Welcome back Flik and Flak!

When I was about 7 years old (in my mind anything that happened in my childhood was when I was about 7 - must have been a terribly eventful year) I was given a watch for my birthday. It was very exciting, I'd had some watches before, but usually hand-me-downs or freebies from the cereal box (seriously, I only recently took the lego watch to the op shop). But this was my very own, with a pretty purple strap, handy time-telling numbers around the edge, with a big hand and a little hand, and pretty little people to help me tell the time. I can't remember wearing it, but I'm pretty sure I would have.

In my teenage years I was given a new watch, a practical and colourful swatch. I wore that until it broke in a PE class collision, then replaced it several times using the Swatch replacement policy for all it was worth. Finally they said 'stop breaking your watches in the same way that no one else seems to manage' and gave me a super basic watch which then gunked up and stopped. So I went back to the FlikFlak 'until I got round to buying a new watch'. It had always come out of the drawer for the beach or kayaking or other outdoorsy things - metal case, water resistant, solid buckle, perfect for those pursuits, but this time it was out for everyday wear too.

I wore it a lot, worried the watch man when I mentioned while getting a new battery that it was going kayaking 'oh dear, when they say water resistant, that's not really what they mean...', got a new strap after the original shredded after a mere 15 years of use, and still it kept going. I half-heartedly thought about getting something new, more grown-up, but then this one got the vintage/funky/kid's stuff factor that seems popular at the moment, and it was doing its job perfectly well.

Then one day early January 2012 I went to put on my watch, and couldn't find it. I'd been cleaning, it was typical that I couldn't find anything after that, but why did the lost item have to be my watch? I looked in bags, pockets, couches, bins, everywhere I could think of. I asked people, rang the gym, and was generally just a little despondent about my loss. So last week I went looking for a new watch, found one and asked them to hold it until I got paid. It's a metal shiny thing, a bit more adult than a FlikFlak, and I intended on going in to buy it tomorrow.

Today I went to the gym. I rummaged around in my bag for lip balm, and my hand felt something metal and familiar. I pulled it out. THERE WAS MY WATCH!!!!!! I'd completely emptied this bag, shaken everything around, and decided it definitely wasn't in there but today I was proven a liar. My gym buddy reckons it must be Borrowers, my mum thinks I've got secret pockets, all I know is that I've got my watch back, and it's made my fairly uneventful day happy indeed.

I'll still go in and make a final decision on the other watch tomorrow - it wouldn't hurt to have a nicer watch, but I'm so happy that 18 years of faithful service haven't ended with an ignominious disappearance, that one day I'll be able to retire this watch with the gratitude it deserves.


In other news, Mondays are my day off and it's lovely. This year I'll have something worky on every day except Mondays, so they're going to be my favourite day of the week I suspect. I spent all morning reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and enjoying it a lot, it's a perfect mixture of historical groundwork and interesting novel. Now I'm going to reward (and undo) my mildly exerting work at the gym with chicken kiev for dinner. Of course that's how it works, isn't it?