Some watches mark the hours and seconds, others make up for lost time
The new May issue of Monocle features our first-ever cover dedicated to watches. I am not sure why it has taken us 20 years but some things take time – slow, mechanical time.
Inside the issue – and on the cover – there’s a very cute shoot of handsome hounds being stroked by elegant watch-strapped hands. We’ve called the story “Watch Dogs” and it’s superb. It’s all the idea of our creative director, Richard Spencer Powell, and it’s so good that now he’s kind of screwed. Where, you wonder, can he go after nice pooches and glorious timepieces all shot by Jess Bonham, plus a very amusing headline? All week he has been suggesting that we should photograph sunglasses on cats and call the story “Cats’ Eyes”. But it was when he proffered that we do “hamsters in hats” that I told him to have the afternoon off.
Also in the issue is an idea of mine. I know, I still have them. It’s a simple story in which writers, designers, chefs, diplomats and divers tell the tale behind a watch that they wear. Creative Yorgo Tloupas was commissioned by the Greek prime minister to design the special edition Swatch that he sometimes sports (he has a lot of watches). Photographer Christopher Anderson bought his Omega Speedmaster because he was perhaps a little jealous of the one that his assistant had – but in the decades since it has become part of his work and also a constant reminder about the value of time.
I have two nice watches. I will tell you about the first one. My parents had me late in life: my dad was hitting 50, my mum in her mid-forties. They had already raised a large family when I came along. This was not what they had planned. But they rolled with it. Yet, even as a child I could do the maths – unless they lived well into their eighties, I would be parentless in my thirties. I always liked my parents; there was no teenage tension with them. We made the most of things. But as the child predicted, in my thirties my dad died. My mum stayed until I was 44.
The will was modest but there was a sum of money and rather than take a chip out of the mortgage, I decided to buy a watch as a way of keeping them both close, of acknowledging the passing of time. Today the click of the metal bracelet on my wrist sets me up for the day. The watch’s weight, its sauntering second hand, the way the green dial winks and glints as it catches candlelight, all bind me to a time and a place and to two people who set me on a pretty good path (even if they did head off a bit too soon).
Yet the other good thing about a watch is that it also knows how to let you get on with your day. It’s not a flashing digital display demanding your attention or the awful death march of time that emanates from a ticking antique clock. It’s just there when you need it, marking the seconds, counting the hours and quietly adding meaning to your day.
To read more from Andrew Tuck, click here.
