The tour de force

Look at the dial. Lacquered waffle effect, applied Orient logo, steel indices, dolphin hands. Then the trick. Go round to the year (it runs from 2010 to 2031), pick the month, and it shows you every day and date of that month. Press the button, move it on, and May starts on a Wednesday. The dots are leap years. It's not a perpetual calendar, you move it along yourself, but I've always loved it. It's so clever. I don't know how they do it.

Is it perfect? No. The lacquer is shiny and lacks definition, the date window has no frame, and the needle seconds hand doesn't reach quite as far as I'd like. No lume. That's fine. It's a dress watch. Forget about it.

Noisy little wizard

Fully in-house automatic, 21 jewels, 40 hours, 21,600 an hour. No hacking, no hand winding, and the movement is very, very noisy. At this price, that's acceptable. Orient rate it plus 25 to minus 15 a day. I found this little wizard running at plus six. Who else is doing a fully in-house automatic for around a hundred quid? Nobody. You Swiss think you're so clever, but the Japanese do it better for less.

Case and jingle jangle

41 mm, 11 mm thick, 48 mm lug-to-lug. Mineral glass, 50 metres, which really means splash proof: wash it in the sink with a damp sponge. It'll slide under any cuff and almost wrap around any wrist. Hollow end links, push pins, satin links with polished mid links. It really is not bad, a jingle jangle, but it's a stamped clasp, so on mine it's a Strapcode Engineer. On the Engineer it just looks freaky.

Verdict

Timepieces of the highest order for the blue-collar boys. It's brought great pleasure to so many people who aren't rich, and it keeps great time. Mock him and you reveal your true self. This watch is never going to leave me. I will die with this watch, and it'll be passed down. Never give up.