In her shop in downtown Nice, A Heure d’Émilie, a young watchmaker is about to set the new time on hundreds of watches. Passionate about the ingenious mechanisms of watches or clocks, Émilie faces this excess work with enthusiasm and determination.
I put them back on time, otherwise my customers will pick up their watch which is not on time.
In addition to the watches entrusted to him she must also pay for the ones she sells in the store. Impossible to let go of a watch indicating the wrong time! But while it may seem easy for some watches, in reality it is not always easy. Occasionally “the winders are so small that it is difficult to set them on time“. For other mechanisms, the customer has simply forgotten how to do it.
So Emilie does it for them and it happens (rarely!) That she does not know how to do it. So she searches. Sometimes she makes inquiries, but she always finds. Barely 26 years old, she has been practicing this passion for 10 years already. She knows how much her customers can become attached to watches. This can come from the sentimental or market value of tocantes, sometimes bequeathed by ancestors. Consequence of this attachment, some clients come to see her every six months, at the time of the hour change precisely.
The time change comes back every six months some customers too
“I even have clients who only come for the winter change, once a year “, it means that there are “summer or winter customer“. Like many people from the French Riviera, his clients are reluctant to bring the time forward or back, despite the ritual established twice a year for 45 years, to save energy.
“VSSome customers have 2 watches“Emilie tells us again with a big smile. A way of always being punctual without worrying too much about the time change. For the anecdote, like a shoemaker, Émilie tells us that very often watchmakers are very punctual with customers especially to make the work finished, but that these same watchmakers are known to be incorrigible latecomers …
As for the time change, Émilie hesitated, because there was talk of abolishing this practice which is current on the Côte d’Azur as everywhere else on the old continent. Following a vote in the European Parliament, a measure supposed to harmonize practices should have put an end to this ritual of changing the hour. But everything has been suspended due to the coronavirus epidemic. So we continue to change the time like every six months since 1976, and Émilie to wind up her beloved clockwork mechanisms.