A truth universally acknowledged is that if you slap the adjective ‘marine’ in front of any noun, its sale price shall increase by an exponential factor. You can get a kitchen clock from Argos or Dunelm for a tenner. A marine chronometer, say, Wempe’s 2023 Tim Heywood design: £46,400. One boat owner might scoff at another for buying ‘a fancy clock in a box’, but Wempe’s chronometer is ‘gimballed within a cube of fine wood’.
A sailor might want to buy several ocean-going yachts instead, but Wempe’s £74,508 masterpiece – the dial concealed within the gold-lined doors of mock coco de mer nut – is ‘a thing of beauty, a joy for ever’. I laugh, if only to mask
