Watchbore and the Story of Time

(Part II)
BY Watchbore

In which Watchbore reveals the most significant wristwatch of all time and brings the story to a grateful conclusion.

Readers will recall that they left Watchbore in conclave with his new part-time personal assistant, Miss Gloria Luscious, a lady whose secretarial skills, as Watchbore was discovering to his gratification, were proving to be quite remarkable for one so young.

But Watchbore must draw a veil over the boring minutae of his day-to-day business activities, and take you to the Somme battlefield in the late summer of 1916, where Private Harold Watchbore 8760, 3rd regiment of the South African Infantry Division, is about to lose his life in another futile attempt to take Delville Wood.

"The bombardment will cease as soon as I begin my afternoon nap," commanded a well-lunched general several miles from where Private Watchbore sat cowering in a malodorous trench.

Whether Private Watchbore advanced into his own barrage or the machine-gun bullets of the opposing team is a matter of small importance in the similar fate of a million other soldiers. Like most of them, Private Watchbore was a victim of bad timing.

The vital necessity being in a position of military advantage in the crucial time between the lifting of the barrage and the opening of enemy machine-gun fire is what persuaded soldiers in the front line reluctantly to adopt an item of female jewelry - the wristlet watch.

Extensive horological research conducted by Watchbore proves that the very effeminate wristwatch would have never won the male wrist and become the symbol of the 20th century without the noble sacrifice of Private Watchbore and millions like him. Thus, as he stands, hat over his heart, before a cross in a field of crosses, listening to the haunting notes of the Last Post fade away over the Menin Gate, Watchbore draws great comfort from the knowledge that they died for Omega.

It is fitting, therefore that the watch chosen as the single most significant wristwatch is the one that crossed the gender barrier to become the icon of our age. It's a 1916 purpose-made military wristwatch, with a protective cover over the glass, black dial and luminous markings. Equally fitting, is that it is displayed next to the timing device of a Polaris missile warhead.

There were two other timepieces that held Watchbore's particular attention at the exhibition. One represented the highest achievement of medieval time-keeping in a working replica of the amazing 14th-century Dondi clock, constructed according to the detailed instructions and drawings of the original maker, Giovanni de Dondi of Padua, Italy. It has seven main dials showing the cycles of the moon, sun and five planets, a complete religious calendar, including moveable feasts, and the time of night and day, sunrise and sunset. Completed in around 1375, the original vanished sometime after the 16th century.

Watchbore also had the privilege of admiring one of the best expressions of Breguet's genius - the superb action of his twin-movement regulator with the pendulums swinging in anti-phase - the one owned by Britain's Queen Elizabeth (the other being in the collection of the Ecole des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France). Watchbore is at a loss for words to describe the emotions aroused by this most beautiful instrument - the first to explore the phenomenon of resonance in timekeeping.

It is well known that the depiction of time results in some astonishing examples of human intellectual ingenuity - but not only in calendars, clocks and watches. Time is also the subject of powerful art, notably Titian's disturbing Allegory of Prudence and Poussin's masterly Phaëton asking for the Chariot of Apollo, both of which held Watchbore spellbound in time-suspension.

Among the exhibits relating to personal experiences of time, Watchbore could not help but be moved by the poignant photographic record of a bourgeois German couple, Anna and Richard Wagner. Every Christmas from 1900 to 1945, they sent a photograph of themselves in their parlour with their Christmas tree and presents. We see them as a young couple starting out in life, their years of hardship and abundance, Richard growing a prosperous outline, Anna receiving her first vacuum cleaner in 1927, wearing overcoats during wartime fuel shortages, growing old. The last photo, in 1945, shows the white-haired Anna alone - no tree, no presents. Richard had died that August.

While Watchbore knows that his readers are avid for a few thousand more gem-like words on the various interesting artworks and objects on show, and eagerly await full details on the similarities and differences between the Iunuit and Australian Aboriginal concepts of time, he must regretfully disappoint them by bringing this cliff-hanging tale to its ignominious conclusion.

He will thus gloss over the many other fascinating facts learned at the exhibition, such as the alarming news that Vishnu will destroy the entire universe in 311,040,000,000,000 years, and that Panquetzaliztli is the 15th day of the 20-day Aztec week. He must also deprive his expectant readers of the full epic of his Herculean production of 20,000 words of eyeglazing drivel in record time, and fast-forward to the day when an envelope bearing the symbol of the world's most feared media empire is delivered to Watchbore's garret.

It was from the Editor.

"Dear Watchbore," it lied. "Congratulations. Your 20,000-word piece on "How I set My Watch to the Ancient Greenwich Time Signal" is just the kind of unreadable trivia that we knew we could rely on you to produce. In fact, I will go so far as to say that even if I ate prodigious quantities of alphabet soup1 followed by a large Vindaloo curry I would be incapable of voiding myself of copy as appalling as this.
It is indeed so dreadful that it will at last enable us to make our long-planned breakthrough in publishing history.
Instead of going through the expensive and unnecessary process of publishing new articles to keep the same old ads apart each month, we will print the same text every issue and simply change the ads. This is what our advertisers have been demanding for years, and market research has shown your text is totally unreadable, so nobody will notice.
Among the most immediate cost savings will be you, as it will have by now dawned upon you that we no longer need your so-called literary services. In other words you have written yourself out of a job.

Good riddance,

The Editor."

Watchbore was last reported to be engrossed in reducing his 20,000 word text by a word each day, until he had distilled it into a phrase of unparalleled wisdom, expressing all that will ever be known about time and watches - a task that will keep him agreeably occupied for the next 54 years and nine months. However, before he was led away by the two gentlemen in white coats, he managed to smuggle out to Richard Paige a selection of his more accessible works, the less subversive of which might be published for the entertainment and edification of TimeZoners.
In the meantime he heartily recommends that TimeZoners put The Story of Time Exhibition, which closes on September 24, on their itinerary. They will find it in the splendid surroundings of the Royal Observatory and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, just 7 1/2 minutes of arc east of downtown London, England.
(ends)