Gucci

As everyone knows, accessories are the fat girl's friend. When you are fat, and have stupidly big feet at least a handbag or some earrings won't refuse to be seen with you.

So it was understandable that when my grandparents wanted to buy me something expensive and long lived for my 21st birthday, jewellery came out on top.

In fact, I've always had thin wrists. You know that "test" for frame size where you wrap your fingers round your wrist and see whether they meet. Well, mine overlap by quite some way, and there was never a stage where they didn't meet. I just explained that by the fact that I had long fingers, rather than believing that I was actually small framed underneath all the blubber.

So a watch it was, a lovely expensive Gucci watch. I've worn it pretty much every day for the past 7 and a half years, apart from when it's being repaired, or when I'm on holiday. It may be valuable, but it was designed to be worn, so I wore it.

The photo is of me and the watch at my first graduation, back in 1999. You can't see it very clearly, but it's essentially a solid band. There's a clasp to get your arm in obviously, but when it's shut it's solid. There are no links.

Over the years I've gasped at the cost of batteries, and at the cost of special gucci screws when the bracelet bit came unattached. And on Christmas morning it did it again. As I was handing out presents from under the tree the watch dropped from my wrist, the screws had gone again.

I took it back to the place where I had it repaired last time. £40 for some screws, par for the course it seems. Bloody Gucci screws. They said it would be three weeks (the screws have to come from Italy because they don't have them in stock), and finally phoned today to say that they can't drill the sheared off screw out and it would need a new case.

£225.

I tried to remain upright. There is no way I'm paying that on their say so without taking it for a second opinion, so that's what I'm doing as soon as I get it back. Last time it broke they did drill out the screw, so I can't see why they can't do it this time.

But, worst case scenario, I have to buy a new case, I really don't know whether I can justify it. That's a hell of a lot of money. I could buy a new DKNY watch for less than that (just to pick one thing I saw in a shop window on the way home through town). I could buy a cheap Next watch and not worry about it breaking.

It's my 21st birthday present and I love it, but £225 to repair it? And then to worry about wearing it in case it breaks again? And, and this is the important bit, when it doesn't actually fit me anyway. From having normal sized wrists when I was fat, now I'm normal sized I have teeny tiny wrists. I was trying on watches in Next on the way home, and they all just hung off me. The Gucci one slides up and down my arm and gets annoying when I'm driving. I've never wanted to see if they could replace the bracelet with a smaller one, because I suspected it would be around the £250 mark, and judging by the cost of the case I wasn't far wrong.

So I really don't know what to do. Repair the watch, buy a cheap one and save the good one for best. Cut my losses and either go with cheap or moderately pricey. Forget it and move on, or get my lovely, but loose, watch back.

Fingers crossed that the second opinion comes back good.

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Today really wasn't good. I got a text from my mother saying that my dad had been up all night ill and was now on a drip in a clinic in Egypt where they're on holiday. She texted back later to say he had improved a bit and was now at home, but still, I don't like this sort of worry.

Well, February can only get better.

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By the way, thanks for your comments on my last post. Some days it's not too bad, some days it just gets to me. I have found a film that looks to not tick too many of the "avoid like the plague" boxes, and I had actually been looking into volunteering. Plus I might have to get myself into town to go watch shopping at some point. I refuse to be an utter hermit, no matter how much I'd like to.