I have always had a fondness for watches (and movie quotes).
I learnt to tell the time within a day at the age of four with the aid of a paper plate with some hands attached to it so they could be moved as needed.
I was brought up in the age of the mechanical watch, it needed winding and a certain element of care was required.
My first watch was cheap of course and because of that was rather too delicate, it broke swiftly.
It was a PE lesson at school, I would have been 5 at most. To protect the watch from the rigour of exercise I was removing it carefully, resting my arm on the hard wooden flooring and working away at the watch band to remove it via the standard catch.
The watch fell forward as the pressure from the strap was released. One lug of the watch was already resting on the floor, so it was not exactly a fall of epic proportion, but it was enough of a shock to stop the watch dead.
I could not believe it, it never ticked again. Very upset I remember the moment clearly to this day. Its a moment that will remain with me for the rest of my life such are the tricks and vagaries of memory.
That event has perhaps coloured my life more than I had realised until writing about it just now.
Moving forward.
Digital watches were things of wonder, fiendishly accurate, tough and did not need winding up. They removed a lot of the things which could go wrong from a watch. No overwinding, basically shockproof and kept telling the time. The downside of those early LED watches, you had to press a button to see the time and if the sun was shining you were not going to see it anyway.
LCD answered these problems and before you knew it watches had all sorts of gizmo's on them, the curse of the watch alarm invaded classrooms.
They never quite lived up to their billing though.
James Bond watches are about as accurate a "cool guide" as it gets.
Over the years I have owned many watches but never found "the one", consequently I have wasted a good deal of time effort and no small amount of cash on the quest.
The minimizing of wasting those 3 elements is important to most people.
My favourite is a watch by J.W Benson, made and presented in the 1940's to someone that worked at St James's. Its a beautiful understated watch and about as accurate as you could wish a watch to be.
My watch of choice is the Casio GW-300 G-Shock Tough Solar Waveceptor
It ticks all the boxes.
It is solar powered, so never needs winding, and in theory does not need new batteries.
It gets a signal from the atomic clock, so it is going to be forever accurate.
It has a large clear face which tells me everything I need to know in terms of timekeeping.
Water-Resistant to 200M.
It is a g-shock so its going to take a beating and keep ticking and by the looks of it has, although I dont remember details.
In fact it never leaves my wrist.
I have found the watch that little boy needed all those years ago.
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