On my watch

My first watch, Itta gave me. I was seven or eight. It was a Timex with an expandable spring metal strap. I can see it vividly in my mind's eye, now fifty plus years on.  Watch number two was my father's old Tissot. He bequeathed it to me when his colleagues bought him a new watch for his retirement. Mr Hughes, the affable Welshman who taught physics at Worthing High, thought it would be interesting to test the luminous hands and dial with a radiometer; it was almost off the scale, perhaps 10 time the legally permitted limit for radioactive sources so my father had a jeweler scrape off the radium infused luminous coating.  

At Imperial I think I may have had a digital watch with a small calculator - all metal buttons.  Next was a chunky Bulova, an electronic analog watch I bought from a catalog while I was working at IBM. Judith bought me my next one, a Kenneth Cole fashion item, chunky and heavy, very masculine (not at all me). Then there was a gap of about 10 years when I didn't wear a watch, instead using my new cell phone if I needed to know the time.

When went back to wearing a watch the Kenneth Cole had stopped (not that long ago now) and I bought the Olevs on Ali Express. I paid $29 for the first one but then found the same watch in a variety of colors, all for $16, in several different Ali Express stores. I now have five or six. The Tissot, which my father assured me was a top of the line Swiss watch (which apparently he had acquired on the black market in Tehran in 1945), needed winding every day and generally had to be adjusted at least once a week to make sure it told the right time. My Olevs have gone over six months (perhaps longer) and have lost (or gained) no more than three seconds. That's real progress, and about time too.