The memes of the week: Dumb buys, colonoscopies and the wisdom of dads

Luke Benedictus

Hospital chic (via @watchumor)

Style is about being appropriately dressed for the occasion. But sometimes life throws you a sartorial curveball. Having to submit to a thin, flexible tube containing a small camera being inserted into your bottom probably qualifies as such. So what to wear on your wrist? Do you take the high-contrast approach and go for something bold that’ll really pop against the stark whiteness of the hospital gown? Or perhaps you lean into the minimalism? Go for a clean dial with no date – a second hand if you absolutely must. There’s no doubt that being on the receiving end here will not necessarily showcase you in all your dignified splendour. So maybe that puts even greater emphasis on your watch to reflect who you really are (when you’re not having your bowels inspected by a polite lady with rather cold hands). Either way, this is a tough decision.  After all, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Guilt trips from beyond the grace (via @watchlobby)

I’ve written at length before about how one of the best ways to justify buying another ruinously expensive watch is The Heirloom Defence.  Many years from now, when you’re dead and gone, your child will feel the reassuring heft of your favourite watch resting gently on their wrist.  Here is a ticking memento of your eternal love. Your watch is something that they can connect with, enjoy and treasure. Before hawking it at some scuzzy pawn-shop to get fast cash to blow on whatever sordid escapades their idiot friends have peer-pressured them into. Problem is because you’re dead you can’t even yell at them. Maybe you can haunt them a little bit? To be honest, I’m still not completely across how after-life logistics play out in such matters. That’s why I’m always a fan of getting potential heirlooms engraved. It may not stop the watch eventually being sold to fuel your kids’ drug-fuelled misadventures. Hopefully though, it’ll make them feel a tiny bit more guilty.

The venn diagram of truth (via @kingflum)

Think about the most considered purchase that you’ve ever made in your life. The one that you’ve pondered and agonised over before finally parting with your hard-earned cash. Now you’d assume the winning entry here would be the most expensive, but the reality might horrify you. When we bought our house after months of futile searching, we were shown a fixer-upper within our budget in an unexpectedly promising location. But then, displaying the sort of behaviour for which his profession is justly maligned, the estate agent hustled us into a super-quick decision. He claimed another buyer was itching to pull the trigger. Buy now or miss out…  I got pretty annoyed by this hard-sell tactic. Blunt truths may have been exchanged at a reasonably heightened volume. Following this pointless and self-defeating outburst, we would have missed out if it wasn’t for my wife sweet-talking the estate agent at length, coupled with the fact that he used to have a high-school crush on her sister. Anyway. The upshot was we bought our family home – parting with a terrifying sum of money  – within the space of 24 hours. It happened so fast we didn’t even realise there was no bathtub.

This spell-binding insight into my family living arrangements (you’re welcome) is to make the point that a watch tends to be an unusually thoughtful purchase. You deliberate, you pore over the options, you read lots of highly informed, erudite yet surprisingly entertaining reviews on T+T. Then you max out your credit card again. That’s what this meme is getting into. Buying a watch isn’t an impulse buy. It’s about the journey not the destination as Ralph Waldo Emerson or Aerosmith once said.

Unfortunately, this reality challenges another of my long-held beliefs –  probably now considered sexist and out of date like the rest of them. It’s about the gender-based differences in approaches to shopping. Men, I used to believe, tend to shop to buy. Whereas women are more likely to approach shopping like a leisure experience. When I think about how we buy watches, it looks like I may have been wrong about that, too.