This gives me a great deal of satisfaction.

I think this watch was given to me for Christmas 1967 or maybe 1968. I can’t remember precisely. My sister received a Donald Duck one at the same time. I’m not sure whether or not she still has hers or if it still works. It’s a strange thing because I doubt I would have ever been given it had we not lived in Bahrain at the time and “luxury goods” were cheap there in those days, whether or not that remains the case I am unlikely to ever find out. That’s not saying my folks were cheapskates, far from it, simply that had we been in the UK, they would not have been able to afford such luxury.

It’s a Seiko. There is a strong possibility that it’s only on my wrist, in full working order, and keeping excellent time because I broke its glass a long, long time ago, possibly within a couple of years of being given it. It got put into a film canister (as you do) and put in the drawer waiting for a new glass and remained there for forty five or forty six years until late last year, when my Dad came across it and had a new glass face put onto it. He brought it down to me before Christmas and it’s been my only timepiece ever since.

When he arrived, it still had a strap suitable for a seven-year-old and I couldn’t get it on so DM adapted a strap from another watch to fit it and me. He’s got a bit of a watch fetish – he owns several and is fascinated by ones with proper wind-up movements, as this of course has, given its age.

I only wear a watch when I go out “to work” (Uni) and only then because unlike the situation in an office, when you can constantly see the time on your pooter, I have no way of telling the time there because clocks are few and far between. Until my Dad turned up with Bambi I’d been borrowing a Swatch from DM because my other watch had died a few months earlier.

When I was working as a volunteer in a school before Christmas the kids were fascinated by it and instantly recognised Bambi which surprised me because I thought it might have been so long before their time that they wouldn’t have come across it. But they knew exactly what it was despite being younger than I was when I was bought the watch.

So you see an old timepiece on an old timer’s wrist!