Real Tart

I never stop...

7:20 AM, 25/9/2008 .. 0 comments .. Link

Bumped into one of the neighbours yesterday - actually to tell the truth, he bumped into me, steaming into the back of the Bentley at a t-junction.
"Why'd youse stop?" he asked.
"Well," I said, "the word Stop on the sign, the t-junction and the car coming up on my right all combined to make me think it would be prudent to put the brakes on and wait."
"I never stop there," he grunted.
"Obviously," I said.

In other news, regular readers will recall I had a bit of a splurge on Ebay back some months ago thanks to what some people have perhaps unkindly referred to as my watch fetish. No madam, I don't mean I like to watch...I mean I like wrist watches.
Now at first I thought I'd go for 1970's pieces because some looked pretty interesting and also they generally didn't cost an arm and a leg, which is good because you need an arm to put the watch on. Then I started looking into the whole watch thing and what was available and what I really liked and then I decided the 1930s, 1940s and sometimes 1950s watches were the go, as they say.
The thing with those earlier pieces is that they're not the size of a moonrock, they don't bleep or need a battery and they tend to look pretty stylish, and they always will. Some have an art-deco opulence to them - so loads of stepped sides and engravings of leaves and stuff - while others are just so simple they look, well, timeless.
So, I ended up (and I have stopped buying them now, thank the Lord) some that didn't need any work and some that needed restoring. My general aim was to have them returned to as pristine a condition as when they left the factory. I found a master watchmaker in Sydney who is as grumpy as he is brilliant (bit like myself really - ha!) and he set to work on some of them.
Each day I can now wear a different watch, which unless you have the er, umm, fetish, is perhaps not easy to understand, but think of it as an alternative to buying shoes, dresses (not me, I hasten to add, you women, I mean) or jackets, perfume, cardigans, or even cars.
Today I'm wearing a 1931 Bulova Lone Eagle. This is the watch made to commemorate some bloke's crossing of the Atlantic in a bi-plane. Bulova is an American watch company and they produced some remarkable pieces. I got this one for $55. It didn't work, had no hands, no glass, and the dial was worn but it looked great in its silver case. It cost me $300 to get it back to as-good-as-new condition and today it ticks strongly once again - over 70 years since it first left the factory - and tells the time accurately and is probably worth about $600 if I decided to sell it. But it's not the money - it just looks great.

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Real Tart

I never stop...

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