Losing time

I'm entirely surrounded by dysfunctional timepieces. There's the Ikea alarm clock, which I bought because it looked so cute, like something belonging to my grandmother. Unfortunately it works about as well as my grandmother's memory, which is to say, erratically. It needs daily winding, which is fine, because it needs daily adjustment too. I've gotten quite used to looking at it and subtracting 5 minutes or so, because it tends to run fast. Except lately, it's as likely to run slowly. Or to gain half an hour instead of 5 minutes. It's very confusing.

Then there's my Swiss watch. Which I bought in April last year. It's not a smart or expensive watch, just a fairly decent one that I happened to buy in Switzerland. Shortly thereafter, it started stopping - that sounds horribly clumsy, but that's what it did: it formed a habit of stopping, for a random duration, then it would go again. So it might be accurate, or it might have lost 20 minutes, or 5 minutes, or two hours. Of course it was still under guarantee, but that would have meant shipping it back to Switzerland, and I was pretty sure it would come back with the same problem - since almost every watch I have ever owned does this. I can take it to get fixed, be told it's fine, and have the same problem as soon as I collect the supposedly working watch. I hear a lot of people have this problem; something to do with the electromagnetic field of the wearer. It's annoying, especially because it's so erratic. My previous (cheap) watch never did this, so I'd kind of forgotten.

Anyway, so that watch was giving trouble, and I was considering sending it back for repairs, but then it stopped. Stopped stopping, that is. It ran fine. Beautifully. For at least six months. Until about a week ago, I foolishly commented to Beloved on how beautifully it was running, and how nice that was. The Very Next Day it stopped again. And has been doing so daily ever since. Now it's totally stopped, in fact; I'm leaving it alone for a while to see what happens.

Because sometimes my watches just get over themselves and start behaving. Like my evening watch - a remarkably pretty pseudo-antique item; I've never seen a watch I liked as much. But it is highly susceptible to the stopping problem. Especially in hot weather. Or very cold weather. Or when there's any damp in the air. Which is a problem in London. At the moment, that watch is working just fine. But I don't trust it. So I'll wear it, but it's not that functional, because I always feel the need to double check against a reliable source of time. Bit pointless really.

Which leaves my computer - fine if it's on, but I do have a lot more stuff to do not at my desk than at my desk. Or my cellphone, which is usually buried in a handbag or coat pocket or something, or off. Or the bedside alarm clock. So I can't really complain, there are ways for me to check the time. But it seems to be more hassle than it should be, just at present.

Plus, my internal clock seems to be on the fritz too. I keep losing hours out of the day. Thinking it's 2 o'clock and it's suddenly 5. I know there's a rational explanation - I don't pay attention, it's that simple - but it feels like all around me time is going haywire. Annoying.