EXCUSES AND REASONS

I`m always looking for an excuse to travel to the West Country. I don`t know why I need an excuse. I don`t know why I don`t just get in the car and go there. It`s in my blood, I suppose - somewhere I feel at home, comfortable, welcome. At least by the landscape, if not always by the people.

Now, I thought I had found the perfect excuse, not to say reason, to travel the long and winding road back to Mullion Cove on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall (pictured.) Almost two years ago now, I bought a watch there for £6 in the village shop. "Any problems with it, my dear, you just bring it back," I was told when I completed the purchase.

Well, after all this time of keeping good time, it has finally stopped. It might have been the shock of having its time changed last weekend when we put the clocks forward an hour. Or, more likely, the battery finally expired. A new battery would cost more than I paid for the watch, so not much point in that. It then occurred to me that I might journey once more to that accommodating shop in Mullion, not to complain but perhaps to invest another £6 in a new watch. Now I realise that it would be an expensive trip but, hey, an excuse is an excuse. In the end, my conscience got the better of me, so I have sourced a local supplier of £6 watches and invested in this one:-

At my age, there seems little point in spending a small fortune on a watch that will only tell the same time as my cheap ones and which might well outlive me. In any case, if the Rolexes of this world never go wrong and never conk out, I would be unable to finally break out of my conscience and have a reason to go back to Mullion, rather than an excuse. Even if it is 320 miles away.