When I was growing up it was always a sign of intelligence to own a wrist watch. As kids we had no concept of time and we didn't need to worry about time. A wrist watch was something that we knew would govern our lives and was just something else to lose. Then along came the digital watch.

I'm sure the digital watch must have been invented by some one who's kids always stayed out later that they should and were never on time for tea, but hey, they didn't own a wrist watch so they couldn't tell what time it was.

Digital watches changed all of this, digital watches were cool they did all sorts of cool digital things that posh quartz wrist watches didn't do.

The good people at Casio made the coolest digital watches, these had calculators on them, you could play games on them, albeit very basic number games and they played crazy digital tunes like "The Yellow Rose of Texas" in a horrible tinny pling plong fashion.

But all the kids loved Casio digital watches.

Soon manufacturers from all over Japan and China were coming up with digital watches that copied the Casio version but nothing could surpass it.

It just wasn't the same when on Christmas Day you eagerly opened your presents hoping for a Casio Digital watch only to discover that your parents had gone out and purchased you what they thought to be the latest thing in high-tech only to find out you were going to be just another has been at school as far as super cool digital watches were concerned.

Digital watches have come along way since my boyhood years, basically they are still the same time piece. They still tell the time on a grey screen with black digits but nowadays they have been more under engineered more than anything. The evolution of the digital watch has gone backwards.

This is mainly down to the fact that Casio decided that they'd taken the digital watch as far as they could and moved on to bigger and better things. As well as this the youth of the day moved on and realised that once you'd listened to an awfully tinny rendition of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" approximately one hundred times you didn't really care for the tune that much.

And then one day it dawned on the youth of the day that we were becoming slaves to time. We'd been lured into a world of digital slavery by our parents on the pre-tense of being cool and trendy by having a Casio digital watch that did all the things we could ever dream of, and plenty more.

But suddenly we knew what time tea was, we knew what time we had to be in by, the digital watch cut short our fun time and we had no excuse any longer.

So we all stopped wearing watches for a couple of years and dragged our childhood out for as long as we could, it wasn't cool to wear a smart quartz watch and any how they were too expensive to lose so our parents wouldn't buy us one.

So for approximately one year of my childhood I was suckered into an age of digital slavery by my parents, my peers and by Casio.

I've never owned a digital watch since but I do love my wrist watch, and yes, I am a slave to time and I have just bought my son a solar watch, and he loves it. Little does he know!

And I've not heard the "Yellow Rose of Texas" for about 25 years.