My alarm is a c***. I’ve decided. In fact, I’ve decided that I’m never going to put it on again.

That sound? At this hour? At this moment? I was in the middle of-

A pebble dropped on a trampoline. The pebble screams every time it lands. Or maybe its more like a beep. Or a bleep, like those running tests we had to do in PE – as if adolescence wasn’t hard enough.

What it reminds me of most is the beeping of hospital beds, which keep the steadiest time, right up until the moment before death, till everything has gone wrong, the heart convulses, the pulse races, and sudden madness makes a last ditch attempt to bring us back, to be miraculous, to survive. That’s what my alarm is like. And no I’m not being dramatic.

Sometimes I hear it when it isn’t mine. In the cereal isle of Tescos, interrupting the quiet of a public library, or the silent raucousness of my commute. That sound sounds and suddenly I’m late, and sweating and hungover and about to miss something very VERY important.

Anyway, the point is I’m never putting it on again. Until tomorrow.