ring the bells, wake the town, everyone is sleeping....

Who says I'm stuck in my ways?  Only this week I made a fundamental change that is having a profound impact on my life every single day, right from the very first moment I wake up.

Quite literally.*

* literally literally, I mean, not figuratively literally.

I've changed my alarm tone.

Now, clearly I'm not suggesting that this is as stressful an event as divorce, bereavement or moving house... that would be ridiculous.... but it's surely in the top ten.  No?  Wouldn't you say?

You might think that the only important part about an alarm is that it wakes you up, not how it wakes you up... but surely the way you are woken up is absolutely critical to your mental and physical wellbeing: the transition between asleep and awake must be managed with great care to ensure that you can be as productive as possible during the day.  Naturally, in an ideal world we would all wake up naturally and get up in our own time, but in practice we all have places we need to be and don't have that luxury.  Hence the regrettable need for an alarm.  But who wants to be woken up with a jerk?  That can't be good for your heart.  Surely it makes more sense to be eased gently out of your slumbers to better set you up to cope with the stresses of the day ahead?

After many happy years contentedly using the classic "bell tower" tone, my head has been turned by the wide selection of new tones included as part of the upgrade to iOS7, and I've shifted to "cosmic".  It was time for a change, but a change like this is stressful and fraught with risk.  What if the new alarm tone had a negative impact on my day?  How would I cope?

Well, two days in, and it's really far too early to judge if the change has been entirely successful or not.  What I will say at this early stage is that the new alarm tone has already had a positive effect on my relationship: rather than dragging myself out of bed without a word and heading to the bathroom, now I have a thirty second conversation with my wife.  Sure, we only talk about what we think to the new alarm tone, but that's two mornings in a row now.  That has to be good, right?  We're both undecided on the new tone, but at least it's given us something to talk about.

The cat hates it.  She's made her preference for the old alarm tone abundantly clear.

last night I dreamt....

....that someone had given me a Cliff Richard Greatest Hits album for Christmas.

Now, I like "Wired for Sound" as much as anyone, and I know that amantadine can give you nightmares, but this troubles me.  It really does.

Perhaps I've been watching too many zombie programmes.

road to nowhere....

I had a dream last night.

I was driving down the motorway. It looked a lot like the southbound stretch of the M1 around junction 23, but I suppose it could have been anywhere. I was driving along happily enough, when I was overtaken by a car travelling in reverse. I was a little taken aback, watched the driver as he disppeared up the road with his hands on the wheel but his whole body twisted round to look over his shoulder, and I found myself wondering if it was even possible for a car to travel that fast in reverse.

Or perhaps I was just travelling really slowly?

I'm desperately resisting the tempation to view this dream as any kind of metaphor for my brilliant career.

I don't need no good advice.....

I've only just remembered that I had a dream last night. It was so vivid that when I woke up in the small hours, I almost got up and wrote it all down before I forgot. Needless to say, I didn't bother getting up, and as a result I've only just thought about it and I've forgotten most of the details.

Hmm.

What I can remember though is that I was being chased through a wood. I can't remember now who was chasing me (although it seemed remarkable at the time). I do remember that I wasn't alone though - oh no. Throughout the chase I was accompanied by Harry Redknapp and Tony Adams. Neither seemed unduly concerned by the pursuit, and both seemed rather more interested in offering me a string of 'helpful' advice.


Adams (l) & Redknapp (r)

Now, I know that they've done brilliantly at Portsmouth Football Club, but are these really the people you would want advising you on a life and death chase through a forest? It's a bit different to a relegation dog-fight, isn't it?

Mind you, they're probably more useful than Avram Grant and Steve Clarke, and certainly better than having Gary Megson offering up helpful tips. If I had to pick any Premier League football manager to be watching my back in a matter of life and death, I'm pretty sure it would be Roy Keane. He'd scare me, for sure, but wouldn't you rather have him on your side than not?

Anyway.

Frustratingly, I don't remember if we managed to escape or not. Well, I'm not that worried about the safety of Redknapp and Adams, but it would be good to know if I made it out okay.

Perhaps I'll get the next installment tonight. I'll take a pen and paper to bed just in case.

dream on...

I've had a number of things chewing over in my mind recently, and maybe as a direct result of this, I woke up at about 4am this morning having had an extremely vivid dream:

It is late at night and I am in the living room at my parents' house. Everyone else has long since gone to bed. The phone rings (only it isn't a phone, it is coming from my laptop). I answer and there is a moment of silence at the other end before a slightly reluctant voice speaks. I recognise the voice at once, even though I haven't heard it now for something like 5 years. It is my friend Justin. He wants something but he doesn't want to tell me what it is and asks me to go and get my older brother. I go upstairs to the room where my brother is sleeping and try to wake him up but he's soundly asleep and he barely stirs. I go back downstairs to discover that Justin is now quite agitated and can no longer wait for my brother to get up and talk to him. He has something he needs to say and it now looks like he will have to say it to me. He tells me that he needs someone to look after his parents' luggage. They are in the airport and about to go to Eygpt, but for some reason they have to leave their bags behind and need someone to look after them. As we speak, Justin tells me that he has already sent them to my mum and dad's house and wanted to make sure that they would be taken care of.

...but my mum and dad have just moved, I tell him. The bags will be going to the old house, and there will be noone there to receive them.

And then I woke up.

What does it mean?

Answers on a postcard please.