I’ve been bad. I’ve done the worst thing in the world. I’ve been on eBay.
The Camel Trophy was an international driving competition sponsored by Camel Cigarettes between 1980 and 2000. And every time they did one, they released a watch to commemorate it. This one is from the 1990s, apparently – not the original strap, sadly, but I’m not really concerned about that. The case is basically a chunk of bronze. It’s not a huge watch, but it has that field-watch easy legibility and it’s a proper weight on the wrist.
The brown strap, of course, means I have to match it with something, because I don’t wear brown/sand/camel/beige clothes, so I wear a brown leather bracelet and a couple of brown wooden bracelets on the other wrist, a pendant on a brown leather thong, and a brown 1990s Sergio Cerruti Roma leather belt I may have just bought myself on eBay ahem. Never forget Gene Wilder’s rule from his notes on the first draft of the Willy Wonka costume:
Also a light blue felt hat-band to match with the same light blue fluffy bow tie shows a man who knows how to compliment his blue eyes.
To match the shoes with the jacket is fey. To match the shoes with the hat is taste.
While we wouldn’t necessarily use the word “fey” today, his general point stands. And we try to cultivate taste.
The G-Shock is running three minutes fast, it turns out! I love a big chunky G-Shock. I read yesterday that they’re coming back into fashion as the whole lo-fi anti-networked thing gains pace in some spaces.
Toby Standing, menswear editor at online shopping platform Lyst, where G-Shock currently dominates demand in the digital watch category, believes the trend is linked to the rise of “dumb” phones and wired headphones. “A willing adoption of tech that is ‘worse’ than something else available is a distinct style choice,” he says, and is redolent of “an era of less input, less doomscrolling, and more novelty”.
OPERATIONS: scripting, planning, thinking STATUS: I have been buying too many films, CDs, and possibly another watch. READING:HOUSE OF DAY, HOUSE OF NIGHT, Olga Tokarczuk (UK) (US+) LISTENING:Konstellationen by CAMILLA PISANI
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Well, the heatwave is here. Today is linen trousers, thin socks and one of the 100% cotton popover tops I get from from a manufacturer in Tibet, which are remarkably durable.
Today begins a much less connected season, in a way. I managed to read the top ends of four newspapers and four news/magazine sites this morning. (If anyone’s keeping up, the current stack is: The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Economist, BBC News, Politico and Foreign Policy.) I am gathering up the print objects that have gone unread so far this year, and last night I started catching up with the Times Literary Supplement and The Wire after I squeezed a litre of organic orange juice. (The Zulay (UK) (US+) is the best squeezer I’ve ever had.)
The honest response to all this, for someone like me, isn’t to write a manifesto. It is to build something small, and then to use it, and then to invite a few other people to use it, and to see what happens. Not a revolution. A tree.
That is what Tuhat is. Tuhat is Finnish for one thousand, and the rule is exactly that — every post must be at least a thousand words. No notes. No threads. No hot takes. No algorithm sorting writers into winners and losers based on how often they post or how spicy their headlines are. You get a page at tuhat.net/u/you, and your readers find you the old fashioned way, through a URL, an RSS feed, or an email subscription you actually own and can export as a CSV.
The constraint is the point. A thousand words is enough room to make an argument, tell a story properly, or sit with something difficult without rushing to a punchline. It is also enough friction that nobody publishes here for the dopamine of it. If you don’t have something you genuinely want to say, you won’t bother. That is by design.
John Coulthart:
a further evolution of a form of digital drawing I’ve been developing, a process in which you draw a portion of the picture then copy and paste it to a new layer, distort it slightly using one of Photoshop’s Distort filters, then draw over and around the new section until it blends seamlessly with the rest. This has the effect of creating unpredictable forms that underly the work as a whole, rather like the Surrealist techniques of frottage, grattage, decalcomania and so on. The Surrealist processes were all the product of physical materials but the impulse is the same whatever technique you may use: the introduction of a random element that might evade the conscious input of the artist and the habitual strokes made by the drawing hand.
However bad a writer you think you are, you are not worse than AI. But you still keep letting it do your writing for you, as if I won’t be able to tell. Listen: I can tell. I can always tell. You think I won’t notice, but I will. There’s no hiding from me. If you let AI do your writing I will find out, and I will kill you.
OPERATIONS: am behind. STATUS:
I have taken my FitBit off, because the app was “updated” to Google Health and now it hallucinates bicycles.
I have just taken delivery of two cases of ale from Williams Bros brewery and a case of wine from Flint Vineyard. Flint is a Norfolk vineyard that makes an exceptional sparkling, and William Bros is the home of the Fraoch heather ale and a remarkable summer ale called Birds And Bees.
Four phone calls before noon suggests that this is going to be a difficult day for focus.
READING:THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+) LISTENING: SUPER-HEAVY HAMOAZIAN REVERIE, Urthona LAST WATCHED: SCARFACE (1983), because you always drop the remote when SCARFACE comes on. Also, THE RUNNING MAN (2025), and finished watching THE BOYS, and did two episodes of British period crime show LEGENDS. DRINK: found a 25 year old Lagavulin in the back of the cupboard
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
I am almost back to normal – just a cough and a sore throat for the most part, which means everyone else was right when they told me this mange going around lasts three weeks or so.
I have just been informed that a new coffee shop has opened, around the corner from me. When Uber came to town last month, I considered using it to get to Leigh, where Little Fin Roastery is, and then I caught the mange. And then Uber pulled out of town, apparently because they didn’t want to meet the council’s standards on private car hire. I am not Uber’s biggest fan, but huge chunks of my area are poorly served by public transport and I’m not walking for an hour and a half just to get a decent cup of coffee. And my deli of choice doesn’t do coffee! So I’m going to walk up to the new place in an hour and see if it will serve as a morning office. And once my chest is cleared and my voice comes back, I’ll be using the deli as my afternoon office for half the week, drinking £10 glasses of fancy wine and telling myself I am getting a great deal of thinking done and I have begun the great leap forwards.
AI is prompting investors to reassess every business model under the sun (vaguely reminded of that tech news website that clearly used a random headline generator into which they plugged the tech buzzword of the moment, which is how you got the headline “Can IoT Help With Bicycles?” There’s also a sense of people thinking they can see a huge hammer in the distance, even though it’s mostly made of smoke, and assuming everything around them looks like a nail. I saw a story, I think on World Of Reel, about a guy who’d been given 30k to make an AI film and was trying to crowdsource an idea for what film to make on social media)
OPERATIONS: I have a huge consulting job to nail down and a prose serial project to solve and it all needs to be done this week. And I’m out on Saturday night, so I need to land the newsletter before then, too. I am copy-typing out of a notebook for the next hour. STATUS: I really need to stop buying clothes and I really need to stop looking at the watches at Sputnik1957. READING: READING: THE BIG THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+)
…first prize went to the Wineflask, in which the almost centenarian Cratinus defended his own drinking with the line, ‘You’ll never fashion anything clever by drinking water!’
LISTENING:
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Over the summer, I was sent a gift by a company I did some consulting work for. I got the delivery notification and assumed it was a book or something. Turned out it was this. An IWC Ingenieur Mission Earth, which they don’t make any more.
46mm across, huge, heavy and industrial. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I looked it up online and it’s so expensive that I’m afraid to wear it.
I found one in Germany on eBay, still in its plastic box. The battery slot won’t bloody open, so it’s dead until I get it to a shop, but I’ve got it. Little smaller than I expected, and the strap is horrible so I’m going to change that out soon. But it’s a lovely little thing, for quiet and easy days out and about, and I’m very happy I have it.
40mm case, parachute strap. Not a manual wind, which is what I was looking for, but I did need a casual analogue in grey, and there it is. I like the simple styling of the thing: it’s pleasantly utilitarian. Details here. And yes, the markers at 12 and 6 are ever so slightly pissed to my eye too, on the item itself and on the photos on the website. Style elements apparently come from the French Navy – it does have a faintly nautical air to it. I’m happy with it.
Currently 15% off, which is why I decided to splurge a little.
I did actually track down and buy a Swatch Metropolis watch. It’s such a peculiar thing. It’s not even the only watch I’ve bought in the last few weeks. I’ve bought three. All analogue. Smartwatches are tool watches and I only need one smartwatch. I already have one. Analogue watches are for disconnected days, for matching to moods and clothes and tasks. I can admire Longines and Breitling and all the luxe watches from a distance, but I like a simple watch, I’ve found. Putting one on is a signal to myself that I’m disconnecting. Just as when I put bracelets on my right wrist instead of the Fitbit, which I’ve been doing for the last month.
It’s rare I see a Swatch that I would want to wear, but I tripped over this, found in this article, and I am mildly obsessed. It’s from 1989, and I’m fascinated by its Bauhaus-y, METROPOLIS the film-y look. And, let’s face it, a very 80s look. But the cool European 80s.
