I noticed something about my old alarm clock this morning. It's not very friendly.
I've had it since I was about 10 years old, it's one of those old digital ones with a wood style plastic covering and bright red digital lettering and a few brown buttons adorning the top. I usually use my mobile as an alarm clock, then the old brown digital thing goes off a few minutes later as a back up. This morning the mobile started doing it's sweet chirping sound as if to say "here's a nice gentle sound to lull you from your sleep, now please wake up". The chirping gradually gets louder and louder but remains quite pleasant, even if it does get extremely loud after 30secs or so.
The old clock on the other hand... well it has this incredibly loud and intrusive harsh beeping sound that it repeats continuously, as if to say "you're still in bed? what the f*** you doing there? get the f*** up now and turn me off as I'm not going to stop until you do and I can keep doing this all day you know, I'm a mains powered 1980's alarm clock, alarming by name, alarming by nature and that's what I was put on earth to do so you better get used to it buddy 'cos I you 'aint 'gonna get any beauty sleep while I'm around!" until you flick the switch to turn it off. It used to have a snooze feature but that broke years ago, once the alarm clock realised that that was the only nice thing about it.
Saying all this I do like my alarm clock as it does the job it was intended to do very well and has only every let me down a couple of times when I've set the time wrong. I just wished it would surprise me occasionally with a nice chirpy sound, an invigorating "Good Morning!" and a warm bagel and a cup of earl grey tea ;)
x