Hazards of Hygiene

There´s been so much going on since we came back from England, that I have just now began to go through all the photos and reflect on all that we did. With most photos I try to capture something interesting, something striking, or something beautiful. But there are also lots of snaps that are just a kind of note to self, of no photographic value, but just to remind me of something that happened.

Like this photo. It´s my watch, drying out after I got water inside it and it steamed up so bad I couldn´t even tell what time it was. It kept on ticking, though. The husband, being bent towards DIY and technical challenges, opened the watch with the help of my tweezers. Then he had me blast it from underneath with the hair dryer for a few minutes (it is my watch, after all) and leave it open like that all night. It was ticking away the whole time - it felt a bit like doing open-heart surgery, and I was a bit anxious for it, I confess. But in the morning, the husband snapped the back-plate on, and it worked just beautifully.

The hands have a bit of rust on them, but I can´t swear it wasn´t there before. It´s an old watch, after all.

I´m not sure how it got wet, but for the rest of the trip I took the watch off before going to the bathroom. For some reason, even in brand-new washbasins, there are usually separate taps for cold and hot water, which forces you to either clean you hands cold, or fill the basin from both taps and bathe your hands at a decent temperature. It´s a bit odd and old-fashioned, but one gets used to it. Or adapts. The English themselves often point out that they (as a nation) have very poor hand-hygien. Wonder why.

Oh, and I had to buy a new pair of tweezers. The old pair got so stuck up from being promoted to the handicraft of horology that they no longer recognized a common hair.