I’ve always noted on other watch repairer websites how they spend hours of time and hundreds of words telling you how good they are and how clever they must be to repair watches.

Evocative terms like ‘complete tear down’ and ‘total rebuild’ are used to emphasize to you the magnitude of the feat they have just undertaken. Well, if you can’t beat them, join them I say.

So where to begin?

It all started when I was just four. One afternoon, I got hold of my Great Grandfather’s Thomas Russell pocket watch, which was stored safely away (obviously not safely enough) in my mothers dressing table drawer. I used to love winding it up and opening the back, watching the balance wheel swinging to and fro and jabbing my mucky little index finger into the movement, as you do.

One day my mucky little index finger jabbed a little too hard and the swinging balance wheel stopped swinging and the rhythmic ticking noise ceased abruptly. A sense of intense concern came over me and I had visions of my father’s massive hands walloping ten types of shit out of me as I tried fruitlessly running away from him in a locked room with no windows.

Not deterred in any way by what I had obviously done, I did a ‘complete tear down’ the stairs soiling my pants as I went, grabbed an old leather school satchel, ran all the way down the garden and then returned to the house, satchel slung over left shoulder pretending that I’d literally just returned from a three day hiking tour and was nowhere near the watch when it had stopped working forever.

I’d probably have got away with it too, only my twin brother who, in those days was a nasty little sneak, had seen me playing with it and when it was at last discovered that the watch was broken, he readily spilt the beans, as they say, and I was thrashed senseless by my father, my mother, my grandparents, my elder siblings, the next door neighbour, their neighbour, their neighbours’ neighbour and all my aunts and uncles, of which there were many.

Thus did the scars of childhood haunt me well into my early thirties. the guilt of my unspeakable deed, along with the guilt of many other unspeakable deeds I’d performed in my youth (particularly with Angela Creamhole, the next-door neighbours very willing daughter) hanging ever over me.

Then on a visit to my parents in 1996 to celebrate and partake in the annual all-in kicking competition I had devised for my twin brother, an event that always generated a ‘total rebuild’ of my spirits and at which all members of the family joined in to see who could kick the little f**ker the hardest, my dad handed me the broken pocket watch and suggested I get it fixed somewhere.

Well, the rest is history. The broken balance staff (for that is what had happened) I replaced with one that I turned from a nail using a Black and Decker drill held between my knees (makeshift lathe) and using only a diamond cutting disc and sandpaper to shape it. I then managed to borrow some basic tools and lubricants from a local repairer (Terry Quicke, my mentor and guide in my early years) who lived not far from me, and I serviced and reassembled the watch  using vinegar to clean it and lighter fluid to rinse it.

It still runs to this day and I gifted it to my younger brother a year or so back. At no point did I do a ‘complete tear down’ of the watch because there is no such thing, I dismantled it. Neither did I do a ‘total rebuild’ of the watch because that means bugger-all. I reassembled it.

After that I took formal training and learnt how to repair clocks and watches using appropriate tools and materials.

AND I’VE BEEN DOING IT EVER SINCE…