Time is funny stuff.
I have been obsessed by it, and have been completely unfussed by it at various different stages of of my life.
Back when I was working in public transport, it was an essential part of my job to be aware of the exact time. The way that job worked, you were supposed to run the tram exactly on time (to the nearest 60 seconds) but that was, of course, impossible given that we had to deal with varying passenger loads and motor traffic. With no way to pass or be passed by the other trams on the same route, if you dropped more than a minute or two behind schedule, you very quickly got into a spiral of being late, and thus getting more passengers, which meant you were spending longer loading and unloading, which meant you got later still, which meant you were now getting
twice as many passengers as you were supposed to, and so on.
Conversely, run a few minitues early and you had a really easy trip, and could pick up still more time. On the down (outbound) that could translate into as much as 20 or 25 minutes to sit at the terminus reading the paper, having a coffee, whatever you liked, while you waited for your scheduled return departure time. Mind you, run
too early and you could get in trouble from the management. Net result is that you soon became obsessed by time. You might not be
on time (and in fact 90% of the time you were either early or late) but you always knew
exactly how early or late you were. Ask a trammie the time and he won't say "5:32" or "a quarter past seven". Nope: he just says "36" or "14", meaning so many minutes past the hour. The hour itself is not stated because it is unimportant, nobody cares if it's 4:36 or 5:36, they are only interested in the fact that at "36" they are supposed to be at Balaclave Junction and they have only made it as far as Darling Road.
It was a strange job.
In consequence of that job, I ended up becoming very aware of time, and like JTR, used to make sure that my watch was always within a couple of seconds of the exact moment. Needless to say, the only time you'd ever see me take my watch off was if I was swimming or in the shower. I even used to leave it on in bed.
Then, a few years later I started a different job, at an explosives factory making Gelignite, Dynamite, and Powergel (a tradename for their ammonium nitrate based explosives). Working with this stuff, it was imperative that you
not wear a watch. Or, for that matter, rings, metal buttons, or anything else that might create a spark. Indeed, if someone discovered you at work with a watch on, or a box of matches in your pocket, or anything else of that nature, you would be sacked on the spot and forgo all entitlements (such as wages owing). And fair enough too! I certainly didn't want anyone blowing me up!
As is the case with all explosive facilities, it was very spread out; lots of little buildings in a vast sea of grass on the Keilor plains, each one surrounded by a blast wall designed to make sure that the force of any explosion would be straight up, not outwards where it might set off one of the other buildings. I guess there were 30 or 40 little huts and blast walls on the site, and the site itself was huge, maybe a mile or two in each direction. There were strict, scientifically calculated limits to the amount of explosive you were allowed to have at any particular location, which everyone cheerfully ignored most of the time. There was a specially designed little tractor thing, sort of like an overgrown golf-cart, which the foreman used to drive around, towing a little train of half-ton trailers so as to be able to move the explosives from one building to the next. Once they had got to know you, you might be trusted with the job of doing that yourself while he took a break or attended to some other task for a while - this was much-prized privelage, and a good deal more pleasant than most of the other jobs like packing the sticks of explosive into boxes, or stapling the boxes shut, or stacking them onto the little trailers, or (worst of all) the horrible hot, sweaty, sticky task of fishing the sticks of Powergel out of the water bath they went into to cool them down after they came out of the oversized sausage machinet that made them. Eventually, at the last hut, the explosives would wind up neatly stacked in heavy cardboard boxes and now and then another forman would come along driving a tiny narrow-gauge train, and cart them away to be sent off to the mining company (or whoever had ordered them).
So, when you started the job, you were issued with the following: pair of leather boots (one), pair of rubber boots (one), overalls (two), safety glasses (two), earmuffs (one), and bicycle (one). Yes: they gave you a bicycle because otherwise by the time you got to your little building, it would be nearly time to turn around and start walking back to have lunch! A strange job. We used to love those hot, humid summer days when there was a chance of thunder, because the moment you could see lightning or hear thunder, no matter how far away, you were required to finish the batch you were working on as quickly as possible, place all explosives under cover (that took maybe one minute or less), and make your way to a "place of safety" - i.e., the staff room near the main gate, where you would then while away the hours (on full pay, of course) playing cards and yakking with the other workers until the all-clear was announced. Then, with any luck, the management would decide that today's production was vital, and anyone who wanted to (which was most of us) could stay back for another couple of hours earning overtime rates. Do that twice in a fortnightly pay period and you would be taking home some serious money.
One night in 1957 (long before I worked there, of course - before I was born, in fact - a bolt of lightning hit the nitro-glycerine plant (one of the various little buildings) and set it off. The blast walls worked as designed and nothing else went off in sympathy, and being the middle of the night, no-one was there bar the nightwatchman at the front gate, so there were no injuries. But the factory was in Sunshine, and the blast was clearly heard over the noise of the thunderstorm as far away as Black Rock! (For non-Melbournians, that's perhaps 20 miles away.)
Err ... about the time thing. Naturally, the last thing you wanted was to get the sack because you forgot to take our watch off. (Well, actually that was the second-last thing you wanted - the last thing being, of course, to transport yourself and a dozen workmates to several nearby suburbs the quick way.) So, before too long, I got into the habit of not wearing a watch at all. I'd just leave it at home. There was a clock in the car, after all. And the habit stuck. To this day I still don't wear a watch. I own one, a ridiculously expensive Longines which I remember to put on two or three times a year and never remember to look at - mostly these are the same times that I put on that other horrid symbol of modern stress and city living, a necktie - in other words, weddings, funerals, and precious little else.
I don't miss it in the slightest. There is a clock on the wall here at home (which runs daylight saving time -
real time - 52 weeks a year (in winter, I just remember that everyone else in the country is a hour slow), a computer at the office which I set to an atomic clock whenever it gets more than a few seconds out, and Kristi. Kristi wears a watch most days, so I just ask her if it's nearly lunchtime yet. The only occassions on which this no-watch habit becomes a trifle difficult is if it is a nice day and we decide to "play trains" for lunch - which is our term for strolling up to the local milk bar for a pie or a sandwich and taking it to sit under a tree in the vacant land near the Ballarat - Melbourne railway line. Sometimes a magpie visits us. With no watch and no other way to tell the time, we just have to guess when the hour has elapsed. But we seem to be able to get within five minutes or so, ten at the outside, and that is near enough.
