Nostalgia Revisited

A man shaves with a straight razor, dresses, tucks his fountain pen and mechanical pocket watch into his waistcoat, dusts off his spats, leaves his home and walks across the street paved with cobblestones to his internal-combustion car, which he drives with its manual transmission to his club, where he dines on steak and oysters, and then relaxes before the fireplace with a cigar and a snifter of brandy, exchanging witticisms in Latin with other club members while someone extemporizes upon the grand piano.

 

16 things which either are, or are perceived to be, in decline: straight razors, fountain pens, mechanical pocket watches, waistcoats, spats, cobblestones, internal combustion engines, manual transmissions, private clubs, steak, oysters, fireplaces, cigars, brandy, the Latin language and grand pianos. But each of those things are staunchly defended by groups small or large. Internal combustion still predominates, but it will be outnumbered by electric vehicles much sooner than some people realize, while not soon enough to suit some of us, who are concerned about climate catastrophe. 

The number of people who eat steak is shrinking, and it seems it will continue to shrink. Vegans consider the human consumption of beef to be a catastrophe in several major ways, while others think that life without the possibility of steak would be a disaster, and I must say that I sympathize with both sides in this fight. The vegans make very convincing arguments. On the other hand, we still have teeth designed to tear flesh, and the smell of a well-prepared steak still makes our mouths water. It still makes my mouth water, at least. Are the vegans really immune to this lure? 

I think that if the vegans want to win, they will have to produce great quantities of delicious vegan food. And it seems that many vegans agree, because the amount of truly delicious vegan food is growing at an amazing rate. This will be much more effective than the stereotypical unbearable self-righteous disapproving vegan.

I've written often in this blog about my love for mechanical watches. But even I am wearing a G-Shock right now. They just work better. Yes, can get a mechanical watch which does 80% of what a $100 quartz watch does, almost as well as the quartz watch. You can get such a mechanical watch for as little as $50,000. 

Fountain pens are more of a mixed bag compared to ballpoints and gel. Fountain pens can, unquestionably, do much more than other pens. But the amount of work it takes to keep them working is -- well, it's much more than the amount of work it takes to wind a watch every day, if your mechanical watch is not an automatic wristwatch which winds itself as your wrist moves when you wear it.

If you're an American, you may or may not be amazed to learn how many cobblestones are still in use in Europe, and even on a few of New York city's streets, and for all I know, maybe in many other American cities too. What about cobblestones in Canada? Or Latin America? Hey, good questions! I don't know.

Anyway, maybe I've been a bit of a douchebag for the way that I've repeatedly attacked nostalgia, because I feel a protective urge for most of these old-timey things, and I can at least sympathize with most of the rest. And that doesn't make me, or anyone else who likes these things, reactionary.

But, Aha! you exclaim. The club! It excluded women, and most men, too!

But Aha! yourself, I shout back at you. Just because you were in the club in 1903 didn't mean you weren't progressive. You could go to the club and argue that club membership, and even the vote! should be given to all women and men. Just because you love a stick shift doesn't mean you're not going to get an EV -- or even a bus pass. Loving history does not mean that you hate every progressive evolution. Conversely, cheering on ever-better automatic transmissions and EV's, and doing away with writing on paper altogether, let alone fountain pens, and being vegan, and having been the first to abandoned straight razors and spats -- alas, none of that guarantees that you are not, politically, socially, a reactionary pig! You can't judge the citizen by her timepiece!

Old Things

I'm getting to be an old thing myself. In less than 3 months I will be 59 years old, which really doesn't seem right. On the inside, I feel like I'm 15, tops. On the outside, various physical signs assure everyone that there's no mistake, that I'm really 58 going on 59.

My car is rather old. It's a 2003 Saturn Ion 1 which I got brand-new in the autumn of 2002. At the time, it was not only a brand-new car: the Ion model was brand-new, too, so I got a few Hey wow Mister what kinda car is that?! remarks. Not for very long. Production of all Saturns was halted in autumn 2009 and the brand was officially discontinued in autumn 2010, so that by many people's standards, the newest Saturn is a pretty old car.

The idea of holding onto old cars, and replacing their engines with electric motors, seems to be gaining in popularity. One big argument for this is that is effects the environment less to replace an engine, than to build an entire new car. Currently, such a conversion is much too expensive for the typical old-car owner, but as the number of conversions goes up, and it's going up fast, the price per unit comes down. Will my Saturn live on as an EV? The thought makes me smile.

Once, I held in my hands a pocket watch which was first sold in 1884, which seems very old to me. Nietzsche had not yet gone insane in 1884. I held that watch and said solemnly, "This is the watch which drove Nietzsche insane." A silly thing to say: there's no reason to suppose that that watch ever came within 1000 miles of Nietzsche, or drove anyone insane. But for some reason it amused me greatly to say with mock solemnity, "This is the watch which drove Nietzsche insane." I don't think it was wrong to say such a thing: Nietzsche himself was not big on solemnity, to put it mildly. He even wrote things in his books about how he laughed at those who didn't dare to laugh at him.

Once, through inter-library loan, I got a copy of one of Nietzsche's books which was published in 1887, also before he went insane, which meant that he himself closely oversaw its publication. I'm sorry, I don't remember which book it was. Perhaps the 2nd edition of Morgenroethe? Whatever it was, I was so impressed by the quality of the book, by the way that the paper had held, and how it was just the perfect size and weight, that I looked up Nietzsche's letters and read him writing about what paper and font he wanted for this book. Did he self-publish, or was it normal for German writers in the 1880's to have so much say in the construction of their books, or did Nietzsche choose a publisher who gave him a lot of consideration in such things? Your guess has to be at least as good as mine.

I own a book which was published in 1869. I got it in the early 1990's. At that time 1869 seemed incredibly old for a book which someone such as myself got for $8.50 at a second-hand bookstore (the price is written inside the front cover). It's volume 2 of a 2-volume set of the works of Schiller. Perhaps if both volumes had still been around, it would've been worth more than $8.50 per volume. Perjaps not. Again, surely, your guess is at least as good as mine. The volume is big, the publisher is the FG Gotta-sche Buchhandlung, the font is small Fraktur which I've never been able to read very well at all. This volume 2 is mostly or entirely non-fictional prose. After many attempts at reading Schiller's accounts of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain and the Thirty Years' War, I found a copy of the same texts in Roman type and was immensely disappointed in the dopey things Schiller has to say about history.

1869 no longer seems like nearly such an incredibly old age for a book which I own; but this volume may still be the oldest I own. No, wait... I have a Teubner edition of Aeschines' orations which was published in 1851. I got it for $5.50, I have no idea when or where. In the case of the Schiller there are clues as to when and where I got it. It's my 2nd-oldest volume.

I read texts which are sometimes thousands of years old, but I tend to prefer to read then in recent editions. I'm not particularly interested in old books or collecting, other than for reasons which have to do with the texts themselves. What can I say, people have gotten better at setting type and making it legible. And the old editions, if and when I want to struggle through them, are available in new photographic reprints and in places such as Google Books.

A Few Extremely Expensive Pocket Watches

As far as I thus far been able to determine, there are not many new mechanical pocket watches currently for sale between cheap pieces of junk whose cases can't be opened, so that they're meant to be used until they stop, and then thrown away rather than repaired, like Bic lighters, if Bic lighters sometimes cost more than $100; and extremely expensive items such as the subjects of this post.

This beautiful rose gold piece was unveiled by Panerai at SIHH 2014:

It's currently featured on panerai.com, along with a white-gold version. 50mm, which seems about the right width for a pocket watch to me. Maybe 48mm would be perfect. $61,600 for the rose gold, $65,300, which may be more money than I have earned in my life so far, for the white gold. And no second hands in sight on either one. But I still think they're beautiful.

Panerai also makes the Pocket Watch Tourbillon GMT Ceramica. $184,100.

This one was introduced in 2013, and watch lovers in general go gaga over it. There are a lot of things over which watch lovers go gaga which I didn't understand 5 years ago but understand now, as you can see if you read posts on this blog labelled mechanical watch. Ceramic cases are one of those things over which watch lovers go gaga which I still don't understand. I'd much rather have that rose gold watch, and not only because the ceramic tourbillon is 3 times more impossible for me to afford, but also because I think that the gold watch looks much nicer, and I'm about 100% certain that it's much heavier, which I would like also.

Besides the ceramic case, there's the size of the tourbillon: 59mm. That's too much, if you ask me. Getting close to hockey-puck-ridiculous size. Speaking of hockey pucks: the Vacheron Constantine Reference 57260 --

-- has been inaccurately described as being about as big as a hockey puck. Actually, it's much larger than a hockey puck: 98mm wide and 50.55mm thick, compared to a regulation puck at 76mm wide and 25mm thick. The Vacheron Constantine Reference 57260 is twice as thick as a hockey puck and 22mm wider. And there's only one of them: the photo above is a double exposure, showing you that it has one dial in front and a different one on back. It has been described -- accurately, I believe, although I suppose it's possible that the statement has been very recently outdated -- as the world's most complicated watch.

Well, wait just a minute about that: is it a watch? Call me a grumpy curmudgeon if you wish, but I say no: it's a clock. It's a very nice clock, but I don't know of anybody who could fit it into one of their pockets or would even want to try. It's closer in size to a chicken pot pie than to a hockey puck. It weighs about 2 pounds, or more than 5 hockey pucks.

But of course this isn't about me and my ideas of what is and isn't a watch. Whatever you call it, either someone liked it well enough to give Vacheron Constantine an enormous sum of money for it, or Vacheron Constantine liked someone well enough to give them a stupendously extravagant gift.

How much does it cost? Nobody's going to tell you that. Nobody's even going to say who bought it. If it's ever sold at auction, I can't imagine it going for less than 8 figures.

The Perfect Watch

My Seiko 5 is pretty darn close to perfect. This is my Seiko 5:

There are many others like it, but this one is mine. (I'm going to keep on telling this joke until somebody gets it.) (I might not even stop then.)

Those of you who saw the earlier photo of my Seiko 5 on this blog, posted about a month ago when I first got the watch, may sense that something has changed. Here is that earlier photo:

Your keen instincts are correct. Something has changed: the nylon strap has been removed.

There's nothing wrong with the wrist strap. It is a good strap, sturdy and beautiful. Unfortunately, it is just barely too small for me to use: it took a great deal of effort for me to fasten the strap around my wrist using the last hole, and when I finally did, it was much too tight. And so I removed it, thinking at first that I would replace it.

But now I don't know whether I will. I prefer pocket watches to wristwatches, and with or without its sturdy, beautiful nylon strap, my Seiko 5 fits comfortable into a variety of my pockets. I haven't actually searched very energetically for a replacement strap. One advantage of not having a strap is that it makes it a little easier to look at the back of the watch. And the back of the watch looks like this:

Pretty cool, huh? I know!

Now, some of you maying be saying: Sure, Steve, yr Seiko 5 is awesome, clearly. But of all the watches in the world, how can you say that it is close to perfect, when we know that you know a little bit about some pretty fancy watches -- Rolexes and Patek Philippes and Audemars Piguets and what not?

Well, one big advantage which my Seiko 5 has over those fancy items is that I have never held a Patek Philippe or Audemars Piguet in my hand, and I've only held a Rolex once, because a nice saleslady in a watch shop let me hold it for a moment -- but I didn't hold it long enough for it to make a strong impression. I can hold my Seiko 5 whenever I want to. I held it just now, between typing "[...]strong impression." and "I can[...]" This lends it an immediacy which those other watches, at present, do not have for me. My Seiko 5 makes me very happy. (Can ya tell?)

Nevertheless, I can imagine a watch which would be even more perfect.

Perfect for me. The perfect one for you would be different, and the perfect one for another person would be different again, because we people are all unique.

My perfect watch would be a pocket watch. I said before on this blog that watch manufacturers couldn't make a pocket watch too big and heavy for me. Well, I keep learning more about watches all the time, and I'm pretty sure that they have made some which are too big for me. There's the Patek Philippe Calibre 89, for example, presented to the watch-porn public in 1989. 89 mm wide, 41 mm thick -- roughly the size of a hockey puck -- and well over 2 pounds. It's value has been estimated at around $6 million, but that may be just an abstract estimate, because only 4 were made -- 1 each in yellow gold, rose gold, white gold and platinum -- and it may well be that none of them is actually for sale at any price.

If I ever get to the position where I can afford to spend $6 million on a watch, and it turns out that a Patek Philippe Calibre 89 is for sale, and I get to hold it in my hands, it may turn out that I don't find it too big at all, but just perfect. But trying to imagine it now, it really seems like it would be too big for me to carry around. I don't know if anyone could comfortably carry a pocket watch that big.

Then there's the Audemars Piguet 25701, a large pocket watch, currently made, not an antique, made in various shades of gold. I might find it to be actually too big and heavy as well, I don't know, I'd have to actually hold one to have an idea about that. And as they seem to cost closer to $1 million than $500,000, it may be a while before I have to decide if it's for me.

The absolute perfect watch for me might actually be a rather modestly-sized pocket watch. But I would want as much of it as possible to be made of platinum. Do you seek to know me? Then you must know that I like gold and am daffy about platinum, and that with both metals, heaviness is a lot of the appeal. Platinum is heavier than gold. It's the heaviest material -- or, to be more precise: alloys of platinum are the heaviest materials out of which a watch can be made. Anything heavier would either be brittle or radioactive.

So, my perfect pocket watch might be not remarkably wide, and not remarkably thick, but it would be remarkably heavy because it would be mostly platinum-alloy. And a remarkably heavy platinum chain to go with it would also be perfect.

Next, we come to the movement. It would, of course, be mechanical and not quartz: that is, the watch would be powered by a spring, and not by a battery. Why, and why of course? I don't know how to explain it to you. Maybe someone else could explain it to you. Maybe not. Whether there are actual reasons for it or not, I am one of a whole group of people who are fascinated by mechanical watches, and not interested in quartz watches very much at all.

Watches with mechanical movements, that is: watches powered by springs and not by batteries, fall into 2 categories: automatic and hand-wound. Most mechanical wristwatches made today, from the least expensive to the most expensive, are automatics: you don't have to wind them if you wear them on your wrist all day. The normal movement of your wrist will wind the spring.

But I'm obsessive-compulsive, and obsessive-compulsives will always worry about whether their automatic watches are going to run down even though we know it's irrational to worry about it.

Some automatic watches can be hand-wound. Not the Seiko 5. And I also don't wear my Seiko 5 on my wrist. So there's a certain amount of waving my watch back and forth to keep it wound.

Being obsessive-compulsive, I not only worry that my watch will wind down and stop because I haven't waved it back and forth enough. I also worry that maybe I wave it back and forth much too much, and that the excessive shaking is putting excess wear and tear on my beloved innocent little Seiko 5! (Yes, I just referred to my watch as if it were a living thing, like a pet which can experience enjoyment and suffering. I'm aware that this is not an entirely rational attitude. I'm fine with that. I am who I am.)

Maybe I will learn much more about what is good and bad for a watch such as mine, and maybe I will learn ways to know how tight or loose my watches mainspring is, and what effects may or may not come from always being wound up too tight (insert psychiatric joke here) and so forth.

I am not aware of the existence of any automatic pocket watches. All the ones I know about are either battery-driven, or mechanical hand-wind.

But an obsessive-compulsive person can still experience mental anguish with a manually-wound watch: What if you forgot to wind it today?

There's an answer to that anguish, called the power-reserve indicator. This is a feature on the face of some hand-wound watches (I've never seen one on an automatic) which shows how much time is left until the watch winds down and stops.

What a wonderful feature! I wonder whether it was invented with people in mind who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it definitely is suffering. For whatever reason it was invented, it's as if it was made to order, or made to disorder, for us.

Mechanical watches made today generally will run from 40 to 60 hours or more from fully-wound to stopped. Another way to say that is: they have a power reserve of from 40 to 60 or more hours. One wristwatch I know of has a power reserve of 7 days, another of 31 days and one can run for 50 days between windings, the longest power reserve I've ever heard of.

[PS, 5 February 2017: I just found out about another long-distance runner: the Calibre 947 movement by Jaeger-LeCoultre --

-- has a power reserve of 15 days.]

On my perfect, modestly-sized, platinum pocket watch, I think a power reserve of several days or more would be nice. But it would definitely have to have a power-reserve indicator in order to be perfect.

There are a lot of other things which new fancy mechanical watches often have: stopwatches, second hour hands for the 2nd time zone of your choice, alarms, etc, etc. A new Rolex or Omega may well have many complication which I don't even understand, and I'd have to read the owner's manual and hope that then I'd understand what all that stuff on the watch is. Any function other than just an hour hand, a minute hand and a second hand is called a complication. A power reserve indicator is a complication. I'm not sure whether the indicators of the day of the week and of the day of the month on my Seiko 5 are called a complication or 2 complications.

Other than the power reserve indicator, which I definitely want, I'm really not that crazy about complications. Do I like having the day of the week and of the month on my Seiko 5? Yeah, sure. Would I really miss them if they were gone or if they stopped working? I'm not sure I'd miss them much at all.

However, it's certainly conceivable that as time goes on and I learn more about complications, they will have more appeal for me.

The implication of this, of course, is that the perfect watch for me, or for any person, will change as that person changes.

I Like Cookies

I'm talking about HTTP cookies, the bits of information which companies collect when we're online and then trade with each other. The ones which some people think are part of the way that we will fall under the Total Control of capitalists, or possible even of The Machines Themselves.

And maybe they're right. After all, what do I know about information technology. But the thing is, cookies can also lead to me being informed about really cool expensive watches because companies think I might be a billionaire. For example: yesterday, I posted this picture on Facebook:

That's a wristwatch. The thing is, it's a wristwatch which costs several hundred thousand dollars. So today, I saw ads for other watches which cost even more. Including even some brand-new, retail available pocket watches. Like this one,

made by Audemars Piguet, the company I mentioned a few post back, in the post that started out being about LeBron James and then veered off into another post about watches. Audemars Piguet make the Royal Oak, possibly the world's heaviest production-model wristwatch, won by LeBron on the cover of Sports Illustrated and by Jeremy Piven on "Entourage." The pocket watch in the picture there is the Audemars Piguet 25701, which comes in a variety of styles and materials and seems to cost from a little under $800,000 to over $900,000. The one in the picture has a rose-gold case. I'm assuming that it weighs even more than the heaviest of all Audemars Piguet Royal Oak wristwatches.

But I have to assume. Because the Internet is made by people very much unlike me. If it were made by people like me, and catered to the interests of people like me, I would have easy access to information about the exact weight of every conceivable sort of watch, and I would have found out about extremely-expensive brand-new production-model retail-available pocket watches without accidentally having advertisements for them put onto the Internet pages I visit because yesterday I posted a picture of Hublot MP-05 LaFerrari on Facebook. The MP-05 is the watch in the first photo in this post. It's a manual hand-wind wristwatch. Its face is intentionally made to resemble the engine of a Ferrari. When it's wound up all the way it will run for 50 days, the longest of any watch of which I know. If the Internet catered specifically to my interests, I would know for sure whether or not there is a watch somewhere which runs for longer than 50 days after being wound once. But it's not. And so I just have to guess about some things. And I apologize for that.

And I also have to guess whether more pocket watches in the $1000-to-$1,000,000 price range are being made and offered for sale than a few years ago, or whether I'm simply aware of a few more than I used to be. Partly as a result of dogged online searching, and partly completely by accident because of things like posting that picture on Facebook yesterday. I'm really whacky about pocket watches. Wristwatches are nice, sure, but I like pocket watches a lot more. And only mechanical watches interest me: the kind you wind up by hand, or, slightly less interesting, those watches which are known as automatic or self-winding: they have innards (called movements) which are similar to those in the watches you must wind by hand, but the automatic or self-winding watches are also wound by being moved around as someone wears them on their wrists. The ones with the quartz batteries, they don't interest me much at all, and if I'm looking at a watch or a picture of a watch or a watch on TV, and I realize that it runs by quartz battery, I'm always very disappointed. Why? I don't know why. I think that almost any rational reasons why anyone would be interested in having any sort of watch at all disappeared years ago, when things like smartphones and clocks on microwaves and car dashboards and what have you became ubiquitous.

Why the $1000-to-$1,000,000 price range? Not because I can afford a $1000 watch. I can't. But because the Watch Snob wrote that you have to spend at least $1000 to get a really good watch, unless you get a pocket watch which is 100 years old or so, and take it to a good watch repair person. How would one find a competent watch repair person? I don't know. Maybe I will stumble across that information someday too.

So: in this case, cookies did exactly what they were intended to do: gave information to someone, me, about things he is interested in, ridiculously-expensive brand-new pocket watches. Now, if cookies could go one step further, and help that person, me, obtain enough money to actually buy the things in question -- now that would really be something. That would really be a miracle of information technology.

Power Reserve Indicators

As with some other posts on this blog, this one may contain no information which would be new to specialists in its subject -- wristwatches, in this case -- and laypersons might ordinarily have little interest at all in the subject. Most of my posts are aimed at laypeople, and often they attempt to awaken an interest in them for something to which they'd previously barely given a thought.

On a wristwatch, a power-reserve indicator is a display on the face of the watch which shows how much longer the watch will run if it left untouched -- left unworn in the case of most contemporary high-end watches, which are automatic watches, also known as self-winding watches: they are wound by the ordinary movement of the wearer's wrist.

Or, in the case of obsessive-compulsive wearers such as myself -- I have an automatic watch: at a yard sale in 2004 I bought an automatic Timex built in 1979 for $2 -- by the unnecessarily often and frenetic shaking of the watches because we're irrationally worried that they'll run down. I think most automatic watches, including my Timex, can be wound like old-fashioned manually-winding watches, but when I wind the watch manually, it doesn't seem to stop winding when it's wound all the way, and also I'm worried that the crown -- the thing you turn to wind a watch -- may be damaged, and winding may make it worse. That, too, may well be a completely irrational worry, and yet here we are.

Maybe the power-reserve indicator was created partly with obsessive-compulsives in mind. This watch by Orient

has a maximum power reserve of 40 hours. As the watch unwinds, the hand on the dial at the bottom of the watch's face goes from right to left. In the photo, the power reserve dial is indicating that this watch will run for another 25 hours if left untouched.

40 hours is about the average maximum power reserve of a mechanical watch. If a luxury watch has a power reserve of 60 hours, the manufacturer may brag about that in a short description of the watch.

There has been a competition among some luxury watch makers to create a watch with the longest power reserve. The longest power reserve known to me is possessed by this watch by Hublot,

the Hublot Masterpiece MP-05, a manual wind-up watch, not an automatic, which can run for 50 days between windings. I'm not entirely sure what all the numbers on the face of the watch mean, but I'm guessing that the number in the upper left indicate that the watch has 40 days to go before it needs winding, and that the numbers in the upper right and at the bottom indicate that it is 9:11:30 AM or PM on the 10th of May. I could be wrong, but I'm sure it comes with an owner's manual.

When my current obsession with mechanical watches began about 3 years ago, this was the sort of watch I was not interested in. Back then, I wanted the simplest possible display: something much more like this watch by A Lange & Soehne,

the A Lange & Soehne Lange 31, also a manual wind-up, not an automatic, which happens to have an exceptional 31-day power reserve, 2nd-logest I've heard about. The dial near the 3 o'clock position in the photo shows that the watch has a little more than half of those 31 days left on its mainspring.

3 years ago, I would have liked that this A Lange & Soehne watch is made of platinum -- I still do, and I'm disappointed that the the Hublot pictured about is made of titanium -- but I would have disliked that it is a wristwatch rather than a pocket watch, and that it doesn't have bold Arabic numerals 1 through 12 marking the hours. 3 years ago, with very few exceptions such a preference for a second hand which moves in the same circle as the hour and minute hand, the more a watch's design departed from that of a 100-year-old railroad watch, the more I disliked it. So I would've detested the Hublot. However, in the past 3 years I've looked at lots and lots of pictures of extremely expensive watches, and read a fair amount about them, and gotten more and more used to, and even appreciative of, unconventional designs. Overall, I still like something like the Lange better than the Hublot, and if I could find a brand-new solid-platinum pocket watch that ran as well as a brand-new high-end wristwatch, I would like that best of all -- just letting the world's finest watchmakers know, in case they've been reading my blog, and planning to present me with a magnificent watch in appreciation of my services to the expensive-watch industry: pocket watch, platinum, size 16 or 18, as heavy as possible, cutting-edge accuracy and precision, long power reserve, and a power reserve indicator would be very nice, otherwise they don't need to go nuts with the complications or clutter up the face -- but if I were a billionaire who'd allotted several million dollars to his annual watch budget, not only would I own something like that $150,000 platinum Lange, I'd also consider shelling out $300,000 for that Hublot. (I'm not saying that either of those watches would actually spend more time on my wrist than in one of my pockets.) I don't hate the Hublot like I would have 3 years ago. I like the 50-day power reserve very much, not because I think that such a long reserve is at all necessary -- watches are no longer necessary -- but in a because-it's-there spirit. The Hublot watch is made as a tribute to Ferrari, and if I'm looking at it right, the part running from the top to the bottom down the middle of the face, besides being extremely functional, is made to look like a Formula 1 Ferrari motor.

I know more about watches than I did 3 years ago. The more you know about manufactured items the more you tend to like them, I think, all other things being equal. Some of my fellow Leftists will be appalled by this post, and consider these watches to epitomize much of what is wrong with the world, and I understand that reaction. I just disagree with it.

PS, 10 February 2017: Over at the Time Transformed website, Ambrose Lancaster has written a nice article about watches with impressive power reserves. The longest power reserve on his list is the Hublot Ferrari with 50 days, same as in this post. But he includes a few timepieces I hadn't heard of. And he writes well, and his article contains a lot of interesting information.

Because Of Mistakes! pt 19

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18

The following Sunday, the 10th of June, at about 1:43 PM, Spilman was with Ted in the Green Park, the two of them just relaxing and enjoying a beautiful rare sunny day, when Spilman saw the two men who'd chased him Tuesday night and a couple of nights since. People who'd spent the morning in church were strutting their fine church duds; people who'd been drinking the night before had mostly recovered from their hangovers; people such as Spilman and Ted who'd done neither had been soaking in the beautiful weather since early that morning; and now those two clowns appeared on a bench a hundred yards away or so, clearly watching Spilman and pretending not to, like a very sour note in the lovely symphony which this afternoon had been. Not entirely unexpected sour notes, though. Since Tuesday night Spilman had been enjoying Ted's company more often than usual. Charlie wasn't with them today. He and Latham and many other autistics found the bright sunlight much more harsh than delightful, and were staying indoors. It was the first time since Tuesday Spilman and Ted'd been out together without Charlie; it was the first time Spilman had seen the two heavies in the daytime, the first time he had seen them while Ted was near, and the first time he saw them and felt no need to run. He slapped Ted's knee, nodded in their direction and said, "That's them."

"The two fellows who've been bovering you?"

"Hm-mm."

"Oy. You do mean the two jokers wif matching hats and -- "

"Yes, and matching jackets, and, uh..."

"Yeah, entire matching outfits, they dress in matching outfits a lot."

"You know them?"

"Oy."

"Two of us?"

"Oy, I am very sad to say. I mean, look at them. Is there anything in the world more conspicuous than matching outfits on large grown men? I imagine they were wearing matching outfits too the other times they was chasing you?"

"Yes."

"Disgraceful. Just what you want when you're trying to sneak up on somebody: look like a cricket team. I thought we had some standards. I mean, we don't trust Charlie wif any political business -- you know what I mean. I love the sod, but -- "

" -- Yes, I know exactly what you mean, Charlie's got no sense of what needs to be secret, so we can't trust him with any of our many secrets. It's nothing against him, he's just different. What are they, brothers? I'm simply trying to understand the matching outfits."

"Nah."

"Lovers, perhaps?"

"Uhhh... Hah. Hadn't thought of that. No, I don't think so. I think they're just mates, and more than a bit thick. Some pairs of eight-year-old boys'll dress alike, given the opportunity. If they're not particularly bright eight-year-old boys. These two donkeys shouldn't be entrusted with secrets any more than Charlie -- in my opinion. Others clearly see if differently -- and neither one a them ever fixed a watch or a sparrow's nest. Oy!" Ted shouted. His voice boomed and echoed and many people startled, including the two identically-dressed men on the other bench watching them and pretending not to. "Yes, we can see you just fine, can ya see us awright?" They gestured frantically for Ted to be quiet. "What's that? Lower? Awright!" Ted shouted, then shifted from his natural booming baritone to an even more penetrating, deafening false basso profundo, and shouted, "I said we can see you just fine from over here, can you see us awright!" He shifted back to his natural voice and shouted, "Come on over then, we got some stuff to diiscuss, the four of us. No? You don't want to come over? Fine. I'll ask you anyway: why've you two idiots been trying to kill my friend?!" Gasps and half-shrieks were audible from bystanders, and the two in matching Sunday finery were scurrying over to where Ted and Spilman sat.

When they were near Ted snarled, "Siddown," and nodded down at the bench he and Spilman were occupying. It was not a large bench, Ted was sitting at one end, one of the large smashed-faced fellows brushed against Spilman as he sat down, but this time Spilman didn't feel the slightest bit alarmed. "Two on two now," Ted said, "fair fight. Wanna give it a go now? No? Then tell me just what in the sodding Hell has gotten into the two of you. Oh, by the way, don't wear matching outfits when you want to sneak up on somebody. We both agree, it's about as conspicuous as can be. But you were about to explain yourselves."

"E's not yr friend, Ted."

"E is, for a number of years now, and a good and trustworthy soul."

"Bollocks!" said the one of them who'd been talking, the one seated next to Spilman, and he pulled on Spilman's watch chain, pulled the Waltham 1883 out of Spilman's vest pocket, shook it at Ted and demanded, "What do you say to that?!" Spilman took this quite calmly.

Ted replied, "I say you should leave talking in riddles to people much more clever than you."

The man shoved the watch back into Spilman's pocket and asked, "Ya remember Smif? Dark-haired fellow, bit of a weight problem, worked as a clerk over at Parliament, liked to dress a bit flashy, liked to drink a bit of whisky, liked the ladies maybe even a bit more than most -- "

"Yeah yeah I know the guy, but why are you asking me whether I 'remember' him? Somefing happen to him?"

"Ask your 'friend.'"

"What'd I just finish tellin' you about talking in riddles?"

"Nobody I know has seen Smif since about a month ago when some coppers chased im through Waterloo Station."

"That big ruckus in Waterloo Station was over Smif?"

"Yeah."

"Dint know it was Smif they was chasin."

"It was Smif. Chased im but dint catch im. Minutes after that, Inspector Raymond's on the case, lookin round the station. You know Raymond."

"All four of us know Raymond."

The man paused, it really seemed as if he needed a while to count how many of them there were on the bench. Spilman and Ted exchanged a glance, Ted with his palms raised in entreaty toward Heaven. The man continued, "Apparently Raymond was trying to find Smif before someone else did and help him disappear. But it seems someone else found poor Smif first."

"Bill, I swear by our dear beloved semi-reactionary Queen, if I have to tell you one more time about talking in riddles."

"The last time anybody saw Smif he was wearing that watch." Bill poked the Waltham 1883 in Spilman's pocket several times.

"Don't touch him again."

"E was wearing that watch," Bill said. "And your 'friend' ere, the high and mighty Mr Spilman, who acts and talks like a gentleman but is just as much a dirty Cockney as you or me, started wearin Smif's watch the day Smif disappeared."

"Bill, to call you a sodding moron would be an insult to sodding morons everywhere. That's not Smif's watch. Charlie Evans just happened to be on the platform when Smif was chased through it."

"The famous idiot."

"Bill, I swear to God, I will kill you just for exercise, and then I'll kill your only friend George just for spite. Shut up now. Spilman here is my friend. Charlie is too. And you're a famous idiot. Charlie's daffy about watches. Can spot one a hundred yards away in the dark for half a second and tell you the brand and model. E saw Smif's watch. My other good friend Albert Latham -- "

"Yeah, the, uh... Charlie Evans works for the Lathams now," George piped up. "They make those posh watches."

"I have worked for the Lathams for a long time, Albert Latham is my boss and also my very good friend. I swear to Christ, shut up, the pair of ya, shut up and listen for once in yr lives, ya... The police called Latham in to talk to Charlie about Smif's watch. That's how Latham met Charlie. Latham brought several watches like the one Smif was wearing, so that Charlie could point out the one looked most like it. He gave that one to the police, and he still had the others in is pocket when he happened to meet Spilman ere later the same day, who happened to be looking for a decent watch, and so Latham gave im..." Now Ted pulled the Waltham out of Spilman's pocket by its chain "...this one. I didn't know Smith'd gotten into trouble."

"I had no idea the man they were looking for there was one of us, was your friend," Spilman said to Bill and George. "I'm sorry."

"Fanks," Bill said. "Sorry about trying to arm you. Bit of a fuck-up there, no doubt."

"Oh, please don't give it another thought," Spilman replied, "it could've happened to anyone."

"Fanks," Bill said, and George nodded his wide-eyed thanks. Neither gave the slightest sign of having detected the sarcasm in Spilman's reassurance.

"I'm sorry about Smif too," Ted said. "I hope he's awright. Good that Raymond was on the case so quickly, I'm sure that gave Smif a better chance. But look, the two of ya. This is a perfect example of why you should talk to other people and get their advice first, before you go off on your own and try to settle things. Was anybody else at all aware of your plans to do Spilman in?"

The two of them were staring at the ground, they couldn't meet Ted's gaze. Bill just shook his head.

"Well I'm not surprised. I'm very disappointed in the two of ya, but I'm not surprised. Did ya learn somethin here? Please tell me ya learned something."

"Ahh," Bill said, and cleared his throat, and said, "talk to somebody first," still staring shamefacedly at the ground.

"Oy. Very good. Now sod off and let me and me friend enjoy this lovely afternoon."

They mumbled several more "sorry"s and shambled off. For a long time Spilman shifted his gaze back and forth between Bill and George walking away, and Ted watching them retreat with his lower jaw thrust out in annoyance. Finally Ted said, "They aven't learned a fucking thing. They never learn anything. They're a perfect example of good intentions paving the road to Ell. What donkey ever initiated them to be two of us?"

"I had no idea that man with all the coppers chasing him through Waterloo Station was a friend of yours. It made the papers: a mysterious chase, and none of the police would talk about it."

"Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea it was Smif. Poor sod, hope he's okay now. More of just an acquaintance to me. Bit of a silly fucker, the way he dandied up like a peacock. For the ladies, just as Bill said. I think maybe the ladies would've liked him more if he'd worried less about is clothes and done a few sit-ups now and then instead. Eh. That depends on which ladies it is, I suppose. Maybe Smif was actually onto something."

"So why was he in trouble?"

"Sod me if I know. Fucked a big shot's wife or daughter, maybe? I've no idea."

"Huh."

"What is it?" Ted asked.

"Raymond's been behaving very strangely lately."

"Yeah, I've noticed that too. So what?"

"Mm... I don't know what. Seems like I had half a clue about something there for a second, and then I lost it again."

"Well, if it's important, chances are it'll come to you again. Sometimes you figure something out as soon as you stop trying to, know what I mean? Tell you what, Spilman, whyn't we have a beer to celebrate your aving cheated yet another completely senseless death."

Because Of Mistakes! pt 18

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At about 3 minutes before midnight the following Tuesday, the 5th of June, Spilman was wearing the watch Latham had given him early in May. Spilman hadn't reset the watch since Latham had given it to him, and it was currently about 40 seconds fast. Which meant that Spilman didn't know how accurately it was running. All he knew is that it was within 2 or 3 minutes of spot on, without his having adjusted it for a month, and that that was amazing by his standards, and that Latham was a genius whom he was very fortunate to know. And that Latham shared the same condition with Charlie, although he'd been able to hide it from everyone but some of his family and a Swiss doctor with whom he corresponded about it. Latham insisted upon referring to what he and Charlie had as a condition, and was quite distressed, Spilman could tell, whenever anyone referred to it as a disorder. Apparently Charlie's abilities in some ways quite dwarfed Latham's which, in Spilman's view, certainly bolstered Latham's case for not thinking of it as a disorder. Latham also referred to it as a mutation. Although the term held some horror for the uninitiated general public, Latham assured Spilman that mutation could be either good or bad -- although that itself was a subjective call -- and that if it had not been for mutations we would all still be one-celled organisms living primarily upon our own excrement, if, that is, life had ever begun at all.

With some effort Spilman refocused his attention upon the task at hand: interviewing the butler of a Tory MP who for years had been spying as much as he possibly could upon his master, for the sake of their friends. The interview was pretty much wound up, Spilman had filled quite a few notebook pages -- how had he ever lived before Freddie had started giving him these posh notebooks and pens? So many cleverly-made things in this world, kept -- for the most part -- so greedily by a few away from the many, so that most people really didn't even know what they were missing.

The butler had himself made a few notes, to which he'd referred while briefing Spilman. "Okay," Spilman said, and pointed at the butler's little pile of scraps of paper," "I'll have those, too."

"Oh," the butler said, "why?"

"Why?" Spilman replied. "Why do you want to keep them? As souvenirs, perhaps?" The butler said nothing and merely looked nonplussed. "I'm going to take them from you because they're very dangerous to you, for one thing. I'm going to go through them once to check against my own notes, and then I'm going to destroy them." He took the pile and stuffed them into the convenient pocket at the back of the notebook, one of the countless things, pockets like these in notebooks, which the rich took for granted and the poor knew nothing about. "And if I'm in danger of being apprehended myself, I'll throw this whole lot away," he said, holding up the notebook, "Even though I've worked very hard for weeks to get it two-thirds full of notes or so, because this is all very dangerous. Perhaps, if we and people like us are very successful, in a couple of decades we'll be able to keep souvenirs of our work and write our memoirs and be hailed as heroes. For the nonce we're still criminals."

"Are you actually in danger of being apprehended?" the butler asked as they stepped into the alley from the room, attached to a warehouse in Lambeth, which they and their friends occasionally met in when they wanted privacy. The butler had a key to the place; he locked up behind them.

"One never knows. Oh, I'm so sorry, I almost forgot." Spilman handed a page torn from the notebook to the butler, with the name and address of a physician on it. "The man I mentioned. Take that boy from your household to him. My mind's all over the place. If it is pneumonia, God forbid, this man can help the child."

"Thank you. Thank you very much."

"Of course. Whatever are we here for if not for children like him? Just dress the tyke up like a little scion of our betters, and keep him from speaking, and I think you'll have no trouble passing yourselves off as a gentleman and his son. That'll get you past his receptionist and into his examining room, and then you can both be who you are. Don't worry about his nurse, the man's also one of us. And of course there'll be no charge."

"I say, I'm not a pauper, I can pay to visit a doctor."

"I swear to God, my friend," Spilman exclaimed, "for someone dedicated to breaking society's shackles you never seem to pass up an opportunity to lock yourself in them."

"I want to do my part."

"You do your part and several other people's. You work in a fine house, it's true, and get some fine scraps thrown your way, but all you have as your own is a nasty little room. This doctor has a very large house not far from where you work. He wants to do his part as well. Let him."

As he walked back home Spilman did his very best to look in all directions all the time without appearing to and to keep his ears sharp. He hadn't wanted to let it show to his friend, but as a matter of fact, he was a little more anxious than usual about being waylayed, and searched, and maybe killed. Earlier that evening he'd just seen a pair of thugs coming at him, seen them just soon enough to be able to run away. They'd both been very big, both had fit bodies and smashed-up faces. Boxers, or maybe just fighters away from the realm of sport. Spilman was not an exceptional fighter but he was a positively extraordinary runner. After about a mile the two men had given up, and one of them had yelled after him, "That's it, you rat fucker, keep running. We know where you live."

"So do a lot of my friends," Spilman shouted back.

"You don't ave as many friends as you think!" the voice had retorted as it receded in the dark: they'd stopped running, Spilman hadn't yet. At the time he hadn't thought much of the man's remarks, thinking it was only talk. If talking decided fights, a great many fights would've turned out entirely differently. At first he'd thought the man had called him a rat only to signify that Spilman was a small and loathesome creature. But then it occurred to him that "rat" was a piece of American slang, which had begun to cross the Atlantic, for "traitor." Saying he was a traitor would match up with saying that some people were no longer his friends. Of course, doing what he did, there was always going to be a certain amount of confusion among a certain number of people about what exactly he was up to and whose side he was on. And he had been running away from people threatening him harm on a regular basis since he'd been a small fleet-footed boy. Still, he couldn't entirely shake the thought that perhaps something unusually bad had happened, that some of his friends actually did think he'd betrayed them somehow, that perhaps they'd even sent those men to injure or even kill him, all because of some misunderstanding, or maybe because of a lie from an actual traitor. Spilman told himself not to be silly, not to scare himself for no reason. But he couldn't quite shake it. A chill had settled into him.

Because Of Mistakes! pt 17

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After they'd crossed the bridge they cut through St James' Park, the Green Park and Hyde Park to arrive at St Mary's Hospital where a certain highly-recommended doctor awaited them. His office, one floor up from street level, was spacious and filled with books. Large windows showed old oaks changing from buds to leaves. They both went into the doctor's office, Ted didn't wait outside. Since Albert Latham had announced that his neurological system was very similar to Charlie's, transparency had become the word of the day regarding that neurological condition: it was not to be kept secret, it was to be publicly discussed, and doctors were to meet with neither of them alone. Ever. It seemed clear to Ted that Albert feared some danger that lurked in his and Charlie's condition being treated or examined or discussed in secret or in private. Even Albert's habits of rocking and moaning and doing other odd things when he got agitated, very similar to Charlie's way of doing it -- even these things, Albert now sometimes did in front of other people, mannerisms which, he had publicly announced, he had spent a lifetime hiding from others. Sometimes. And sometimes Albert would start to rock and moan or clutch his head or wring his hands in front of others, and then suddenly run off -- presumably to finish doing what he needed to do in private, as he'd been accustomed to do.

Some doctors had refused to see Charlie other than one-on-one, but there were plenty of other doctors interested in him, and even some of the doctors who at first hadn't gone along with the as-public-as-possible nature of the whole case relented so as not to be left behind.

This doctor -- Ted had heard the man's name not for the first time today when they introduced each other, and forgotten it already, the doctors were beginning to become something of a blur for him -- asked them to please be seated in some of the office's rather abundant armchairs. Ted complied, Charlie cast a nervous glance at Ted, and Ted said to the doctor, "It's sometimes very difficult for Charlie to stay seated. It may seem to you that you don't have his full attention if he's wandering around the office and looking at everything but you, but believe me, the interview will go better than if he's sitting and can't think of anything but how uncomfortable he is sitting."

"It's true," Charlie chimed in. "It's a bit strange, but I'd be very grateful for your understanding." Charlie had found, with Albert's guidance, that phrases such as admitting that certain things were strange and saying he'd be grateful for someone's understanding were very helpful when meeting people for the first time. At seemed to help everyone to be more at ease. The doctor's books were fascinating. Charlie had seen so many books in so many different luxurious rooms lately.

"Of course," the doctor replied. "And I understand that an actual physical examination will not occur today, that it's to be an interview only, am I correct?"

"Yes," Ted said.

"Yes, thank you for understanding, doctor," Charlie said.

"Of course," the doctor replied.

Charlie strode over to one of the large windows, just outside of which a female robin was jumping back and forth between two branches of an oak and chattering agitatedly. "She's lost her babies," Charlie said, pointing to the bird. "She had a nest right there on one of those branches, I don't know whether or not the eggs had hatched yet, but now they're gone, the whole nest is gone somehow, something happened to it, and she's very sad. It's very distressing. But there's nothing anybody can do about it now."

The doctor turned in surprise to Ted, who said, "I'd imagine e's completely right, Doctor. E's very good with animals, very sensitive to what's 'appening to them. Also, if e doesn't know something, e tends to say 'I don't know,' right straight up with no 'if's' or 'but's.' If e says something is such and such way about an animal or a watch, I'd say a good rule a thumb is to assume e's right until you know otherwise."

"I hadn't even noticed there was a robin's nest out there," the doctor said. "That's extraordinary, Mr Evans."

"Aaaa-aah. Aaaa..."

"E prefers that everyone call im 'Charlie.'"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Charlie. I shall do so from now on."

"It's not so important. Thank you for understanding."

Because Of Mistakes! pt 16

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At about 12:19 PM on Thursday the following week, the 31st of May, Ted slapped a man on the back of his head, slapped him so hard that it gave a resounding crack and sent the man stumbling forward for several steps. Charlie turned and looked as the man stumbled past him. It looked as if he were going to fall, but he righted himself again. This was one of two men who had been walking toward them as they walked across the bridge toward Westminster. One of them had called out to Charlie "Oy!" and took off his cap and was holding it over his heart, "d'ya mind if we have a look at the watch?" Charlie was reaching to take the Latham Model 100 out of his pocket, the one Albert had let him pick out of all one hundred of them, with an emerald-green face and a gold case and chain. Part of the face actually was covered with emeralds, the rest was gold covered with emerald-green lacquer which kept a very high shine.

Charlie had taken his hand away from his watch pocket again when Ted slapped the man. The man had managed not to fall, but he had dropped his cap. Before he'd righted himself Ted had begun to shout at the two men, turning back and forth from one to the other and holding one of his enormous forefingers very close to their faces: "Oy! Ya don't bother this one! Ya don't touch him, ya don't touch any of his fings, and you certainly don't try to rob him! D'ya understand me? Oy! I asked you a question!"

The man Ted had struck mumbled, "Oy, Guv, we understand," as he picked up his cap and set it on his head again with both trembling hands. The other said, "Yeah, Captain, we hear you loud and clear."

"Good! Understanding is a glorious fing. Now piss off on out of it!" The two men ran away toward Lambeth without a look back. They were both about average size, but when Ted had slapped one of them and yelled at them both he'd made them seem very small. Charlie guessed that Ted was about six foot five, and his shoulders were very broad and he had very big rippling muscles in his arms and legs, you could see that through his shirt sleeves and trouser legs. They watched the men running away for a while, then Ted turned to Charlie and clapped him gently on the shoulder and said softly, "Alright then." Charlie didn't mind when Ted clapped him on the shoulder. He knew that Ted came with him to keep him safe. These occasional claps on the shoulder were the only times Ted touched him, and, just as when his Dad hugged him or toussled his hair, he knew that these claps on the shoulder were meant to express good will and the intent to protect him.

Charlie asked, "Were they going to -- "

"Yeah, Charlie, they were going to try to steal your watch."

"How do you know?"

"Hm. It's hard to put into words."

"Is it because of their social class?"

"Ah, well, no, Charlie, it wasn't that. I'm from the same class as they are. It may be that most of the people who'd try to steal a man's watch are from the lower classes, but not everybody from the lower classes is a fief."

"I guess I'm from the same classes myself."

"There you go, Charlie. Have you ever even thought about robbing someone?"

Charlie stood for a moment, trying to recall such thoughts, and then replied, "No."

"There ya go, Guv."

"Aaaaahhh. Aaaa, yah."

"What's wrong, Charlie?"

"It's... I'd like it better if you just called me 'Charlie.'"

"But I do call you 'Charlie.'"

"Just then you called me 'Guv.'"

"Oh, I see. Sorry."

"It's not a bad thing. It just confuses me when people call me 'Guv' or 'Sir' or 'Mr Evans' or 'Charles' or 'Friend' or 'Matey.' It's like when there's somebody else around named Charlie. I'm not sure whether people are talking to me or someone else."

Ted was basically Charlie's bodyguard now, and the Lathams had given him that position when they gave Charlie the gold-and-emerald Model 100. At first Ted -- like many others -- had been alarmed by the idea of Charlie carrying around a watch worth well over a thousand quid. "This ain't exactly a posh part of town," he'd said to Albert. "I know, you and your fahver and brover carry watches like that, and some customers come and go with them, but... You know what I'm saying, Sir."

"Yes, I do know."

"He's different."

"Yes, he is. But, you know, we're different too. You, me, the whole firm. We want to change things."

"Yes, Sir, and you have changed things -- "

" -- We have changed things."

"Alright, thanks for saying so. We have changed things. But do we go around asking for trouble?"

"Yes, that's exactly what we do."

"Sir?"

"Anytime anybody wants to make a real change for the better for people who need help, they're told, 'You can't do that.' Every time someone shows any ambition to rise above what is supposed his 'station' in life, he or she is told, 'You can't do that. You'll fail. Well sod that. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes, Sir," Ted had answered, and he felt the glow in his chest he had often gotten from working for the Lathams, "you've shown it to me before, but fank you for reminding me: you mean that if you actually want to change fings, as opposed to merely sitting around wif a bunch of pooves talking about changing fings, you're going to have to upset some people." It wasn't the extremely high wages he and all the other Latham employees got which gave Ted this periodical warm feeling -- it was the arrogant determination to change the world which was behind those wage rates and many other things they did. It had occurred to Ted then that the wages were an example of things which people said couldn't be done. No doubt people told the Lathams that they couldn't pay their people so much, that they would go broke and that it would spread anarchy and chaos and crime and disease and so forth, and, well, that it was simply impossible. It was the way that the Lathams, some more than others, Albert particularly, whenever people told them, "You can't change the world," as all of us are constantly told, said, "Sod that, watch me, I'm changing it."

Back on the bridge, Charlie said, "You 'read' them. That's what it's called, isn't it? People 'read' other people. That's how you knew they wanted to take my watch. I can't read people. I'm not good at it at all."

"That's okay, Charlie. We all have strong points and weak points. Your strong points are very strong."

"Yes, I'm becoming well-known for watch repair. And for 'reading' animals. I do that unusually well."

Because Of Mistakes! pt 15

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At about 10:05 on the same Monday morning, about the same time that Latham had a panic attack leading to his confessions to Brown, Chief Superintendent Martin rose from behind his desk and shut the door to his office, because Inspector Raymond had begun to shout most indiscreetly. As he settled back into his chair, Raymond had not interrupted or slowed down his screed: " -- because how do I know you're really with us on the Left? Because you say you are. That's all I've got to go on. How do I know that Smith had to be dealt with that way, for the greater good, for the sake of things I believe in? Again, your say-so is all I have."

"Raymond! Do please try to calm down. You ought to take a leave of absence, for the sake of those very same things you and I believe in. At least you finally stopped wearing Smith's watch on that great bloody platinum chain -- yes, I noticed that, of course I did, do you think others didn't?"

"One other person did, at least. He took it off me. Someone I know is my friend." At last Raymond had stopped shouting. Through the glass walls of his office Martin saw entirely too many policemen looking up from their desks in their direction.

"Good," he said to Raymond. "Be grateful you've got friends. Think of your friends, and how your behavior and appearance can affect their safety, and what they try so hard to do."

"You might want to be just a bit careful lecturing me about my friends' safety, Sir. You going to have me dealt with if I'm too troublesome, like you had Smith dealt with? Or maybe finally I'll just decide that I need to deal with you before you deal with me."

"Oh please don't be melodramatic! A bit ironic, while we're at it, you lecturing me right now about being careful. Do try to calm down and think for a moment, Raymond. My word is in fact not all that you have about Smith, you also have someone rather widely known as a Leftist, known not previously to have been in the pocket of the reaction, suddenly sporting suits costing a month of his salary apiece, and that expensive watch on the end of that bloody great platinum chain. In Smith's case, in fact, you have my word, plus his extremely erratic behavior."

"But about you, all I have is your word. You could well be a triple-agent passing yourself off as a double-agent, giving just enough help to me and others like me to keep the flow of information going the other way. Well, I'm tired of it. I want to be given more information about your network, I want to be reassured that the man I've been working for is who he says he is. Yes, I suppose the reasonable thing to do would be to take some sick leave, go to the country for a week or two, maybe to a spa, have you tell everyone I'd just needed a break, then come back and as if all I'd needed was a rest. Well sorry, but I just don't feel like being so reasonable. I think I've earned the right to make some demands. For all I know about you, you might be neither a double- nor a triple-agent, but an independent, pretending to be on everyone's side but really on no-one's side, merrily lying to everyone you meet and plundering everyone you can. Your great big house and your piles of cash are real, whether you swindled the reaction of them or not."

"Yes they are. I also have to constantly pretend to flatter and serve people I despise. I'm quite aware that almost everyone thinks I'm a corrupt lackey for them. I know that any day, I could be arrested, if the state suddenly decides to punish corrupt police officers, or I could be blown to bits by a bomb thrown by someone because he shares my ideals -- assuming I actually haven't been lying through my teeth to you for years. You ever consider things like that?"

"I have, I have," Raymond mumbled.

"Alright then. You've earned the right to be unreasonable. You've certainly earned the right to know more." Martin picked up the phone and told the operater, "House of Commons, terminal twelve... Yes, hello, it's Martin... Yes yes, Chief Superintendant Martin, please get me Griggs... Well then you'll just have to interrupt him. This is urgent... " As he apparently waited for someone named Griggs to come to the phone, Martin took a piece of paper and wrote on it. "Griggs. Put everything you've got on file 12 into a packet and bring it to my station... Well then you'll have to reschedule your meeting, and extend to everyone my sincere apologies for disrupting their schedules. Get it all into one package, write '12' on the package, and nothing else, bring it to my station, hand it to the sergeant at the front desk, tell him it's for me, and leave. Don't say anything about the package, don't say your name or where you work, don't engage in small talk if you happen to know the sergeant personally, don't hang about at all, just say the packet's for me and get out of there. Oh, and forget you ever knew anything about something called file 12. Thanks very much, Griggs." Martin hung up and handed Raymond the piece of paper he'd been writing on. There were several names on it, including the names of two Labour MP's. "Tell all of these people that I've widened your circle of confidential contacts. If they act like they don't know what you're talking about, it means you're visiting them before I've had a chance to tell them you were coming, in which case just have them telephone me. Now, file 12: that's a dossier on Smith. Plenty of things to investigate, and figure out how accurate I was when I talked to you about him. I am sorry, you know. It's a bloody awful thing, killing a friend."

"Killing anybody," Raymond said.

"You ever kill anyone in the Army?"

"I don't know if I did or not," Raymond said. "In a couple of different battles a bunch of us shot away at each other from hundreds of yards apart. I fired my rifle into the middle of some clouds of smoke, mostly. No idea whether I hit anyone or not. Never was in any hand-to-hand fighting."

Because Of Mistakes! pt 14

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"I'm not. Often he can fix a watch with his bare hands. He's got such control of his fingertips that he can unscrew a tiny screw with his index finger, and screw it back in with his finger when he's done. When a screw was too tight to use his hands, he used the blade of a folding pocket-knife. Besides that knife, he kept a pair of tweezers in his workspace in his father's pub, and I believe that may've been all of the tools he was using before we met. We've given him proper loupes and tools and lamps he can use at home now, in addition to his work desk at the plant. And of course having decent tools has just fired him off like a rocket, in terms of what he can do, and how fast."

"So does he have any interesting designs for new watches?" Brown asked.

"Um, no. We were very hopeful about that at first, but the idea of designing something new doesn't seem to interest him at all. He wants to fix things. He sees a watch and as if he immediately imagines a Platonic ideal of the perfect version of that watch, and he wants the watch to be as close to that imaginary perfection as it can be. And that's how he expresses it, too: as approaching perfection. He's quite clear that he doesn't consider any existing thing to be perfect, and that everything is just a matter of trying to come close to perfection. If it's close enough to perfection it gives him pleasure. If it's not it can distress him quite a bit. And we're not just talking about watches here, he wants to fix everything he possibly can: he'll move a fork a tenth of an inch to make a table place-setting more symmetrical. He'll insist on walking a certain route because it'll shave ten paces off of a half-mile walk. He'll complain that there are too few pigeons sitting on a statue to make a pleasing arrangement. He'll notice if an animal is injured. He's very concerned about animals. He might see that a pigeon has a sore foot, and he can't do anything about that, and it upsets him greatly. He'll see that a shoe on a horse pulling a hansom cab is loose, or too thick or too thin, and he'll try to tell the driver about it. Some drivers actually listen to him about such things, because, ...Hmm. Well, because they've learned that he's always right. He's simply a genius."

"That's extraordinary," Brown said. "I'd only heard about the watch repair, I hadn't realized his talents extended to those other things. But I gather that he's also, oh... Forgive me..."

"Yes, in addition to his unusual abilities he also has unusual weaknesses. He doesn't understand people very well. He can be quite awkward socially. And so at first many people assume that he's quite simpleminded, when in fact the opposite is the case. Let me put it this way: he's very sharply focused on some things, such as watch repair, while he has great difficulty focusing on some other things which most people understand, and take for granted that others will understand them too. For example, if a group of people are walking and conversing, it will be clear to most people that whatever it is they're talking about is likely to be much more important than whether the route they take to their destination gets them there a few seconds sooner. Crowds generally are difficult for him. He doesn't seem to lie, as far as I can tell, nor do I think he can tell when others are lying. Not right away. Sometimes he'll figure out after the fact that things which have been said don't all add up. That can sometimes distress him quite a bit. In some respects he's innocent in the extreme."

"You said that crowds generally are difficult for him. Generally, but not always?"

"That's right, not always. Depends very much on the particular crowd," Latham said. "What are you getting at?"

"Well. He's obviously an extraordinary man. I thought it might be nice to introduce him to society."

"You want to show him off as a freak at one of your parties." Latham knew this wasn't quite accurate and he blushed as soon as he'd said it.

"Latham! What do you take me for?" Latham had begun to breathe heavily and to become dizzy. He felt the need to rock and forth or moan, to do something to soothe himself. Something or other which he always did after he had gone off by himself and hidden. He felt that whenever the conversation was about Charlie, people perceived that he was unusual like Charlie, although they never admitted this to Latham's face. He imagined them laughing at him and Charlie behind his back. He was fairly sure that it didn't happen quite as often as he imagined, that these anxieties were irrational. But it was hard to control them, and the fear that he would be exposed as a lunatic, and sent to some torture-chamber of an asylum, never to be released. This fear of awful asylums was even more irrational than the concern that people could see that he shared Charlie's characteristics, and that they regarded both of them as imbeciles, but it was hard to banish the fear even as he recognized it as irrational. Latham was upset with himself for confiding in Inspector Raymond about autism. Raymond simply didn't understand. He'd been the wrong one to confide in. Or perhaps, on the other hand, it was the secrecy which had been ill-advised all along, and he ought to have been perfectly open about his condition all along, never made the slightest attempt to conceal the ways in which he was unusual. Various scenarios of alternate pasts, if he had done or not done this or that, and imaginings of various possible consequences for each choice he might have made differently, began to race faster and faster through his mind, and the need to get away, to rock, to clutch his head and wring his hands and moan, became ever more desperate. Brown was saying, "Latham! My God, what's wrong? Do you need some water, some brandy? Do you need a doctor?" Obviously, Brown was a much better one to confide in than Raymond. But he had to open up generally. Let people think what they would. As with anything, the more intelligent would understand and the stupid ones would draw stupid conclusions. No one was going to put him into an asylum. Get it out, get it out. Tell the truth at last.

"Water," he said to Brown. "Water, please." Brown went running out of the office and soon was back with a glass of water. In the meantime Latham had begun to rock and moan and wring his hands, and this time when he was no longer alone he didn't attempt to hide these behaviors. He took the glass from Brown, drank down half of it at a gulp. It was icy and good. He put the glass down on Brown's desk, Brown raised a hand as if to lay it comfortingly on his shoulder, he gestured for Brown to please keep his distance, Brown understood the gesture and and stayed back. Latham took another gulp of water and nodded toward Brown's desk. Again, Brown understood the wordless request, and he went back and sat behind his desk again.

And then Latham told him, in detail, about how he shared many of Charlie's characteristics, with the major differences that neither his genius nor his social awkwardness was as pronounced as Charlie's, and that since early childhood, sensing much better than Charlie did how some people reacted to others who were different, he was in the deeply-ingrained habit of hiding the ways in which he was atypical. About the effort it took him to attempt to blend in. How things like the rocking and moaning and hand-wringing, which he usually did in secret, helped calm him down when his mind began to race uncomfortably. Clutching his head also, and striking the tendons below his knees and under his feet to set off his reflexes, how these and other things also helped. Things like a drink or two, for instance, or the company of some pretty girl or other with whom he managed to get along. How he had instantly known that he had many of these things in common with Charlie, the moment he'd first seen Charlie in agony, being held down by two constables on a crowded Waterloo station platform while an inexpert doctor methodically made things worse. About his anxieties about being confined in an asylum, and how he realized that those fears were irrational. Each big secret he gave up to Brown was like a heavy stone lifted off of his chest. He could breathe easily again. "I know you would never want to show anyone off as a freak," he said the Brown, "I know you're not like that at all. I lashed out because I was panicking. I'm sorry."

"My dear fellow," Brown said. "My dear Albert."

"I really prefer being called Latham. Sorry."

"Not a problem at all, Latham. Well, I must honestly say, as far as I was ever able to tell, you always fit in quite convincingly. Only thing a bit unusual about you has been how little eye contact you make. Just a split-second here and there to sort of ground things, and otherwise you're staring off somewhere. But even that isn't terribly unusual. I had no idea at all. My god, the strain it must have cost you."

"So, yes, by all means, let's let you have a party and introduce Charlie to some nice sensible people. You're quite right, it's time to introduce him to the wider world. What sort of event did you have in mind?"

"I was thinking of my uncle's place, actually. Does Charlie like the countryside?"

"I've no idea. I'll ask. And of course you've got to invite Charlie's Dad as well. I'm not sure how often he leaves the pub to someone else, or for how long."