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Continue reading →: Charging ahead or still on the grid?Electric cars need to be plugged in every now and then. But what do you do if you haven’t got a driveway? As the countryside around Bampton fills with huge new housing estates and commuters, even the lanes that lead to major routes are rammed in rush hour. Traffic on…
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Continue reading →: Driving from the back seat.I’ve not worked as an advertising copywriter since June 2013. I’m rather relieved about this. A recent Twitter post about difficult clients reminded me why, so I dredged this out of my ‘drafts’ folder. It’s a piece I wrote in March 2008 to try and illustrate why the traditional client/agency…
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Continue reading →: The 241 year old pendulum clock that’s more accurate than your watch241 years ago today, John Harrison, one of Britain’s finest clockmakers died. He left behind designs for a clock that makes the accuracy of that quartz watch on your wrist look pretty average. Chances are, your quartz will be be reasonably sharp. Probably just +/- 15 seconds a month. Not shabby, given…
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Continue reading →: Happy Birthday, M. Breguet
Today will pass in most people’s diaries with never a thought for the man behind so many elements of the watch on their wrist. Abraham Louis Breguet was born 270 years ago today in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Automatic winding, tourbillons, gong-repeaters, more accurate escapements, better hairsprings, shock-absorbing escapements, lubrication-free escapements… Breguet was…
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Continue reading →: Rare vintage watch turns up in auction.How a rare, early Heuer 2447S turned up in a regional UK electrical goods auction.
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Continue reading →: Seiko 7a28 – watchmaking history at pocket money prices
Fancy owning a little piece of horological history? Well, you could head over to Geneva’s Patek Philippe Museum museum with your jemmy, a striped shirt and a ‘swag’ bag and quietly remove their Rieussec Seconds Chronograph. Feeling even braver? How about the earliest chronograph yet discovered? The Louis Moinet, in…
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Continue reading →: Being Santa.
December 18th. Nick Whitelock sat at his desk by the window and looked out as the cold, winter rain tracked its way down the pane. “Sleet, more like.” he thought to himself. He was, as usual, the last one in the office. The rest of them would be in the…
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Continue reading →: Village Remembrance in Bampton
In need of bacon, as one often is on a Sunday morning, I nipped into the Bampton shop just before the village remembrance parade. A young lad, about thirteen I’d guess, walked in and moved, a little hesitantly, towards a spot just in front of me in the queue. The usual…
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Continue reading →: Splat the rat
Most councils use conflict-based ‘traffic calming’ schemes as speed reduction measures and to discourage drivers from using certain roads. They call roads like these – the roads people use to get to work, to go shopping and home to their families – ‘rat runs’. In my own village in West Oxfordshire we have…
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Thanks for dropping in. There’s all sorts of stuff here, from reviews of watches to thoughts on driving and riding. And you’re welcome whether you agree with any of it or not.
MMC Musings 