Watching …

The day before I left to live in NZ I stayed at Stuart’s so that he could take me to the airport early the next day. At bedtime I asked to borrow an alarm clock to help me rise. ‘Use this’ he said loaning me a watch with an alarm that he had formerly used for running due to it’s second timing facility.

I had been in NZ for a day before I realised I was still wearing it.

It is a rather unlovely, utilitarian Casio & yet I have become irrationally attached to it. It has a chunky black screen & a rather tatty blue material strap which closes with Velcro that’s losing it’s stick.

I wore the watch every single day & night of my year away, much to the amusement of the Stud girls who would eye my Friday night gurly outfit & say kindly ‘And you’re planning on wearing that watch with that outfit are you ?’ ‘Yes’ I would reply, it wasn’t up for discussion.

During my year away the watch was dunked in cold water whilst I cleaned troughs, pulled on daily by nosey colts who adored the sound of the Velcro opening, and served as a 5am alarm clock. I set it by the GMT signal on Radio 4 when I left England and it has never lost so much as a second in time.

Every now & then I try swapping it for my very pretty gurls watch which has a stretchy brushed chrome band & a pink, metallic face. It never lasts a day though because my Casio tells me the day, date & time at a glance & it lights up at night. Can my gurl’s watch do this ? No.

Last week I thought I had lost the Casio & was hacked off all day. I had a vague recollection of the strap being loose whilst riding & when I dismounted Hannah after our unintentional sprint I found it was missing. I assumed it was trodden into ankle deep mud somewhere on Walton Heath & cursed my stupidity.

So it was a lovely surprise to find, as I emptied the washing machine, what I had actually done was washed it on a 40 degree cycle with lots of underwear. I know it’s designed to be waterproof to 50 metres but I love it even more now for still telling the time after 40 degrees and Ariel.

And now my question, what 1 item could you not do without ? I may be wrong but I seem to remember Stuart telling me the Casio was a cheap watch & yet, to me, it’s worth so much more than it’s monetary value (especially as I didn’t buy it J) I did recently catch Stuart looking at it on my wrist & I could tell he was thinking ‘Hmmm, that looks like …’ Sorry Stu, you can’t have it back.

Cx