On Sunday I realised, to my embarassment, that my watch hasn't been telling the correct date since the turn of the month. (Hope you all changed your calendars.) After fiddling with the dratted thing for five minutes, I finally decided to look in the manual for guidance. Surprise! The manual didn't tell me anything remotely useful, except for one thing. I'll tell you that later. It explains why the manual couldn't tell me anything. But, for now, I shall tell you about the problem.
My watch is, on the whole, a good one. It's a Sekonda Men's Multi-Dial Watch, which I bought for twenty-five quid from Argos. A budget watch, but a good one at that. Plus it looks more expensive than it is.
Here it is for you.
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| The Sekonda Men's Multi Dial Watch. |
The date dial constitutes a large part of the problem. The dial shows thirty-one days in each month and, as anyone could tell you, there are not always thirty-one days in a month. This is not where the problem arises.
The actual problem lies with the day dial, except that there's not a problem with the day dial. Bear with me, people. There is nothing wrong with the day dial. There is also nothing particularly wrong with the date dial, assuming you're alright with twisting the adjustor on the side for a while every month. The problem is that both of these things have been placed on the same model of watch, while both having the same control.
You will notice when you look at the watch pictured above that there is a solitary knob on the side with which to adjust the time. The idea is that you can use just one thing to control what your watch says. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.
You can adjust the time fine, it's when you come to the days and the date that it gets frustratingly complex and nigh-on impossible to fix anything.
Let's say it's the end of September, ie the thirtieth. It's a Tuesday (And I know it wasn't this year. I just don't care.). Now, the next day, you wake up, look at your watch and realise with a sigh that it reads the thirty-first of whatever month it is. So you prime the thing and turn the dial forwards one day and tick - the date dial's set. But wait! the day dial has leapt forwards with it. So, despite it being a Wednesday, your watch declares it to be Thursday.
What's even more annoying is that it's on a twenty-four hour turnover. Every day it changes. But the watch is analogue, so doesn't show whether it's AM or PM. Which means that you're scuppered if you accidentally go twelve hours ahead.
Therefore, you now have a watch that can either tell the right date or the right day, unless you wish to turn the dial heavens-knows-how-many times to get it to the right date, time and day. I can tell you now, you'd have to twist it a fair number of times. And no, I won't work it out for you. I've got better things to do, believe it or not.
So, back to the story. I realised, in the morning, that my watch was a day behind the date but fine in days of the week terms. Get me?
The manual said nothing. In fact, it actually didn't say a thing about my watch in the entire manual. It became clear to me that Sekonda decided to be lazy and not publish a manual for each model of watch they made, but instead bung the information from several other models into one pocket-sized slip of paper and hope that no-one would ever need it. Idiots. They had instructions in that thing for literally every other watch that they could possibly have made in the Men's Watch series, but left out the crucial instructions for mine. Is this some mad marketing scheme? Collect the other watches in this series and you'll get the manual for the first one you bought with another, different model? No thanks.
Thoroughly depressed at the thoughtlessness of Sekonda and infuriated by the obvious design flaw in my watch, I looked back at my watch to see if it had fixed itself.
Miraculously, it had. The date was now reading correctly, with the right date and day and everything. So in true Professor fashion, I screwed it up.
I decided to show it to a friend, so twiddled the knob and moved the hands past twelve o'clock. To my amazement, the other dials shifted forwards one day respectively. I turned the dial the other way, but it wouldn't go backwards. The stupid creature would only move forwards.
"What is wrong with this crazy contraption of a clock?" I cried exasperatedly.
The friend eyed me with careful consideration and, with utter sincerity, she remarked:
"Well, it's been on your arm. What do you expect?"
That was the hammer that smashed my sanity.
* * *
I did eventually fix the dratted thing, with difficulty. I basically stopped the watch and waited until the next day and then restarted it. Now it only tells the right date for twelve hours each day, and I can guess why. It's twelve hours out of sync with the world.
All this trouble because Sekonda made the date dial have a twenty-four hour turnover for an analogue clock. It just had to get stuck in the wrong half of the day, didn't it? Just my luck.
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is why I no longer have a great love of wristwatches with date and day dials.
This is an irate Professor warning Sekonda that they're going to be receiving a very angry, detailed letter expressing my lack of love for their product. Do you think they'll refund me my time?
Professor Pisces, signing out.
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