Watches

Have gone on a bit about my love for watches and clocks. Let me briefly wax lyrical - don't quite know why they hold such a fascination, but they do. Guess it must be to do with the ingenuity of getting a load of cogs and a spring to keep such good time - a real example of beauty through function. I'm a bit of a traditionalist as far as time-pieces are concerned.

I think the nicest clock I've ever seen was in Anglesey Abbey just north of Cambridge - a modest, old English regulator - quite small but still standing on the floor and like other regulators, a large minute hand and a smaller hour hand on a separate dial - makes telling the time a little difficult 'cos you have to look in two places at the same time, but very lovely. Here's a photo of something similar:

My favourite watch is the same as it has always been, since I was a young boy with my nose pressed against the jeweller's window - the Omega Speedmaster, also known as the Moonwatch, since it is the first model worn by the astronauts on the moon. I had to sell my house in Tackleway in Old Town Hastings to buy mine - they're about £2,200 in the shops now - needless to say, I didn't pay that much.

I'm not entirely loyal though, and did have an IWC Portuguese Chrono Auto for a year or two. Eventually sold it on ebay, as I didn't find I was wearing it enough. Fabulous looking thing though, simple white face with blued steel hands and numerals, like this.

Wouldn't mind a Patek, wouldn't mind an IWC Portuguese regulator, wouldn't mind a 1960's old rose-gold Omega Constellation, and so it goes on.