Time

As you may have guessed - if you have been following my profane rants over the last few months - there are enough obsessions in my life as it is, so you will not be surprised to know that I have battled all my adult life against developing one for fine, vintage watches. This is why I eventually settled on the one above - a NATO issue, quartz, military watch made by the CWC company. It is tough and rugged, can been worn both at work (stonecarving) and at parties (with a clean strap), and it keeps as good a time as most watches costing £15,000 more.

It is the chronological equivalent to my choice of car - the humble Volvo - which I have been driving for about 30 years, though not the same one. I have managed (ever since ceasing to carry out my own mechanics) to curtail my fascination with old petrol-engines and autos, preferring to just get in and start the damn thing, in the expectation that I will arrive at my destination without the assistance of the AA (that's Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous).

I do expect to be wearing this same watch when I die. If I die in an explosion which destroys the building I am in at the time, then I am confident that this watch will still be ticking away and continuing to gain the 1 second per 2 months that it does now, so they will have to estimate the exact time that the bomb went off rather than have the information supplied to them by simply pulling a stopped watch out from the rubble.

As far as my glass obsession goes, I have no choice. There were a limited number of fine drinking glasses made between 1680 and 1800 and an even more limited number have survived. Copies just do not cut it - it has to be the real thing. It's the same with watches. I do not understand people who will spend £20 on a crappy copy of a Rolex from Hong Kong. It is such a sad thing to do, that I fully understand my friend, who saved up for years to buy himself one (of the cheaper ones) costing £7000.

I have 3 vintage shotguns, and none of them cost more than £170. My friends own some beautiful guns which cost them in excess of £15,000, but they do not shoot any better than mine, so that's another obsession I managed to nip in the bud.

This - above all - is an honest watch, and - like military binoculars or optics in general (an obsession that I did not manage to nip in the bud) - it is made to as high a standard of efficiency and reliability that a State budget will allow and, in the recent past, that was quite a budget! Private discernment can be so expensive.

Ok, I see it is high time that I went to work.