Saturday 29 March 2008

WHY, WHEN YOU WANT TO SEE THE DATE ON YOUR WATCH IS IT ALWAYS QUARTER PAST THE HOUR?



Every good ,well brought up lad knows ,the breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

So, this morning ,as my uncaring wife ,the Lovely Lynne, hadn't stocked up on bacon for a growing lads diet of bacon butties, i had to consider the alternatives . The daughters comprehensive ,and growing collection of boxes of cereals with the words ; CHOCO, WHEETO,FLAKES ,KRISPIES ,oh yeah n' lets not forget HONEY, in the garishly designed titles on the said boxes. I stuck my hand in one of the boxes and it took my 3 hours and a virtual skin graft to get the bloody CHOCO POP off my fingers. So, i decided i'd go for ol' faithful and have a boiled egg n' some toast. Yeah that'll do the job. Now there are many reasons as to why the Lovely Lynne married me, but one of them is ,cos if theres one thing Tim Leatherbarrow can do ,that is boil an egg!

So, without giving too much away into the mystic arts of egg boiling. I set the pan of water to the boiling point of water. Plopped the eggs in and commenced timing the process on my swanky watch's chronograph. I pressed one of my collection of buttons lined around the top of the rim of the watch face, and a variety of little fingers started clicking around various little dials at various rates. One ,the fastest measured 10ths of a second; The second fastest measured seconds. And slowest was one measuring the hours. Then ,aside from this array of ticking and movement ,there was a large second finger, which with the moveable dial outside the watch was all you needed. Then when i thought the egg time was up , i was going crosseyed trying to read the dials on the face of my watch. The numbers were in 10's and could be read ,but the individual lines were a blur .The accuracy of the chronograph is fantastic ,if you could see it. Why do people need watches with all these extra clocks n' dials ; showing the sun, moon n' stars and seasons ,and aside from that see the internal workings of the bloody thing .And you can do it all 90metres under water ,for some reason i'm sure somebody could explain to me. My watch'll do 10 m's, which isn't much ,but it's enough for the average swimming pool,or for a shower. And i can time myself taking it .Cos, thats another strange thing about chronograph's ,once you start timing yourself ,you find yourself doing it wherever you go .It wont make a blind bit of difference to your speed or timekeeping ,or anything, just something to do while your going ,or doing ,wherever ,or whatever you are doing or going.

But one of the great mysteries ,is why do they put the date by the no3(quarter past)..Because whenever you are asked or need to know the date ,you can guarentee it's quarter past the hour and the minute hand'll be over the 3 ,so you can't see the date 'till 20past. So, if they stuck the date somewhere else on the face ,the problem wouldn't arise ,simple ,eh ?

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