Ben Winwood's Babysitter Watch

Ben Winwood's Babysitter Watch: Object Post 68

Source? Very likely Ben bought it with his wages

Significance? It was part of the reason Ben left the twins alone by the river

Fate? By now, Ben will have swapped it for a smartphone which is an updated version of the same idea. He may still have the watch in his sock drawer

Author’s inspiration? High-tech watches were big at one point

Appeared in? Kayak!

I call it a watch, but it’s more than that. Mum calls it ‘Ben’s Babysitter’.

Ben Winwood was eighteen and in his first job when he took his twin brothers, Mark and Luke, along with their kayaks, to the river where they were going to meet their uncle, Owen, for a kayaking adventure down the river.

The arrangement was that Ben would deliver the twins and their kayaks into Owen’s keeping, but it didn’t turn out like that.

Owen was late. Ben’s high-tech watch corroborated that fact. Ben relied on that watch a lot.

It tells him when to get up and when to go to sleep, what to wear and how many times to kiss high girlfriend – only kidding there. Seriously, it does just about everything but cook the dinner.

Right now it was telling him he was going to be late for work. Naturally, Ben was doing his ‘nana.

Ben was a helpful big brother. He looked like the twins (and they all looked like their father) and he shared their pride and care of their possessions. He lent Luke his own kayak for the trip, and he fully intended to wait for their uncle… but…

“You’ll get the sack,” I told Ben.

Ben, with a job to keep and a van and girlfriend to consider, reluctantly left, after exacting a promise from the boys that they would wait for their uncle.

Ben presumably got to work on time, but there was a world of trouble waiting for him later that day and not even his babysitter watch could get him out of it.

Ben Winwood and his babysitter watch appear in Kayak!

 ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, anthologist and reader. You can find you way into her maze of websites and blogs via the portal here.(Sally is me, by the way.)

The goal for 2017 was to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. 2017 is well behind us, but I ran out of year before running out of books. As of June 2018 I STILL hadn't run out of books, but many of those still to come are MIA by which I mean I don't have copies and remember little about them. There are more new books in the pipeline, and I'm certainly showcasing those, but in between times, I'm profiling some of my characters, places and objects. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along on this journey so far!