In Memorandum

Today saw the last day of use of my faithful, trusty, eventually worn out watch. It has been on its last legs for the last few months, and I have decided to take it off the life support that is super-glue. It has had its last wearing.

The watch has been through the good and the bad times, the happy and the sad, the comic and the not so comic. One memory I have of it was on its last repairing, where I superglued both my thumbs to the watch, much to the amusement of Steve and Amanda.

I have decided to move on, and buy a new watch.

This might seem odd for a post, but the breaking of the watch has left me reflecting on life. That watch has been with through every major exam I have sat from GCSE onwards, and it has successfully woken me up at 6.42 (during school years) and 7.00 (at Uni).

Time marches on (as the watch has unfortunately found out), and I am nearly the grand old age of 20! Wow! What have I achieved in 20 years? Not a lot admittedly, but I think surviving the first 20 years of my life is quite an achievement. Anywhoo, enough with the morbid stuff.

In 20 years of life, how many rainforests have I destroyed in using paper for revision? How many Mars bars have I eaten? And how many times have I been disappointed when watching the might Aston Villa? (far too many!).

My watch has been a staple in my life, a constant, as it fulfils my obsession with time (I won’t quote any Larkin or Keats here, much to the relief of my readers!). Whilst I will not be as helpless as throwing a hamster off the Titanic, I will be a little lost without it for a time.

However, I will paste one of my favourite poems, ‘The Sunlight on the Garden,’ by Louis MacNeice. Whilst it is not about watches, it is about the passing of time, and looks for a beauty in loss.

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

It has been a fine servant, and hence I dedicate this post.