Time for what?

I tell you I don’t care!  What people think is of no significance to me!  What do they know about the so-called ‘right’ number of watches to own?  Eh?  What do they know?  Nothing!  That’s what they know!  Nothing!

So, now that is sorted I can share with you that I have bought another watch.  And no, I have no intention whatsoever of giving this one a number.  Not to have watches in double figures shows a callous disregard of the work of generations of watchmakers who have struggled over hundreds of years to bring the measurement of time within the grasp of the ordinary citizen.  I spurn people who say of the watch that they were given at 21 (or in recent times at 18) is for life!  For life is fine as a concept as long as it is not alone in that life!

The new watch is an automatic (how post-modern of me!) and has the usual essentials, to wit – waterproof, luminous, day, month, numbers, sweep second hand and it even tells the time!  The USP of this one (as if it needed one) is that  part of the face has been taken away and so it is possible to see some of the internal workings of the watch, uh, working!  It is fairly chunky and has some encouragingly prominent buttons to press sooner or later and a leather strap – but I’ve had leather straps before and they are fine even with swimming.

And swimming is something that I have done twice today.  Getting back to the old days when I had a swim before and after school.  I must say that the second swim was more to test the waterproof qualities of the watch, but I found it, let me search for the right word here, satisfying.  And swimming is something which always makes you feel good, or if not good, then at least virtuous!

And my new Kindle was delivered.  There is a touch of the watch syndrome about this new arrival as well.  You cannot hide with Kindle.  The new machine arrives and you put your details into it and it tells you exactly how far you have been sucked into the whole Kindle experience.  ‘Stephen’s fourth Kindle’ is says very clearly in their Paperwhite technology, so its there in black and white.  How the hell have I managed to acquire four of these machines each of which is able to hold a thousand or so books?  Well, if you have to ask the question, you obviously don’t know me!

The new version is, quite frankly, brilliant!  It is for reading books.  Simple.  And it provides an environment for doing just that very well indeed.  It is not a tablet, it doesn’t have any fancy extras – though the people at Kindle have tried their best to make the limited functions that the machine has seem bright and new.  I love it!  Buy one.  Even the touch screen technology on this version is much better than the Sony ebook reader that I had a few years ago.  I celebrate progress and am prepared to put my money where my weakness is!

Now the real struggle starts with my deciding whether or not to ‘replace’ something which is working perfectly well, but is a little tatty at the corners.  I don’t know why I write this because this ‘debate’ is already over as far as I am concerned, the only question is when.

There is a slow trickle of comments on the forum about my writing among others, but it is slow and I would like to have a more rapid turnaround of work and comments, but I will have to make do with what is emerging and make the most of it.

Our writing tasks are becoming more complex and we are being asked to work our notes and our techniques into more sophisticated pieces of work.  This is definite progression that is both encouraging and somewhat frightening at the same time! 

That’s education!