My watch has been five minutes fast for three years. I know it, so the trick should not work. Still, I reach the platform earlier, buy water without looking over my shoulder and sit down before the driver starts closing the luggage compartment.
At the coastal terminal, the paper timetable had been corrected in blue pen. The bus was due at 12:20, or 12:35, depending on which line you trusted. My watch said 12:17. The clock above the kiosk had stopped at 9:04.
Time as a small piece of luggage
A travel watch does not need to make time more precise. The road will undo precision soon enough. It needs to make time easier to carry. A glance should be enough. The strap should tolerate heat, a jacket cuff and the sudden decision to wash dust from your hands at a station sink.
The bus arrived when it arrived. An older passenger folded my ticket lengthwise so the destination remained visible and told me which side would have shade. I sat there. Five minutes later—real or borrowed—we pulled away.
Keeping the watch ahead is not about fooling myself. It is a small agreement with the uncertain parts of the route. Those minutes can absorb a slow queue, an unreadable sign or a conversation that deserves to finish. They are not saved. They are spent before I need them.
By the sea, the road narrowed and the bus stopped for goats. Nobody checked the time. I did anyway, then left the watch where it was: five minutes into a future that never quite arrived.