Fave Friday

This week: my Pure DAB radio alarm clock. I have this one. I bought it quite some time ago now, new from ebay, and it is one of those sort of unseen things in my home that I use every single day without really noticing, because it wakes me up every morning.

In October it stopped working. It would kind of crash when the alarm went off in the morning. I missed Radio 4 in the morning, but actually I was getting up more quickly because there was nothing interesting to listen to. And anyway, I thought, I've been getting up before 7 for over a decade now and I think I am probably old enough that I no longer need to set two alarms.

(I have traditionally been notoriously bad at waking up. My most notable oversleep was on my very first day at my current school as a trainee.)

That attitude lasted until the penultimate week of term, when I was woken by a text. "That's funny," I thought, "because that app on my phone doesn't switch the sound back on until 6.30am so why did it wake me up?" Then I realised it was 6.52. I had been meant to pick up a colleague at 6.45. I realised that perhaps I did still need two alarms (although, in my defence, my phone was being very shifty and had not sounded the morning alarm in spite of it being set to go off. Perhaps it thought I needed a lie in).

I digress. I went on Amazon looking for a new radio and discovered in the reviews that a faulty power cable causes this problem so I gambled and replaced that for one fifth of the price, and it worked. So happy! I missed the Today program.

For a while, I was bereft when Chris Moyles was dismissed by Radio 1. He never played any music until after 7am and the new guy seemed to have a preference for thumping dance music which is NOT the way to be woken up, I think. So I switched to Radio 4 and have never looked back. This morning, for example, there was an article about 18th century sugar production, quoting the cost of sugar per pound (£10) compared to annual average wage (£15) - I can't explain more than that what it was about as I was drifting in and out of consciousness at the time - and I was teaching that in a lesson period 1 today. How perfect?

Now, I know that was Radio 4 really and this post could easily be about them (maybe next week) but the humble radio alarm clock is the conduit through which I receive this information every morning, and I am a huge fan. I had an inferior radio alarm previously, which never wanted to stay tuned and almost always had an irritating whistle....it stood me in good stead, even though it took me about 5 years to work out how to switch it from radio alarm to beeping alarm because it came without a manual; but I couldn't go back now. The crystal clear sound and the way I don't have to fiddle around with a dial, inching it this way and that until I get to something acceptable make it worth its weight in gold.