During my Greek salad days and at a moment of extreme hubris while supervising the loading of my Saudi boss's ship at Sembawang in Singapore, I splurged on a gold Rolex® Oyster Perpetual - and I haven't worn it for twenty years!
There's no need for a wristwatch at "Riverbend": the three laughing kookaburras wake me up in the morning, the passing tourist boat giving a friendly hoot tells me it's lunchtime, and hearing the first movement of Giuseppe Brescianello's violin concerto no. 4 in e-minor, Opus 1, performed by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, tells me it's time for bed and listen to my nightcap with Phillip Adams' Late Night Live.
Now that we've added two visits to the new Bay Aquatic Centre to our weekly routine, we added another time indicator: Waschfrauenhände! You know when your hands go all wrinkly and pruney after too much time in the water? We used to call it "Waschfrauenhände" in the (c)old country when the nearest thing to a washing machine was a wooden washboard and housewives spent many hours with their hands in water.
It's a quarter past seven in the morning, and we're about to drive to the Bay to immerse ourselves in the therapeutic pool, heated to a constant 34 degrees. It's total bliss and we spend hours in it until our hands look like you-know-what and we know it's time to face the real world again.
