Night watchman

Here's a curious thing.

I have quite a lot of watches. None of them are particularly rare or collectable or even expensive (I think the dearest was £108 new, twenty years ago). But I like watches, and can't bear to part with them. I wear a watch every single day, and feel naked without one. Example: aged 16, starting my first Saturday job at a now-defunct department store, through nerves I forgot to put my watch on, and only realising half way there. In a panic, I borrowed Mum's slightly feminine (though all black, at least) Casio digital and wore it for the rest of the day, rather than be watchless. Similarly, a few years later on a lads' holiday to Spain, quite early in the week the waterproof seal on my watch failed, and so did the watch after a dip in the pool; I then wore a non-functioning watch for the rest of the holiday week, rather than have a bare wrist.

So I am tied to wristwatches, in a way that the youth of today are not. Why wear an anachronism when you can just look at your phone screen to tell the time, right?

Anyway, one of my watches is a metal analogue, powered by a kinetic mechanism. I used to wear it to work, back in the dim and distant past of actually going into the office rather than working from home. It was my work/formal watch, because it is quite smart (or was - the tale of how I scraped the edge off one corner of the crystal face is a little too, erm, racy for this blog post). However, it has been lying, unworn, by my bedside since mid-March. The kinetic mechanism, by which the wearer's movement charges the battery, ran down in May, so it isn't even telling the time at the moment (other than twice a day, ha ha). But I digress; last night, I went to bed and, as ever, the last thing I did before getting under the covers was take off the watch I had been wearing all day, a solar-powered digital confection that is my casual/active/knockabout watch. And when I woke up this morning, six hours later... I was wearing my work watch. Some how, at some point in the night, I had reached out in the dark, found the watch and strapped it on, no mean feat in itself given that I was asleep and the watch has a locking fold-over clasp. Weird, eh? I've never sleepwalked or anything like that before... but I quite like the idea of putting a watch on in my sleep. And all without moving enough to restart the kinetic battery mechanism...

This watch-based nonsense is all the excuse I need to post a live performance of Watcher of the Skies by Gabriel-era Genesis. Always good to remind ourselves just how "out there" they, and particularly Gabriel, were back then. Multi-coloured, sequinned cape? Check. White gloves? Check. Bald stripe shaved down the middle of the head? Check. Giant, er, bat wings sprouting from behind the ears? Ch... jesus, Peter! Anyway, here it is. I love early Genesis like this. You might not (probably won't) though, so... sorry... Regardless, what's the weirdest thing you've done in your sleep?