Richard Baum

Some success this morning in the struggle with Six Town Housing over the condition of the flat at Sherbourne Court. It is home to a baby (and will soon be home to another), but is riddled with damp which is obviously doing nobody any good.

After some increasingly fraught lobbying yesterday, we have managed to get the maintenance visit which was compassionately scheduled for three weeks from now brought forward to tomorrow. That will allow for repairs to be scheduled, which I have asked to be actually carried out urgently.

Unfortunately the morning has not been entirely successful. I am becoming increasingly tired because of Tamsin’s futuristic alarm clock, which is driving me mad and is so hyper-effective that it wakes me up a full half hour before it’s supposed to each and every day.

It is a Philips “Wake-up Light,” ostensibly designed to wake people up slowly and as nature intended, rather than startle them into consciousness by playing the news intro from Five Live, which is what traditionally woke me up. The advertising blurb talks about people with conditions which make them actually depressed about getting up on dark mornings. Tam seems well up for believing this, and whilst I am sure that there are awful and genuine mental illnesses of this sort, I am struggling to overcome the suspicion that she might just, y’know, not like getting up for work.

So this thing of her’s is a radio alarm clock with a gigantic light on top of it, which slowly comes to life for half an hour before the scheduled alarm call, reaching full brightness at wake-up time rather like the sun rising. And then, at the allotted hour, rather than the radio or some beeping puncturing the air, the sleeper can be stroked gently towards awakenness by the sounds of water rolling over rocks, or birds tweeting in the trees, or, oddly, frogs croaking. Tamsin likes the birds.

Apparently Tam likes this new method. Unfortunately I think I have the world’s most sensitive eyes, because the very instant the light begins its grim march towards full shininess, I wake up. And then I spend the next half an hour staring at the ceiling watching it get brighter and brighter, like a passenger staring out the window on a space ship to the Sun.

For her, this alarm clock does exactly what it says on the box. She langurously stretches out at 7am with a smile on her face. I look bitter and annoyed, and would much prefer to revert to the traditional method which saw me flailing about like a madman as the news headlines blare from the wall, wondering whether I am still in my hideious nightmare or whether the FTSE losing 2000 points in one morning is actually true.

What makes the situation worse is that I bought the damn thing, as a birthday present. And it cost the best part of £100! One hundred pounds to be woken up for work in the most irritating way possible.

She’s bounding round the house like a song bird, fresh as a daisy, whilst I am half an hour more tired than I was before, becoming insane with hatred for the little orange glow in the corner of the room. I have tried wearing a mask to shield my eyes, but frankly it makes me look like a buffoon. And I think I have an odd-shaped face because it won’t sit right on it.

There is no escape from this. Even now I can feel it burning its fake sunshine into my eyes. I can’t bring myself to deprive her of her morning crux, but how’s a man supposed to get a good night’s sleep when the sun itself rises in his bedroom? Answers on a postcard please.

Rick