[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry's watch

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 52702

Morgan said:

<snip>

>Where I live, completely mechanical watches are
>neither popular nor cheap. Not the kind of thing a teenager would
>have, or the kind of thing a local version of the Dursleys would let
>Harry have if they dislike him so much.  <snip> But if that kind of watch 
>is indeed cheap and easy to find in England, that could explain it (and me 
>not being British would explain why I didn't consider it a possibility).

Just to clarify, if my previous post on this topic has given any non-Brits 
the wrong idea...

Cheap electronic watches have all but killed the mechanical watch industry 
- the amount of precision engineering which has to go into creating even a 
cheap mechanical watch makes it many times more expensive to produce than 
even a relatively expensive electronic watch, which can be sourced for 
pennies. That said, it is perfectly possible to find mechanical watches in 
junk shops and garage sales for next to nothing, not because they are 
inherently cheap, but because they are unfashionable (they're intrinsically 
heavier than electronic ones and need winding, which is a non-no in todays 
fast-paced world; they are also more delicate).

However, in the fickle world of what is seen to be trendy, mechanical 
watches have a certain cachet due to their very unfashionableness (the 
movements of fashion are quite strange: for instance, over the last five 
years or so, fitted carpets have become undesirable - as usual with 
fashion, it started at the top and filtered down to the hoi polloi; that 
trend is currently being overthrown with expensive fitted carpets being all 
the rage in interior design!).

My take on Harry's watch is that the Dursleys being who they are, Vernon 
could have easily bought Dudley an expensive mechanical watch as (in his 
eyes) a status symbol. (I don't know about other cultures, but getting 
one's first decent watch was an important right of passage at the time and 
place I was growing up).

I could see him having given Dudley an expensive mechanical watch which 
Dudley rejected because it didn't have the bells and whistles of a modern 
electronic watch. Dudley would be far more interested in having a watch 
with a calculator, backlight and heavens knows what else, such as 
"waterproof to 100 meters" (not that Dudley would conceive of voluntarily 
diving to that depth). Dudley wouldn't see the value in a piece of 
precision engineering. I'm not saying that Harry would, but he would at 
least see it as a utilitarian object.

Alternatively, I could see the Dursleys giving Harry a cheap watch they'd 
(literally) found to enable him to be punctual in making their breakfast, 
etc. The need for it not to require the further investment of a new battery 
once a year or so (and the additional trouble to Harry of needing to wind 
it) would be a further incitement to give him a mechanical one.

Just a few thoughts. :-)