But two months, nay, not so much, not two

As if to share my growing grief the pine needles seemed to have given up hope and have dropped silently onto the surface of the pool last night. The sun hid itself behind the clouds as I ploughed my lonely furrow – and this time, given the amount of vegetation in the pool the metaphor did not seem too out of place!



I have started my traditional preparations: getting a new battery for another watch so that the summer watch can be placed in a drawer with one or two others that I have accumulated over the years. As is now usual when I get a battery changed, it was anything but ordinary.


I had thought to wear a red Ronson watch, of which I am particularly fond, but it is many years since that one has ticked and even the surge of power from a new battery was unable to get it started. So many years ago was it bought that I can find no mention of Ronson watches on the internet except in those catch-all sites which give you a false sense that they actually have real information but it is all a blind.


My choice of watch for the autumn term (I could probably make it a weekly choice if I wanted) reverted to the one near perfect watch that I own.


I have a simple list of requirements for a watch:


1 It must be waterproof


2 It must have luminous hands


3 It must display the day and date


4 It must have a sweep second hand


5 The hours must be numbers


You check out any page of watches in a catalogue or on the internet and you will see just how few fulfil all the conditions that I consider necessary. Even when you realize that I am prepared to be flexible about the colour of the watch face and the strap my conditions eliminate well over 95.4% (a figure I have just made up) of all watches currently on sale.


My Swatch “Irony” is one of the very few watches I own which have all five requirements. Bless it.

I left the watch to have its battery inserted while I went shopping for groceries and on my return a distrait young lady weakly held out the watch and said that she had been unable to open the battery compartment. She had been trying to dislodge it with a 10c coin which didn’t really fit the groove, whereas I had a 1c coin which I had picked up from the floor of some bar in a gesture which obviously showed that at least some of my antecedents were from a place is Wales a little further west than Cardiff!


With my reading of Chandler firmly fixed in my mind I twisted the coin and the back opened. It was at this point that I should have made some throwaway remark or originality and hard bitten wit, instead of which I did a mock growl to demonstrate my he-man potential. This was greeted with what could only be described as an embarrassed simper.


Well, at least the watch works and I now have a band of gleaming metal on my wrist which is a contrast from the chunky black plastic that I have been sporting for the summer.


Armed with the “new” watch we defiantly went to the beach where I at least threw myself into the foaming shallows and was slapped and buffeted by waves which for the Mediterranean were large and aggressive. In a thoroughly domestic and matronly sort of way the currents and waves all tend to bring you to shore in double quick time. Indeed the interval from being out of your depth and suddenly being able to stand up is so swift that the illusion of security that comes with touching the sand with your feet is immediately thumped out of you by waves which come laughingly over your head and tumble you the few remaining feet to shore.


The sun was not immediately the most impressive thing about being on the beach, I think the sandpapering from the brisk breeze propelling sand grains at delicate skin was the more obvious, though by concentrating on the texture, colour and movement of the waves noting particularly the effects of whatever fugitive light from the skittish sun was about it was possible to forget about the abrasion. Now say that a cultured mind is worth nothing!


I have now reached the stage where interspersed with the more normal fare there are some strange un-Chandler-like stories emerging from the electronic innards of my e-book reader. One of them concerned a magic bronze door and the next story is entitled “Professor Bingo’s Snuff” – I can’t help feeling that I am delving into those reaches of Chandler’s literary past where, like Asimov in his mind-bendingly awful “Lucky Starr” novels (all of which I have read, I might add) you find stuff stories which were simply written for money. At least Asimov adopted a pseudonym!


I am painfully aware that, as evening draws on, there is only one clear day left of the holiday. I have therefore decided to turn my mind to an altogether more congenial date in what really is the very near future.


There are now 55 days to the time when I will start to “earn” by doing nothing more than staying alive.


I am sure that a numerologist would make something of 55 but to me it merely signifies a time period of less than two calendar months.


And I’m counting!