I know that in the twenty-first century, the only people who don’t use a mobile phone for the time are the over-70s and stand-up comedians. But I like a watch and I wear one whenever I leave the house.
It’s particularly essential when I’m travelling. How else am I going to know when to get my plane, bus or tour? Yes, I have a phone but its battery isn’t as reliable as a watch battery and I never entirely trust that it’s automatically updated its timezone.
My day-to-day watch is a 2009 Swatch Irony II (no longer in production). It’s a men’s style, a big chunky stainless steel one with a black analogue face, nice silver italic numbers and a little glow-in-the-dark square at the end of each hand, which rarely actually shows me the time in the dark. It also has a small day and date panel which I find very useful.
It’s heavy – my mum thinks it’s far too big and heavy to wear and my grandmother can hardly lift it. But I’ve taken out links in its bracelet to make it fit my wrist absolutely perfectly and I often can’t tell it’s there. Particularly in the car on the way to work, if I’m wearing long sleeves, I’ll often tap my wrist to make sure it’s there and not sitting at home beside my bed because I just can’t feel it. I can feel it when it’s not – I feel very lopsided.
My more adventurous watch is a long-coveted Casio Baby G. I’ve wanted this since I was at least twelve and what really swayed me was falling into bogs in Wales last November and getting so much water in my Swatch that it stopped working. A new battery and a quick pat with a soft cloth and it was ok again but I’d realised if there was any risk of it getting wet, I should get a waterproof watch.
The Baby G is waterproof. I wore it in the pool in Cyprus. I wore it to hike across Iceland. I wear it on days out with my Brownies and Rangers. It has rubber bumpers on the face to make sure you can’t smash it on things or scratch it rock climbing I dare say it’s not indestructible but it’s not far off it.
As for description – it’s plastic. It has a plastic strap with a buckle, the aforementioned bumpers and five buttons to activate its array of features which I mostly don’t use, including its illuminated face, the time in about 26 locations, a stopwatch, a timer, alarm, calendar and, of all things, phonebook. Every thirty seconds, a prancing animal animation replaces the date for a moment, presumably as a kind of screensaver to stop the date burning itself into the little screen. That’s cute. Like the Swatch, it’s a pretty big chunky watch.
While I was thinking about a waterproof watch I stumbled across this post by Kylie from Between England and Iowa, which is what gave me the push to go for the Baby G rather than the cheap and simple one most people had for caving when I was at uni and I take her advice on time zones. My Baby G has a button to switch on world time so I set the time at the airport I’m departing from and live on my new local time during the flight. Jetlag doesn’t really affect me – the furthest I’ve been since 2003 is two hours ahead in Romania, Finland and Cyprus but it’s a good habit to get into, I think.
I mostly don’t sleep in my watches. I can if need be but I mostly choose not to. I also take them off the moment I sit down at my desk at work and the moment I get home. But I couldn’t leave the house without one of them.
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