Who Watches the Watchmen?

So, apparently no one in Edinburgh cares what time it is.

I alluded to this in the Tuesday, August 7 post but never got around to going into a bit more detail about it.

Having flown into Scotland on Friday the 3rd, I realized that evening that I'd neither brought my watch nor travel alarm clock. It wouldn't be an issue until Sunday morning, when we were to have been in our performance venue at 7:00am... for those not knowing the time difference, that'd be 2:00am Georgia time.

I had a bit of metaphorical baggage from my college years hanging around due to the TD we had during our summer stock seasons. Despite all of his other faults (he stood for years as the sole example of everything I didn't want to be as a Technical Director), I could say two things that I actually respected about him: He was always responsible about his bedtime and he was always the first up and ready for the workday. In these two aspects I've also turned out to be his opposite, and it's always bugged me. I should be an example, at least here, I thought, and thus determined that it was my responsibility to help ensure that I was the first up, ready to go, before the rest of the company. I helped determine the time when most others needed to be up and moving about, and decided when we'd need to leave, with Hannah's approval, of course, as it was her party.

Understandably knowing what time it is would be a good thing.

So, the morning of the 4th, Saturday, I set out bright and early to find a watch and clock. An easy thing, I'd assumed, as every convenience store around here in Marietta carried some sort of timepiece. Of course, that morning, "around here" was thousands of miles away in the land of redundancy and excess, the horrible U.S. of A. In Europe, they do things differently.

I began at a local grocery store about the size of my office. They directed me to a pharmacy. The pharmacy directed me to a Woolworth's, only a fifteen minute walk away. "Perfect," I thought, "Woolworth's carries everything."

Except watches or clocks.

The young clerk then directs me to a watch shop down the block. Even more perfect!

Except the watch shop, while they carried watchBANDS and actually repaired watches, did not sell watches themselves or clocks. Nor could the clerk initially direct me to a store that DID sell watches... or clocks. As I left, it came to him that I should try a place two doors down. They'd certainly have them.

It doesn't matter what was two doors down. All you need to know is that, no, they didn't sell watches. Or clocks.

A Happymeal toy with a cheap digital readout, a sundial... I would have been happy with most anything at this point.

I finally took out my city map to begin making my way back to another commercial area. Numerous stores were visited. Minutes ticked by, an hour passed... (not that I would have known at the time, mind you, but they did). I'd passed an outdoor market, a place in what used to be the gallows/cow sales area of Old Town (which I'd later find was adjacent to what would become my favorite Mexican place in the city; see Aug. 8 post) and a single flea market hawker had a few vintage antique watches he would be willing to part with... for around thirty to seventy five pounds each ($60-$150). Sorry, I'm frustrated, but not that much. Not yet, at least.

Continuing on nearly aimlessly, eventually I stopped in complete frustration at streetcorner where five routes converged into one spot. Seething in that I'd been walking for an hour and half, visiting countless (non-described in this post) vendors, yet apparently no one knew were to find a watch (or a clock), I'd had it. I stood there, angry, with a series of unspecified and muted expletives flowing through my imagination, frozen in irritation, nearly overcome with the fury over not being able to find a friggin' timepiece of ANY sort. Fuming, I went back the way I'd come to cut over a few blocks to a familiar street I'd visited the day before.

Half an hour later I did happen to come across a cheap tourist shop that had a few watches and did indeed pay a reasonable amount for a decent looking, square faced timepiece (and tiny travel clock with a discreet alarm), and all was well in my life again. It'd only taken two hours and a long, circuitous route which had taken me in an arc all over downtown Edinburgh.

(Thanks for hanging in there with the mundane details of my frustration. All of this has been written to come to this final moment of the anecdote:)

Later that afternoon the company headed out of the flat to hand out fliers advertising our show which was to premiere the following day (y'remember, the reason I needed to know what time it was to begin with). On the route to the venue, I recognized that we neared the spot where I'd stopped in anger to mentally raise a fist to the sky at the ridiculous lack of timekeeping pieces in the city, and relayed the story, specifically the intensity of the moment on the streetcorner, to Caroline and Lauren. We paused for a second as I described the morning's agitation on the very spot where I nearly had a meltdown.

Listening so well as she always does, Caroline, with her patented smirk, asked, "So, you couldn't find a place that sold one, anywhere?" She delicately pointed over my shoulder. "Like that one?"

I glanced back. Not three feet behind me was a store with an enormous window filled with its wares, and a sign above it that read, simply, in one foot tall, three dimensional, polished aluminum letters:

'WATCHES'.