Summer time
Nick Foulkes seeks summer watches that fulfil his alter-ego ambitions 1 am always ready to be mentored by older, wiser men, and on the important subject of the holiday watch my mind always returns to a piece of very useful advice given to me by Sir Dai Llewellyn Bt — a man who appears to inhabit his very own Sybaris and has lived a happy and largely blameless life enjoying himself and cheering the lives of many others in the process. I remember him once telling me that he never ventured on to the beach without a pair of Ray-Bans and a Rolex, which was pretty much infallible advice when he gave it to me almost 20 years ago and remains oracular to this day . . . to judge from the revival of the Ray-Ban Wayfarer (videlicet Jude Law in Cannes) and the £100,000 recently achieved by a Rolex (ref. 8171 moonphase from the 1950s, if you are interested) at a recent New York watch auction held by Bonhams.
Actually, that particular watch is not such a good choice for the beach as it is not water resistant, so if you are cursing your bad luck on having missed out on such a bargain, at least you can console yourself with the reassuring knowledge that its owner won't be wearing it out on the boat this summer.
But if you are planning a yachting holiday, then Rolex has come up with a watch just in the nick of time, a new model that has been given the snappy name 'Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master II Regatta Chronograph'. It has a countdown indicator, vital for the sailor planning his own race, and a chronograph that uses the rotating bezel as part of the operating system — just don't ask me how. Even if your knowledge of boats is derived from childhood memories of Captain Pugwash and the closest you get to the America's Cup is to rent a pedalo or an inflatable banana, at least this watch will make you look like an off-duty commodore. And that is part of the point of a holiday watch: rather like a holiday itself, it should take you out of your normal routine and transport to a better place.
There are two types of holiday watch buyer. The first heads towards the Swatch counter at the airport and picks up something he doesn't have to worry about. Then there is the man who chooses his holiday destination to maximise use of his watch collection and may even use the excuse of an upcoming vacation to clear out the bank account and buy a new watch. I am definitely of the second school, although, not having much of a bank account to clear out, I am on occasion reduced to borrowing watches; the best loan so far was a gold Rolex Day Date on a presidential bracelet that a friend had bought in 1989 and never worn — perhaps something to do with the heavily impastoed Life on Mars-spec bark finish on the gold bracelet. But where others saw a period piece, I saw a way of freeing my inner highstakes gambler (albeit less Daniel Craig in Casino Royale and more Joe Pesci in plain Casino). So powerful was the allure of this watch that I had to hand it back to its owner, to stop myself taking it on a trip that was likely to prove financially lethal, to that Vegas of the Far East, Macau.
I am so suggestible that Twill happily allow my watch to con me into believing that I have transformed myself from a pale 42-year-old paterfamilias trying to escape the Sisyphean realities of middle-class west London life into a golden-skinned beach-hopping playboy. To have any hope of effecting this miraculous change, a watch has to be large, preferably the size of an alloy wheel, but even then I look nothing like Tim Jeffries.
Of course the Euro watch of choice is the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, a huge octagonal piece of steel with a watch movement buried deep inside, that was launched in the mid-1990s. It is a work of genius, and when I saw it at the Basel Watch Fair I ordered one immediately. The other day I happened to come across a photograph taken a couple of years ago of me wearing it while I was away one summer; well, at least the watch looked great.
It is to the credit of the Swiss watch industry that it does all it can to assist me, and doubtless many others, to fulfil alter-ego ambitions, providing any amount of role play on the wrist. The latest crop of summer watches offers plenty of scope for self-delusion. Two in particular appealed to me, reissues of classic diving watches: Blancpain's Fifty Fathoms and Breitling's Superocean Heritage. Both these pieces made their debut during the 1950s and have now been revived with all their period shark-wrestling charm intact.
The trouble is that I cannot dive, in fact I get a bit panicky if I can't see the bottom of the sea, but it would almost be worth learning how to operate an aqualung and avoid getting the bends just to be able to wear the new Bvlgari Scuba Flyback Chrono to time my decompression stops.
I particularly like the multitude of multicoloured hands that have apparently been developed in consultation with a crack team of rescue specialists to be especially visible under water — so it shouldn't look too bad on the beach at the Marbella Club either. However, it might look a little de trop strolling along the prom in Eastbourne.
RECOMMENDED SUMMER WATCH RETAILERS www.bvlgari.com www.breitling.com www.blancpain.com www.rolex.com www.bonhams.com www.audemarspiguet.com
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