Tightly Wound

I used to work in a watch and clock boutique many years ago. It was the latter half of the '80s and we sold only European watches and clocks. Primarily Swiss, naturally. Right up to beautiful gold things with diamonds and other precious gems, which were primarily bought by people living the Greed Is Good new money lifestyle of the '80s. Frequently with more money than taste. I would see these pieces of precision workmanship walk out the door, knowing that I could have just as easily hung the brandname and some diamonds around their wrist and they'd have been just as happy.

Come the crash of the early '90s I'll bet there was some fabulous secondhand bargains to be had.

Anyhoo. Lesson number 1 with beautiful manual watches and clocks, don't wind too tightly. Ease off when things start to get too firm. Stop before everything gets torn out of its delicate moorings. Before the carefully calibrated springs and sprockets get torn asunder, or stretched to where they'll never be the same.

Metaphor, anyone? Ay dios mio. It's month end here at work today, the person I'm supposedly job sharing with at the moment (who has been made redundant and leaves next week) didn't show for work at all this week and so I'm doing her work and mine. I slept badly last night because it was such a warm night.

I have a ton of work to do by the 5pm deadline, but I'm taking 15 minutes to write this, do a tiny bit or web surfing and hopefully stop a few turns short of being over wound.