The one. A review of my Rolex.

There are times in your life where logic and rationale doesn't come into your decision making equation - you just know you want something and you act upon that impluse, buying this 50th anniversary edition of a Rolex Sea-Dweller 126600 (MkII for the real Rolex fanboys) was one such moment for me. It was the year that I turned 40.

I don't come from money and I'm not 'rich' in the modern sense of the word, I work extremely hard and I do ok. I basically have zero vices and I am not extravagant or materialistic...but I did drop £9300 in a oner when I purchased this watch.

The above is the mind of self-justifying mind games I had to play with myself, when justifying this watch to myself. 'What will others think of me', 'is it a waste' etc... Ultimately, for reasons I'll explain in another post I had 'a story' and that seemingly appealed to a Rolex AD after I was on the wait list for a mere 2 months before one morning I was invited to buy this Rolex.

The watch itself is just simply stunning. I instantly feel better wearing this watch and it is far more robust that people give it credit for. I've worn it in (posh holiday) gyms, playing beach volleyball, in the sea, in the pool, whilst canoeing, whilst playing tennis etc and I will continue to do so.

The light bounces off this watch, perhaps that's because it's 904L stainless steel, whereas most - if not basically all - other steel watches are 316L stainless steel. It's incredibly comfortable and very easy to alter the micro-adjustment on-the-fly when I'm overseas somewhere hot and my wrist expands.

The ceramic bezel is a thing of beauty and continuously shinny and alluring and the bezel itself has crisp bite when you grip it to alter the bezel if you ever actually did wear it for scuba diving. If you were crazy enough to do saturation diving this watch also has you covered with a 4000ft (1220m) dive rating and helium escape value to show off to Hugo and Rupert at the bank...

There is something perfectly balanced about the weight of this watch, I've heard of others complaining of this, but I've never felt that was an issue for me.

The dial is just so pretty. It is something that I look at a lot, which is actually very distracting because when I check the time I often have to do it twice, as that first instinctive look at your wrist at the time simply makes mu brain go, "oh that is pretty", then I go back to my day...then seconds later, I realise that I actually do need to know the time so I check my wrist again. Repeat. Again and again.

This is my grail watch and I absolutely love it.