Above my paygrade – part two

In Wordsworth’s manifesto of the English Romantic movement, there is a rejection of the high flown language that passed for poetry prior to 1800. The emphasis is on plainness of speech, and finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, of finding a richness of spirit and meaning in the very poorest of places. And when we view an object or a scene it is not simply the contemporary reality we see, more the multiple layers of its existence in time, as granted by imagination and history.

Thus an old watch becomes more than a timepiece, not so much the sum of the time it tells as the times it has known. There’s also something truly beautiful about mechanical watch mechanisms. They sum up all that is best in mankind, in the thousand minds and the hands of the past that came together to create such delicate, wondrous devices.

So when I find one that’s ailing and abandoned, I take a pleasure in seeing if I can get it going again, in helping it on its way. There is no purpose in this, other than a kind of defiance, and few people are appreciative of it anyway. After all, why not simply buy a new watch? Well, that may be the best policy if all you’re concerned about is telling the time,  but there is something more in restoring life to a machine created by past hands and minds. We pay homage to it and to something in ourselves. For a certain type of person – me – there is something of the soul-life in it, something Romantic.

This Accurist I’m working on is a quality piece, and comes apart nicely, easily. I’m not used to seeing gold hallmarks on a watch. They confirm the date of manufacture, while various arcane service marks tell me it’s seen some work, back in the days when watchmakers were numerous and not as expensive.

So, what’s up with it? Well, the balance won’t swing, but a few puffs from the blower brush seem to wake it up and it runs, hesitantly at first, settling down a little slow and there are significant variations in all the positions – face up, face down, crown left, crown right. Either the balance is worn or it just needs cleaning. We’ll stay positive and assume cleaning will do the trick.

I’m not going to disturb the whole mechanism, so it’s just a light strip and clean the balance. I do the pivot holes of the escapement train with a toothpick dipped in white spirit. Watchmakers will grind their teeth at the thought, but they had their chance and turned their noses at it. So,… my turn, my methods.

Then it’s oiling, and the best bit for me, a steady hand and a dropper finer than a pin. It’s just the pocket-jewel atop the balance that’s the usual challenge, trying to get the dropper through those balance coils without touching them. I do smear oil on the coils a few times, so clean it off by immersion in white spirit – the Duncan Swirl method – try again, get there finally. Then I tease it all back together and it runs – much better – much less variation in the positions. It’s still a little slow, so I leave it a day to let the new oil settle in, pick it up again tomorrow. Pleasure postponed is always worth waiting for.

Tomorrow, nudge the regulator arm, let it rest, count the beats. An error of fifteen seconds a day is the best we can hope for here, but I’m happy with a minute on a piece this old. It runs well. The beat is good, nice and flat on the trace. Keeps time. We clean the case up a bit, give it its old sparkle back. That foxing on the dial looks just right, I think, and the guy’s happy, restored to his past, to his place in time. And that he’s happy makes me happy.

Sure, it’s a good piece, and worth it. Plus, we needed each other. It’s certainly picked me up and dusted me down after a bit of a kicking and I’ve saved it from oblivion, lying useless and forgotten in a keepsake drawer. Small victories are important when you’re coming out of a dark place. Accurist, eh? They put their name on some good watches in their time.

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Above my paygrade – part one

It’s above my pay-grade really, this watch, but without me it’s dead. I know its history, and that doesn’t help. Purchased as a twenty first gift by a doting aunt in 1958, it’s seen a man through all the milestones of a long life. But you know how it goes with these old mechanical timepieces? You leave them be if they’re running okay – and it’s been running okay for sixty years – and then they stop.

It could be nothing. A bit of dirt on the escapement. If so, cleaning and oiling will sort it out. The problem is I’m just a tinkerer, some professional skill with machines, but not at this scale. I’ve done watches before, yes, made a hobby of it, so I’m not exactly clueless, but they’re mostly worthless pieces I’ve worked on. The case of this piece is gold, so I’m not expecting a cheap movement inside of it, and I’m right. Hiding, all shy under the balance wheel, the Loupe reveals the distinctive mark of a Swiss ETA.

There are still watchmakers around of course, but they’d want a hundred quid before they’d look at it, those who would even deign to touch it in the first place. I mean an Accurist is a dcent watch, but isn’t exactly an Omega is it?

So the guy was disappointed, hesitated to part with that much money, even though he still clearly valued the watch, would sooner I chanced it, he said, and no blame if I killed it. I mean, after all,… it’s dead already isn’t it?

I enjoy stripping and cleaning old watches, especially the fine oiling and the regulating. It’s a meditation of sorts – the tools, the focus, the dexterity, like Tai Chi in miniature. I’ve years of political stuff to get out my system now after a stunning defeat in the elections, one I don’t see ever being turned around in my lifetime, so I’m turning back to my hobbies for deliverance.

I’ve deleted the news apps from my phone, no longer listen to the BBC. I’ll read a book at lunchtimes at work instead of poring over current affairs online like usual. The new PM can declare nuclear war, the Labour party can appoint whatever bland centerist they like as a leader and I wouldn’t know or care. It’s an over-reaction to a profound disappointment of course, and I’ll get over it, but old watches like this fascinate me, they have character, and history, and this one is easing me back onto my feet.

Except,… I wish it didn’t have to be this particular one because it’s a fine piece and I’m feeling sullied at the moment, lacking confidence. It needs someone more competent.

But what the hell, here goes,…

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Joining the Dots

I chose Langcliffe for the start of the walk because the parking was free. Well, it was not exactly free; there is a donation box and I did donate, but the money I saved by not parking in Settle would pay for coffee later. This is austerity in personal terms, and rather petty I admit. Those truly struggling under austerity, and there are many now, would not have driven to the Dales in the first place because £20 worth of petrol goes a long way towards groceries.

It struck me recently we’ve been under the cosh of austerity since 2008. This tells me two things. One, it’s been a long time. And two, the ideology that’s driving it has either self evidently failed, or it’s driving us in another direction, that in fact it has not failed at all but succeeded in bringing about a state of political and social affairs that has basically reordered society into one that is less equal.

What this means in practical terms is penny pinching on a scale so grand our ears are filled daily with the sound of gears grinding as our machine runs down. There is a shrinking back to the Gradgrind-glory years of the Victorian era, an age when we sent little orphan boys up chimneys and down the mines to work the narrow seams, because they were cheap and expendable. We did not value life. We are being taught again only to value our own, that a person drowned in the Med is not a person, but something less than that.

Anyway, Langcliffe. This is a walk I’ve done before, many times: Catrigg force, the Attermire Scars and the Warrendale Knots. I wrote about it here. My return was on account of a free day and insufficient time to plan anything new. But with a familiar route, freed from the responsibility of navigation, the mind can turn to other things. The weather was promising, the morning peeling open after overnight rains to a mixture of sunshine and humidity.

Someone tried to get my email logins by phishing. I was sufficiently webwise not to succumb. Meanwhile the BBC tells me of a woman who was targeted by phone scammers, tricked into thinking her bank account was under attack and so sought to transfer funds to safety. She lost it all to the scammers. This leaves a sour taste.

This and Austerity. But are the two things not the same?

2008.

A long time.

Hitler was defeated in five.

This economic crisis is taking longer.

Unless it is not a crisis,

But a change of paradigm.

 

Some have grown fat from austerity, but most have grown lean. Then some have sought to join the ranks of the fat by foul and ingenious means, by preying on the poor and the lean and the hungry, because like in Victorian times the poor are once more cheap and expendable, and easily vilified into a thing less than human. Into perhaps a scrounger? Nobody cares about the poor.

But the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales managed to work a little of its magic on my soul. At Catrigg though, I felt unwell, my vision whiting out as I descended the shady sylvan dell, after strong sunshine on the open moor above. I don’t know what this was about but I didn’t panic. Were I to have expired alone at Catrigg, I can think of no finer setting.

He was at peace, they said.

As it was I sat only a while with a sandwich and fruit and quiet thoughts as the water roared through the narrow slit. Then, feeling better, I carried on.

It’s possible something has happened this summer. Many feel the way I do; fearful; alarmed by an ideology that seems unshakable in its grip, and which has razed the familiar ground, so there is no path now for my children to follow. Instead, they must follow the directions of the suited man with his slick coiffure and oily smile, and take their place in the minimum wage economy, regardless of whether they have a university educations or not.

It may fizzle out in a few weeks time, this thing, or it may lead on to a kind of rebellion. Not just here, but across the West and wherever the suited man sits fat. Men are appearing, dishevelled, articulate. Yesterday’s men, the suits tell us, but then they would. The dishevelled men fill assembly halls and football stadiums. They speak a language that is nostalgic to the old, yet new to the young. It will collapse of course, but not before it brings about a change in the other direction – I hope.

The walk is more up and down than I remember, more of a pull on the leg muscles, though I comfort myself this is probably on account of the stretching I did at Kung Fu the night before. In April you will find the early Purple Orchid sprouting in profusion along the base of the Attermire Scars. Today I found the delicate Hare bell, and other blooms so small one would need a glass to see them properly.

It was cold on the tops, a cold wind icifying the sweat on my back whenever I stopped, so I kept moving, munching a Kit-kat as I went. Dark chocolate and bright white limestone. The world could be going to hell in a handcart, quite possibly is so far as I can tell, but so long as I get my Kit-Kat of a morning, I can find it within me to remain magnanimous.

In the pastures by the Warrendale knots there were long haired cattle, reddish brown. Calves sat easy, nudged udders. One cow stood aside, silent and serene in expectation, as wide as she was tall, her calf still basking in the warm hinterland of the womb. A lone white bull moved among them. The path took me through the herd. I made delicate adjustments, startled none. A hundred tons of beef, but not aggressive. Had they the intelligence to be cognisant of their fate, would they have been so easy in my company? Had we been cognisant of ours in 2008, would we have been so easy too?

I return to Langcliffe, hill-achy and bone tingling tired. The church is having a sale of books and CD’s. I am searching for a copy of Belladonna. Stevie Nicks. 1981-ish. I could buy it online for about a fiver, but am holding off, thinking to discover it in a charity shop for £2.00. I have been searching for years.

Why so selective? I spend £20 on petrol for a walk in the Dales, but I won’t spend a fiver on an old CD that I tell myself I really want. Or is it that I resist the siren call of Stevie Nicks. Stevie is nostalgia.

My moods are mysterious.

I did not go into the church. I peeled my boots off, sat a while, let my feet cool, changed my shirt, then dropped the top and took the car across the moor to Malham.

There are moments of happiness. They come suddenly. Unexpected. It’s a rough old road to Malham from Lancliffe – quite a climb up the zigzags into a lonely wonderland of limestone country. The car’s done 80,000 now, still drives like new and with a punch on the climbs that delights and surprises. And then there are these moments, when we’re rattling along, I swear the tyres dissolve and we’re flying, and the land is not the land at all but clouds on which the scenery has been painted. Then the heart opens and I am smiling at the lightness of my being.

I stop for coffee at Malham, having joined some dots on the map. But it’s a strange country opening before us now. And 2008 is a very long time ago.

Anyway, let’s keep that drive

in mind.

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