My dear WorldTempus family, I come before you today with my head hanging in the deepest shame. A bit of context for this startling statement — although you most likely read these words on a Monday, when our newsletter is sent winging through the Internet aether to land in your inbox — I actually wrote them the preceding week. On Wednesday 22 February, in this instance. And the source of my shame is this: I forgot it was Ash Wednesday. That is, I forgot until I read the messages my family’s WhatsApp group chat, by which time I was already halfway through my customary mid-morning Twix bar. While the office might erupt in spontaneous celebratory dancing when my colleagues learn that I will be avoiding our in-house stash of sweets for the next 40 days (effectively doubling the per diem allocation of candy for them), I shall be saving my energy — diverting it away from the chocolaterie and towards the horlogerie. I hereby undertake an investigation of mechanical solutions for Not Forgetting Important Stuff.
There are already a number of existing timepieces out there that indicate significant religious observances; the most famous being the Patek Philippe Cal. 89 (date of Easter), the Vacheron Constantin ref. 57260 (date of Yom Kippur) and the Parmigiani Tonda Hijri Perpetual Calendar (month of Ramadan). These highly impressive watchmaking creations are groundbreaking in terms of the engineering creativity and skill they possess, and if you’re in the habit (as I am) of being oblivious to imminent events of high importance in your religious community, these might be options for you. Of course, if you have the means to acquire any of the abovementioned watches, you’re probably also the kind of person who has in your employ someone whose job it is to remind you of this stuff.
Taking a more quotidian approach to regularly occurring events, there are a whole mound of alarm watches out there that will chime, buzz or vibrate you into alertness when it’s time to wake up (or take that 3pm coffee break). The iconic Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox dominates in this realm, although we shouldn’t overlook the charm of the Rendez-Vous Sonatina, also from La Grande Maison. The Marine Alarme Musicale 5547 by Breguet is perhaps the watch most people would remember when thinking of alarm watches from the brand founded by the father of modern horology Abraham-Louis Breguet, but La Musicale 7800 is surely the pinnacle of Breguet creations in this domain. Essentially, it contains a miniaturised and specially adapted mechanism (most frequently used in music boxes) to play a short piece of music at a desired hour. The version of La Musicale that you can find in boutiques is programmed with a piece of classical music, but special orders can be made to personalise the music to be played — perhaps a few bars of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” to give the requisite urgency to your alarm. (Regional joke alluding to the local Swiss-French saying, “The lake is not on fire” — taken to mean “relax” or “calm down, there’s no rush”.)
More poetic ways to memorialise a date using your watch include a number of De Bethune pieces (DB25 Starry Sky, DB25 Starry Varius, DB28XP Starry Sky etc) with dials that can be personalised to represent a star map indicating a time, date and location of your choice. Trilobe, the young Parisian brand that has nevertheless made quite a splash in the community of watch lovers, offers a similar feature in their Les Matinaux Secret watch.
Probably the watch that most closely matches the requirements of my circumstances, however, would be the Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight Planetarium, with an adjustable “lucky date” function that can be set by the wearer to indicate a particular event to remember. The Glashütte Original Senator Diary offers even more precision, allowing you to set an alarm up to 30 days in advance for a specific date and time.
Of course, all of this can be done with built-in smartphone apps, but where would be the fun in that? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if anyone in the office wants a half-eaten Twix bar.
