What Time Do You Call This?

It was about 9.30pm, which was fine by me. The only problem was my irate parents who had expected me back home an hour and a half previously. I was 9 years old, going on 90, my total self-assurance being held to ransom by the expectation of punishment from this female adult, who seemed to think she knew best.

"What time do you call this?" came the terse demand.

"I thought it was half-past eight."

"Are you stupid? Can you not read a watch? I have been worried sick!" Mother laid on the drama with every place setting perfect, knives, forks and spoons upon a frowning white tablecloth of disapproval.

"My watch doesn't work."

"What do you mean it doesn't work?"

"It starts and stops."

"Couldn't you ask somebody for the time? It is getting dark - surely you know that means it is late? Do you think I am stupid?" Mother was now in full flounce, doing her best to impart guilt. Practised at avoiding the worst of it, I stared blankly ahead of me and tried to look tired, which meant not letting her see what great fun I had just been having in the long-shadowed dusk with various miscreants on bikes, who I doubted very much were getting this kind of reaction on their return home. In my mind's eye, as Mother's rant picked up energy and played itself out, her worries and fears now finding voice, focussed on her "difficult" middle child, I imagined being one of those fortunate boys with easy-going parents. They would be splatted in front of the TV now, eating jam sandwiches. I was waiting for some note of concern to appear, at which point I would cease my passivity.

"Have you eaten?" There it was.

"I have eaten some food... but I am rather hungry..." I tried to look faint, slightly leaned on the door frame to accentuate my waif-like malnourished state.

"Show me your watch." This was unexpected. I walked forward, weakly holding out my left arm.

"Don't be silly, take it off." I did so, handed it over. My watch was a black-faced Timex with luminous hands. It was not the most reliable time keeper. That also had something to do with the fact that in today's game, it had been central to the main method of communications between myself and the Underground, which involved a lot of intense pseudo-scientific muttering into the device, and randomly twirling the dial.

The watch now said 8.45pm and Mother cast a baleful eye towards me as she checked it out.

"Right, go and get washed. I will see if this works or not." To my surprise, she didn't give it back, but strapped it to her arm next to her own watch. I exited minus watch, slightly concerned that she would now judge the entirety of my story by my Timex, but relieved to be out of the glare of publicity.

I didn't get it back for a week. Mother was experimenting. She kept wearing it alongside her large, practical, slightly mannish teacher's watch. People noticed and asked, and she replied to every question. "Why are you wearing two watches?" with a different answer.

"I use this second watch to tell me when to look at the first."

"I need to know what the time isn't."

"My right arm is slightly heavier than my left and I need to counter-balance it."

"I am a football referee."

and

"I am studying Einstein."

I found this last reply very embarassing and since Mother knew less about Einstein than I did, frankly ludicrous. But she wouldn't give it back.

After a week or so, Mother called me. She was in the kitchen and she asked me to dry up. Being a great deal more concerned about hygene than she was, I spent some time finding the cleanest cloth, and then set to this blandest of tasks like all prison labourers, with just enough effort to avoid taking the piss.

"I have concluded my study of your watch," she announced, with a smile.

"Oh," I replied, not wishing to encourage her ridiculous behaviour further. "And?"

"It varies by about 20 minutes over 36 hours, running both slow and fast."

I stopped drying up. "How can you tell?" I asked.

"I made notes!" she said gleefully, suddenly a child, and she pulled out a small pocket-sized vocabulary book, where, lo and behold, a series of mathematical jottings were laid out in columns, with check boxes and ticks beside.

Wow, she had worked it out. I looked at her with a combination of admiration and serious fear for her sanity. "OK" I said, "Can I have one that works please?"

"Yes, but we can't afford one now. So for the mean time, use this, and check it twice every day for accuracy."

Disappointed that I now had a proven bona-fide crap watch to wear and that I hadn't won special dispensation to come home after dark, I took the watch, and returned it to my slender wrist.

She then said, as we finished the washing and drying, "Watches don't work on some people. I have only found one that does for me, and that's this man's watch. It's our personal magnetism. Your Grandad was the same. Got into terrible trouble for being late, but could never wear a watch. Best one he had was a pocket watch, which he used to forget. So that was no good."

I replaced that Timex (which I sill have) with a digital watch, which was the envy of my school friends, but that stopped working about a month after I put it on. I have tried several since, both good and bad quality, been given watches and bought them, but I have never found any watch which lasted on me. I worked in Switzerland, land of watches, for several years, and many times I stood looking into shop windows at their fine-tooled, jeweled shining faces, and those elegant dress watches were more attractive to me than sweets, than pearls, than precious gems, all the more appealing for their uselessness.

I still don't wear a watch.