So, it’s no secret that I adore my little Moskva watch. 1950’s tech that keeps accurate enough time for me, and doesn’t use any batteries; which given the infrequency of my use of it, it’s nice to not be using batteries because my old watches I’d pull them out and they’d invariably be dead.
I’d had a different-but-related problem with my nurse’s watches. They always died at inopportune moments. I’d wear one for ages, it’d die, then it’d take me months to get a new battery (because my own department has clocks everywhere, and on the ultra rare occasions I need one where there isn’t a clock, my phone has a timer on it).
So I decided to see if I could pick up a mechanical nurses’s watch, except.. it turns out that they’re not that common anymore. I imagine no-one wants to pay for the sort of cost that an actual mechanical watch costs. Eventually I found one on e-bay which was inscribed, but otherwise a nice example.
My cunning plan, such as it was, was to steal the strap that’s on the watch I bought when I got a job as a healthcare assistant. Unfortunately, it’s gone walkies and I can’t work out where it is*. Second plan: get a cheap-ass watch, steal the pendantyfobbystrappy bit from it and replace the one on the watch I’d just bought. Clever, non?
Non. It turned out the cheap-ass watch had a interference fit pin holding the strap on, rather a proper watch strap spring thingie (who’s name escapes me).
So then I broke out my dad’s pin-vice and a miniature drill (thankfully there was an unbroken one in there, my dad often bought multiples because he, and I, would frequently break them).
Which kinda made me feel nostalgic.
Thankfully, the new strap is made of cheesemetal, or something similar… As you’d expect from a watch that was as dreadfully cheap as the one that I’d bought. But, pin-vice and drilling and a new pin and lo I have a non-inscribed watch that keeps good time and should, with luck, last me as long as I continue to nurse***.
*Probably it’s absconded on some drinking binge with the nut-runners I spent half of today looking for**.
** That may be a slight exaggeration.
*** Unless I put it through the laundry.
