My time machine

Time: the most popular murder victim.

There are more adages about time than I can quote, so I settled for a left-handed definition. We spend time, buy time; squander time, save time; time flies and drags; we make time and kill time. We while time away and we use it profitably; we have free times and busy times. We are very conscious of time; we measure it and count our minutes and days and years.

As clocks get more accurate and measure time more precisely, we are more pressed for time as the world hurtles forward frenetically. The leisurely pace of earlier centuries when time was measured by watching the sky gave over to sun dials and hourglasses and water clocks and the world moved quicker. Now there are atomic clocks, and we are rushing about in frantic haste.

Wearing a watch for the first time is a rite of passage. My first watch was a dainty, tiny thing; my mother bought it for me when I was in high school. Those were the days you had to remember to wind your watch.

In college, I used to wear my uncle's watch, a Citizen that didn't need winding. I wore that watch for many years. I was given a Seiko as a wedding gift and I wore that for nearly a decade.

I bought a watch for myself for the first time some years ago. It was a Titan, and it lasted too. If the battery needed changing, or the glass got too scratched to read the dial, I'd take it to the service centre in Park Street, where they'd fix it while I waited.

Then I bought a Timex; I blame it on global warming. Don't laugh. I reason thusly:

The world is seeing major changes in climate patterns, and we have been having very hot summers. (I'd taken to wearing a headband in the kitchen, like the kamikaze pilots, to stop sweat rolling off my face and dripping into the vegetables I am chopping or worse. I keep a towel handy to keep mopping sweat, too. Maybe it is not just the global warming, maybe it is hot flushes.) The metal strap of my watch kept getting grimed up by my kitchen duties and by just plain sweating. Yeah, I know ladies are supposed to glow, but I sweat. Perhaps that says something about me.

So I decided to get a watch whose strap won't have to keep getting wiped down, detached and cleaned or need quite as much maintenance.

So, last year I bought a Timex. I wanted a large display of numerals so I didn't have to wear my reading glasses to see what the time was. And while I have nothing against leather straps, I wanted to try the chunky looking synthetic strap.

The watch had bells and whistles. It had four tiny buttons, and it could be read in the dark. It had daily alarm, and hourly chimes. It could tell me time in twentyfour hour mode or twelve hour mode. It had a timer, a stopwatch function and many features I'd never use or need.

The watch was a dud.

It's light died in a month. I took it to the service centre, and they told me it'd be sent to the workshop, which was not in the centre, which appeared to be only a collection point. They took two weeks to fix it, and I had to make two trips to the centre.

This year, just after the warranty ran out (but of course), the strap broke. A synthetic rubber derivative thingie and it broke. Good grief. I took it to the service centre. They said that it would be sent to the workshop, and that they'd inform me when it was ready for me to collect.

That was more than two months ago, on twenty-fifth of August, to be exact. I haven't heard from the centre. It struck me that I might have missed their call, or they may have called and found my phone switched off. I went to the centre and asked, as I was passing that way.

They had no clue. It is still in the workshop, perhaps, the harried looking young woman in the shop said, after rummaging in several drawers and boxes. She said she would call and let me know. She didn't apologise for the delay, didn't offer any explanations, indeed she didn't seem particularly interested in the whole thing.

That was a fortnight ago. I still haven't heard from the service centre.

"Takes a licking and keeps on ticking." That used to be the slogan of the Timex watches. I suppose mine is ticking somewhere. I can't say for sure, though. Because the Timex service center is keeping time for me. It is keeping time from me, too.

Missus Em is a timeless classic, I tell you.

Cheers!