The Luddite reminisces about watches

My wife has always been very keen on wristwatches that do pretty much everything, so she tends to go for those that not only show your heart rate, the speed you're walking, the speed you should be walking, how far under water you can go, whether there's enough air to breathe and so on, but also - when they have the time to do it - tell the time.

These watches are great, but all I want to know when I look at my watch is what time it is. Yup, I know, really old-fashioned, but that's the way things are. I've had watches that would wake me up in the morning, or act as stop-watches, or tell me the time in another part of the world, but in the end I still only use them to tell me the time here where my body actually is. That's really all I need. An alarm clock is better for me that a watch that starts going pip pip pip in the morning, and when have I ever needed to time someone who's racing?  Never, that I can remember.

The first watch I had, which I was given for my 21st birthday, just rolled around second by second, day after day, and told me the time. It lasted until my daughter was 12 (around twenty years, in other words) and I only stopped using it because my wife kindly brought me home a new watch she'd purchased on her trip to England. I imagine, if I could find my first watch, that it would still be going happily.

That second watch was equally long-lived. I only stopped using it when I was back in England with my wife, in 2007, by which time it had long since got gunk in the works, and no one could fix it properly, or else the parts had long since ceased to be made. It still ran, but you couldn't adjust anything very easily. Since it was getting frustrating not being able to tell the time correctly (and I've never got used to checking my cellphone for the time) we bought a cheap watch at a stall in Norwich market. It's the one I'm still wearing, even though it's a pain at daylight saving time - the one where you have to put the clocks back - as it takes forever to shift back eleven hours (if that's what it is we do).  It's never had the happy relationship with me that my first two watches had, and perhaps it feels a little unloved. Anyway, it goes, and that's what watches are made for.

Watch out...

My character in The Mousetrap is called Mr Paravicini....I'll write more about him once the play is over, perhaps, but he's a 'man of mystery', as he admits, early in the piece.   And when he asks what people know of him, his own answer is, 'Nothing at all.'   A lot of this is intentional misleading on his part, of course.  He doesn't want people to know what he's up to.

There's a suspicion late in the play that he's into stolen goods; one of the other characters even claims to know that he has watches hidden in the spare tyre of his Rolls Royce.   Pure speculation.   Mr Paravicini never gives anything like a hint that that's what he's up to, though he does tease Sergeant Trotter at one point by saying that 'he plays the markets'.  Trotter assumes he means the stock markets.  Paravicini just says 'you misunderstand me.'

Back in the fifties, when the play is set, I'm not sure what watches he might or might not be hiding in his spare wheel.   (Seems an odd place to put them, to me.)    These days, if he really was a black marketeer, he might be filling up his spare tyre with mens diamond watches of this kind shown in the picture.  That one's worth a cool US$2,000.   In which case, Mr Paravicini would have no trouble paying his bill at the guest house he drops into on a very snowy night....

Patek Philippe - Who?

How is it I’ve lived for over sixty years and have never heard of a Patek Philippe watch?
The company has been in existence for nearly 170 years, and produced the first crown wound pocket watch in 1839. (Crown winding, I presume, is where you wind the watch with a little round knob, rather than the old way of winding it with a key.)
They made the first wrist watch in 1868, and the first wrist watch with a perpetual calendar in 1925.
Wouldn’t you think their name would be more well-known?
Maybe it is in Europe, but even given that, you’d think that the words Patek Philippe would have somehow trickled into my consciousness through some movie, or novel.
Apparently not.
The Patek Philippe company sounds similar to the Steinway company in their heyday. There’s an element of the handcraftness about their approach. According to some information about them, each single automatic movement manufactured by the company is put through approximately 600 hours of quality control. Assembled watches are severely tested for up to a month (severely, note!) and they’re also observed. Severely tested and observed – it’s a wonder the watches don’t have complexes!

The little beauty in the picture is Patek Philippe Annual calendar watch. It'll set you back a mere $42,000 or so. US dollars, of course!