FEATURE: C.O.C.O. Meet Up London 2023

Way back in 2022 our Swedish friend Jim Dollares announced that he planned to visit London and wanted to arrange a THF forum meet-up. Despite a tiny ripple of enthusiasm in the forum this ultimately came to nothing and ultimately we decided on Jim and I meeting in London with Charlie (Imagwai) joining us in the evening for dinner. But once the date was set it transpired that this wouldn't be possible due to child care commitments and the intervention of British Rail... instead Charlie said we were welcome to visit him in his opulent Kent abode in the evening, so that's what we did.

Yes I already mentioned British Rail, and British Rail were quite a big part of this story one way or another. Put simply, there was a rail strike, which meant if we were gonna make this work then we needed to take the trains as much out of the equation as possible. So, I decided the smart thing to do would be to drive to Charlie's, get the train to London and back, and then drive home (Jim was staying overnight with Charlie before heading back to the airport). This eventually turned into ‘drive to Orpington’ since the limited train service available served that station better than Charlie's local station, albeit the last train back was still a ridiculously early 6:05pm!

And so on the morning of Saturday the 13th of May I found myself rudely awakened at 6:00AM ready for a long drive, including a jaunt across the Dartford Bridge. I did the trip non-stop and got to Orpington at 8:45am.

Unlike the station (which was like stepping back into the 1980s) the train was modern and comfortable and surprising empty considering the reduced service. But then Orpington is a ‘commuter town’ and this was Saturday so it kinda made sense. Twenty minutes later I saw The Shard in the distance and realised that I was nearly at the station. I took a couple of tubes to Oxford Street and then sent Jim a text telling him I was nearby. After a little confusion it transpired he was standing outside the Breitling boutique on Bond Street.

It’s a curious thing to meet someone for the first time when you’ve been talking to them almost every day for 5-6 years, but we hit it off right away and headed up Bond Street, stopping into Richard Orlinski quickly to see his sculptures. Jim asked how much the Gorilla sculptures were and we were told the smallest one was £3500. Then we realised that the smallest one was smaller than we thought, and we both agreed that you would have to buy the next one up or forget it. 

Shortly thereafter we headed next door but one to the Eden Gallery, principally to see the Alec Monopoly artworks which Jim was very excited about. There were of course other artworks in the gallery, including a couple of pieces by ‘Joseph’ one of which said ‘Don’t forget that you are going to die’… and another which said ‘All You Need is Cash’, but the first one was the more memorable and we quoted it several times during the day. 

 

 

Photos taken, we headed off for the TAG Heuer boutique on Oxford Street, but on the way we came across the Longines boutique and decided to pop in for a quick look. I can’t honestly say that anything really appealed to me that much in there, but Jim tried on the sector dial and took great delight in winding it. I must admit, it was very smooth, certainly better than the Calibre 5 in my new Aquaracer.

Jim moved on to some classic looking pieces with gold bezels, first rose and then yellow gold and had myself, the staff (and the other customer sitting next to him) in stitches with his hilarious comments. 

“It is so tacky… I love it!” 

This would become the theme of the day, Jim’s hilarious/outrageous comments!

Onwards we strode down Oxford Street to the TAG Heuer boutique (which is always further than you think). Once there Jim decided it would be a good idea for us to take wrist shots with the boutique in the background, but this didn’t really work and to be honest I wasn’t sure it was the best idea in the world what with all the watch crime we hear about in London. Still, we got a shot, albeit without the boutique in the frame, but we know where it was taken I guess.

Oddly enough I had an email a few weeks ago telling me that the store had re-opened after its refit, but I had forgotten this, so it was a surprise when I walked in through the door and saw the new look. They’ve done a great job, although it looked a bit smaller than I remembered it – pretty sure it isn’t though because the stairs are still in the same place! 

 

We were in TAG Heuer for quite a long time (maybe not quite an hour but probably getting on for that) and we tried on quite a lot of watches… but we started with the woeful new ‘Glassbox’ models. I had already seen them, but Jim was keen to get his hands on them, and then he was disappointed when he did. I really cannot fathom the positive response to these watches, and a second meeting with them did absolutely nothing to change my mind. 

Jim was also completely unimpressed by them and we quickly moved on to something else, in this case the 42mm Carreras with the orange swoosh. Jim was also very keen to try on the supposedly ‘Unisex’ 36mm Carrera in pink, but once he got it onto his wrist he quickly realised it looked ridiculous. Annoyingly it looks almost red in my photo, but it is actually a very deep pink.

I noticed in a cabinet they had the Carrera 44mm Sports ‘Porsche Orange Lava’ Special Edition and was super impressed by how much better it looked in real life than it had in photographs. I asked to try it on and immediately started weighing up whether this should be the watch that I blow my hard earned ‘TAG Fund’ on. But then Jim pointed out that I don’t own a Porsche and questioned whether it is acceptable to own a watch like that if you don’t…

Suitably chastened, I set it aside and picked up the new green dial/bezel Carrera Sports, which is fine but not something I think I would buy. I don’t know, green is a difficult colour to get right and while I think they got it damned near perfect on the new Aquaracer on this one it has a tealish tint to it that makes it difficult to match with the bezel. 

 

Then I spotted last year’s solid gold Carrera Panda and I just had to get a look at that. Now, again this looked much better in the flesh than I imagined and it’s hard to explain why someone would pay £2000 more to own the rose gold Porsche version with the red strap, because this is classy and (yes) elegant and that is a bit naff and while the strap is funky, it also seems rather fragile – and no doubt bloody expensive to replace!

We also got a chance to try on the Dark Lord (second time for me) and while I still like it, it didn’t seem quite as mega as the first time I saw it. But that said, if it was like £5000 instead of nearly £8000 I would probably have taken it home with me! In any case I think I can safely say that is my favourite Monaco now, and if I should come into sufficient easy funds (say, a massive Premium Bond win) then it could be a no brainer.

Having drunk our bottled water and taken up enough of Chau’s time, we grabbed our watches from the counter and prepared to leave. We headed out of the door and Jim said he needed to grab some coffee as he had a headache. We headed across Oxford Street and into Selfridges, having a quick scout around ‘The Wonder Room’ before heading to the café for coffee. 

We perused the menu and settled on carrot cake, which was pretty nice. As it should be for £8.95!

Suitably refreshed we wandered back to ‘The Wonder Room’ and made a beeline for the Hublot stand. 

A man called Sasha approached us and asked us if we would like to try anything on…

“Yes,” said Jim. “But not this one (pointing to the ‘Spirit of Big Bang’) because it is a Richard Mille for poor people.”     

Unbelievable! 

 

Sasha chose to ignore this appalling slur on the Hublot name and Jim elected to try on the ‘Square Bang’ in titanium and gold versions. 

We were invited to sit down at the leather clad table behind the Hublot booth and Sasha set about retrieving the watches Jim had asked for. I must admit, the Square Bang was pretty cool and you could certainly tell we had moved up a price bracket or two from the Dark Lord. It was also rather large, carrying an extra 3mm over the Monaco (which is already a sizeable 39mm square). 

While we sat in the Selfridges café, Jim had told me that we should make up a story to explain ‘why’ we were trying on stupidly expensive watches that we couldn’t afford. And so Sasha listened patiently as Jim spun his tale of turning 40 and wanting to research a special purchase… sniffing the possibility of a sale. Not realising that the guy in front of him was actually 34. The gold version was £34,000 and seemed a bit OTT, but the titanium model was a more reasonable £20,000... if you can call that ‘reasonable’. 

Jim asked to see more gold pieces and Sasha produce the Classic Fusion in both three hand and chronograph variants. Honestly, for some reason the chronograph looked a bit like a watch from Michael Kors that should cost £350, but the three hander was a lot better. It still didn’t really look worth £13,000 or whatever it cost, but it was certainly an improvement.  

Finally we had a look at the Big Bang ‘Gourmet’ which is made of Damascus steel (as used in the manufacture of high end kitchen knives). It was certainly a statement, but I’m not totally sold on the idea of metal that looks like wood. It’s a bit odd to say the least, and this particular model has a couple of gnarly looking ‘knots’ right on the bezel, very distracting and more than a little aesthetically displeasing.

 

We took our leave and had a mooch around The Wonder Room, dismissing the Bell & Ross stand and the pre-owned Rolex Submariners in favour of the Mont Blanc stand where we spotted the 1858 Iced Sea Automatic Date, a watch with a dial that’s supposed to look like ice… at least if you hold it in exactly the right spot so the light hits it just right. 

Our old friend Sasha reappeared to serve us at the Mont Blanc stand, but this time we weren’t invited to sit down; I guess that only happens if you are looking at watches that cost at least £10,000. This time he just sort of tossed the watch at us and then stared off into the distance, completely disinterested and practically oozing disdain from his pores.

The watch was okay, I guess, but we continued on and stumbled across the Black Bay 925. Yay! I peered at it in the case and it looked like it had some odd brown marks on it. A different guy served us this time and when confronted with the fact that the watch was tarnishing quite badly he actually had the brass neck to say that ‘Yes, the customers like that, it’s like brass where it changes as you wear it’.

Sorry, but no, silver is not like brass. No one is buying a ‘silver’ Black Bay hoping for it to turn brown, especially when Tudor promised us that this was special silver that didn’t tarnish. Ha. Well that was clearly marketing bullshit because this thing looked like one of my old teaspoons. And to be honest if I bought it on the premise that it wouldn’t tarnish I think it would be within my rights to ask for my money back. It looked horrible anyway, the silver really does not make for a nice case material and if it’s not even going to stay shiny then what the hell is the point?

Our next stop was the Chopard boutique in Selfridges where we were served by an Asian lady called Ting and Jim was keen to find out if the Alpine Eagle was as good as I had said following my previous encounter with it in Harrods a couple of years prior. Ting brought us the classic blue three hander and also the chronograph version on both steel and rubber, meanwhile I noticed that these were ‘Display Only’ models, what the hell – is Chopard turning into Rolex now or something? I know the Alpine Eagle is popular but is it really moving into the realms of the wait list? Or is this just the usual Swiss psychological warfare in action?

Hilariously, here’s where it all went wrong. As most salespeople tend to, Ting made the disastrous error of asking if the watches were for a ‘special occasion’. While I resisted the urge to pretend that I was Jim’s sugar daddy, Jim persisted with his nonsensical 40th birthday ruse. Only he hadn’t quite thought it through.

“Oh, when is your birthday?” asked Ting.

 

“When is my birthday,” stumbled the hapless Swedish guy.

He could hardly tell her it was about a month ago as that meant he was looking at next April for his 40th, so he sat there looking bemused instead.

“When is my birthday… what month is it now?”

“My birthday is in…..(long painful pause) …the autumn…. (another long painful pause) …October, yes October.”

Wow, Ting didn’t even raise an eyebrow. What a pro. Instead she set about pestering Jim for his personal information, which he absolutely wasn’t going to give her and eventually we made our excuses and left.

We wandered around the perimeter of The Wonder Room, and had a squint at some Chanel J12’s which Jim declared ‘cheap looking’ and some extravagant and no doubt pricey Bvlgari snake watches before Jim declared he was hungry again. Didn’t we just eat carrot cake? 

Oh well, sure… I could eat!

 

The nearest places (I thought) I knew were All Bar One and Garfunkels on Oxford Circus so we set off in that general direction, thankful that while it was warm it wasn’t as horribly hot as the weather forecasters had promised. Arriving at Oxford Circus we hung a left and headed up the top end of Regent Street, but Garfunkels was sadly nowhere to be seen. Slightly annoyed and disappointed we went into All Bar One instead, a place that I’ve had slightly mixed experiences of, but generally on balance positive. As is the way these days, they had the stupid ‘Order at the Table with the App’ thing going on, but Jim (being 20 years my junior) was quickly on it and we ordered. As we sat there chatting we took our watches off and took some pics…

 

Eventually the food came and it was… kind of okay, I guess. Mine seemed to consist mainly of herbs, but the pieces of chicken and bacon that were amongst the chunks of bread were fine and the fries would have been nice if they had been hot enough to melt the cheese they’d grated onto them. Jim mentioned later as we walked down Regent Street that he didn’t think ‘Pak Choi’ was All Bar One’s speciality. Which seems like a polite way of saying it was a bit sucky. What a shame Garfunkels had closed and what a damn shame I didn't know about the 'Sound Cafe' which is a lot nearer the TAG Heuer boutique and now my favourite place to eat in London!

Time was knocking on, unbelievably it was now mid-afternoon and with the absolutely last train out of ‘Olde London Town’ at 6:05pm we had to get our skates on. Realistically I had always known that we would not have time to visit all the watch shops we would have liked to (we didn’t even touch Bond Street – Gah!), but now time really was running out and we needed to maximise what little we had left. I assumed Jim would want to visit the ‘Ooobloh’ boutique, but instead he said he wanted to see more TAG Heuers. Excellent! This meant visiting Watches of Switzerland’s ‘megastore’ on Regent Street, which has three floors of watch boutiques and was certainly the best choice bang-for-buck wise.

 

The WOS store on Regent Street is a pretty impressive space and unfortunately we didn’t have time to explore all of it today; prioritising, we headed straight downstairs to the basement where the TAG Heuer, Tudor, Breitling, Hublot and Zenith boutiques reside. We made a beeline for the TAG Heuer ‘area’, let’s not call it a boutique as it really doesn’t merit the name, it’s more like a pop-up store in a shipping container, which I guess makes it ever so slightly avant garde. But not really.

A man appeared and Jim demanded to try on both the new, blue dial, gold bezel Aquaracer on the blue rubber strap and also the ‘still hanging around’ older, 41mm model with the full two tone bracelet. Jim sat down at the table with the guy while I perused the cabinets, like we were contemplating a ‘distraction heist’. We weren’t, but it’s fun to think about it. Eventually I went and sat down too and once again it was time for a classic Jimbo quote…

The man looked on as Jim described the older 41mm Aquaracer. “This one is very douchebaggy….” said the Swede in his hilarious Swedish-American accent.

“This one,” he said, jabbing the new 43mm Aquaracer at the confused chap in front of him… “this one is less douchebaggy, but still kind of douchebaggy. But this is a good thing because this is the image I want to give.”

The poor guy looked utterly bewildered. I imagine that’s not the sort of thing he hears on a daily basis to be fair, and as soon as he got the watches safely back in the display case he disappeared, never to be seen again. Perhaps he went and squeezed himself into the back office and watched us loitering by the Zeniths on the security cameras?

Speaking of the Zeniths we found a hideous brown Zenith Chronomaster Revival and Jim encouraged me to send a photo of it to Charlie. “I quite like that one,” said Charlie later. I wasn’t a bit surprised. 

Mind you, it was a thing of majesterial beauty compared to the abomination that is the Defy Revival. Uggh!

We browsed around the Hublots, noting they had some of the Richard Orlinski collaboration watches and it struck me how subtle they were – not something you’d automatically associate with Hublot, subtlety. Looking at it again it occurred to me that if I did happen to be a massive Orlinski fanboi I don’t think I would have found the watch ‘Orlinski’ enough to satisfy my Orlinski cravings. It just looks like a fairly normal Oobloh with some faceting to the case and dial (which is quite hard to see unless it catches the light just right, honestly). I can’t help thinking they should have included a gorilla of some description on the dial somewhere, even if it was a very small one. 

Finally we ‘washed-up’ (is probably the best way to say it) in the Breitling boutique, which was completely unmanned. A couple of watches caught Jim’s eye, one of those awful ones with the awful bracelets. Okay, I realise this is Breitling so I will have to be more specific… if I’m not mistaken it was a 42mm Chronomat panda, with that weird bracelet that looks like it’s made of chrome plated cigars. Jim liked it quite a bit, I didn’t. I could see why Jim liked the bracelet though, as it was extremely ‘douchey’ looking.

Then we tried on some rather anonymous Avenger thing and the lady who served us (eventually) brought us the ultra-bland Tudor Black Bay Chronograph to try on, which is so boring I can barely even remember anything about it. God knows why that one is such a ‘hit’ with the watch buying public. Probably because it’s a cheap Daytona substitute.

Time was ticking by and we headed back upstairs, we really only had time to try on one more watch and Jim passed over the opportunity to try on the Oris Kermit (which is brighter than the sun, but utterly ghastly) in favour of this Bremont, which is actually a bit more interesting than it looks at first sight. Unfortunately the things that make it interesting aren’t actually visible when it’s on the wrist, or indeed viewed from any angle except the side. Shame that since they obviously went to some effort to construct the case.

Our salesman Raffaele was a character, and his ‘performance’ climaxed with a funny little move where he had Jim put his hand in his like he was about to propose to him or something. He squinted at the watch on Jim’s wrist, then tapped his arm with two fingers before pronouncing the watch a perfect fit. Hilarious. Nonsense!

Sadly, it was now 5:20pm and we were in grave danger of missing our train if we didn’t get a shift on, so we bid farewell to Raffaele and headed back out onto the sunny street, turning south to the tube station at Piccadilly Circus. We descended into the depths of the tube station and sat on the platform waiting for the next train.

Suddenly I heard an uncomfortable groan from my companion and looked up expecting to see bodies squashed into the train carriage like in 'Train to Busan' or something. It was busy, but nothing a Londoner wouldn’t encounter on a regular basis and certainly nothing to start groaning about. 

Thankfully it was only two stops on the ‘unbearably busy’ tube train and then a couple more on a quieter train before we were back to London Bridge station. We were rushing about trying to find somewhere to buy a ticket and eventually managed to find a machine and then headed off to the platform. 

We managed to catch the 5:36 train, which seemed like we’d left a few minutes on the table, but it would have been so easy to lose that time and miss the last train to Orpington. Eventually we made it back and we dragged our weary selves to my van and headed up the road to Charlie's. 

It was great to finally meet Charlie, though of course he wasn’t really as I’d imagined him and I was shocked to discover he was three years my junior, which meant I was the old man of the group. How depressing. After some more food (thanks Charlie) and a quick tour of the house, we headed out to the man cave in the garden and Charlie produced his legendary eight-slot watch box. Unlike me Charlie wisely limits himself to eight watches, which in hindsight seems like a genuinely excellent idea and quite enough watches for any sane person. As it happens, we were lucky to see some of the watches as just a few weeks later Charlie got ‘the call’ from his Rolex AD and three of the watches were sold to finance the purchase of a new 36mm Datejust with a stunning blue dial.

Charlie’s collection featured two Squaaaales (a retro 60s one with an original bezel – now sold, and a cool bright blue model), two Heuer Carreras (one of the original re-editions, plus the final ‘proper’ glassbox Panda), his blue Tudor BB58, two Grand Seikos (a cool titanium one and a fusty looking one with a cream dial – now sold) and a 36mm black dial Rolex Explorer – also now sold.

Being rather slender, Charlie favours 36mm watches which obviously wear a bit small on me, in fact some of Charlie’s watches were so small I couldn’t get the bracelets over my hand to try them on! It’s a shame I wasn’t able to bring my watch boxes, it would have been fun to see Charlie and Jim’s reaction to old watches like the S/EL and also to see my 47mm SLR on Charlie’s wrist. I guess I could have dropped some watches to Charlie’s house before I went to London, but it was all such a bloody rush.

We had a lot of laughs and the evening flew by, until at 11 o’clock we called it a night. Jim was obviously very tired after all his travelling and a long day walking around London and I knew I had a fairly long journey home… little did I know that I wouldn’t arrive home until 4AM, five hours after leaving Charlie’s house.

It should all have been so simple, back to the M25, north to the Dartford tunnel, right onto the M1 and keep driving until you get home. But no. Ten minutes after I left Charlie’s house I was diverted off the M25 because it was closed. I don’t know if there were any signs telling me the tunnel was closed, but if there were I didn’t see them. So I thought, okay… annoying but we’ll get back on at the next junction and then we’ll be back on track. To cut a long story short, I drove around in circles and ultimately decided my best course of action was to drive all the way around the M25.

I realise now this probably wasn't the best option, but at the time I was so incredulous that the only way to get across the Thames at night was to drive through Canary Wharf (in a 2014 diesel van let's not forget - so probably gonna get some sort of draconian fine) just did my head in, and so it was that I eventually arrived home, 5 hours later, utterly shattered. 

I woke up about 10am the next day and started receiving WhatsApps from Jim who was making the most of his last day in London by wandering around like some kind of ‘tourist’. He had planned to visit Harrods and check out the rainbow bezel ‘Ooblohs’ but he actually ended up doing a big walk around London instead, taking in Buckingham Palace and the House of Parliament and watching other ‘tourists’ queue to take photos of red telephone boxes…  no really.

I spent my Sunday taking as many painkillers as possible, cursing my ‘genius’ idea to drive around the M25 but quietly pleased that things had (mostly) gone to plan and that we’d all got on in person as well as we do online. I mean you never know, do you? Despite all the aches and pains, the frustration of our various journeys (including Jim’s three-hour bus ride from the airport on the Friday) and the limited time we had available, in the end it was a brilliant, never to be forgotten day.