s always easier to find ways of spending other people’s money, I suppose.

Incidentally, I currently wear a novelty “The Prisoner” wristwatch that I bought at Portmeirion about four years ago for less than fifteen quid. It tells me the time with a certain amount of accuracy, which is really all I need it to do. That watch has more than paid for itself in other ways too, as, bearing the famous “penny farthing” logo as it does, it proved to be an excellent opening conversational gambit in forming a very good and valued new friendship during my holiday last year.

It seems, however, that I am in the minority with this idea that a wristwatch is merely a means with which to tell the time. Whilst it seems to be a general rule that wristwatch wearing is generally on the decline anyway, with so many people using their telephones to tell them what the time is at any given moment, there are also a great deal of people who seem to possess a range of watches to be worn as fashion accessories in several different circumstances, some of which probably cost more than my house. That’s always struck me as odd, though. Why pay thousands of pounds for something when you can get something that does the job just as well for less than twenty? I guess that it comes from having a totally different mindset than I’m ever likely to understand, but then I’m the kind of person who tends to think that any kind of ostentation is just a little bit “tacky”.

The watch itself, of course, as an object of desire, used to represent a great many things. Once upon a time it was the gift of choice for a retirement, given just at the time in your life when punctual timekeeping was no longer likely to be quite the priority it once was. My own father’s enforced retirement found his colleagues clubbing together to buy him a radio alarm clock and a sun lounger, neither of which lasted as long as he did, which wasn’t that long, and both of which were, I suspect, a slight disappointment after all the years of service. Mind you, it was the late 1970s, so I suppose these things seemed to be quite bold, thoughtful and radical choices back then, and with skyrocketing inflation, the office whip-round probably lost most of its value whilst someone was out choosing the retirement card.

Ironically, my father’s silver pocket watch, presumably handed on to him from a previous generation, was one of the things stolen from my flat when I lived in the inner city, so even that failed to become a lasting link to the past. Perhaps that partly explains my neurotic need to hang on to all kinds of tat these days. Knowing how quickly these things can be taken from you means that I find myself clinging on to what I can for as long as possible.

What’s that old saying? “Even a broken watch is right twice a day” More often than I am then. I suppose that there are a number of people who think that I should be bending over backwards to provide my “dear old mum” with a replacement, no matter what the personal cost, but I think I’ll just have to try and persuade you that our relationship is a lot more complicated than that and, quite frankly, it’s not going to happen. If you are the kind of person who really doesn’t think that £1000 is a lot to pay, then you’re obviously in a far different league than I am and I’m now wondering quite what you’re doing here, slumming it with the riff-raff. Strangely enough, for me, this is another one of those situations in which, because it’s become “expected” of me, I’m more likely to dig in my heels and get stubborn about it and resist doing it at all. I am nothing if not a creature of unusual concerns and priorities.

If it hadn’t been mentioned, of course, I might very well have seen what I could do, even if it was within my own more modest limited budget. Granted that would have meant whatever I could have provided would probably not been “good enough” but then I told you it was a complicated relationship. Whatever choice I made would no doubt be the “wrong” one, which is sometimes why making no choice at all seems to me to be the best route to take. We are all, after all, shaped by our own experiences.

As ever, time will tell how this all turns out, and how my family all end up telling the time may yet depend upon the amount of time I spend mulling over this dilemma. In the mean time, she ordered herself a cheap one off the internet before I had time to do anything about it anyway, and now seems happy enough with it, although I still feel that there is now a ticking time bomb of emotional blackmail still waiting to go off at some future date and time. Whatever the outcome of that might turn out to be, be sure to watch this space…