I had that idea ages ago, amongst others. Should've invented it, mind.

I never get up in the morning, so I had a few ideas, one of which was to get a water pistol and hook it up to an alarm clock so it'd piss all over me chops in the morning. Counts as washing yer face, too; minted.

The other one was getting one of those heated blanket numbers hooked up to an alarm so that if you switched the alarm off and tried to go back to sleep, the blanket would get hotter and hotter until it's unbearable. Gets your sheets well sweaty though, and without the pleasantries which normally accompany such wetification.

Another was that the bed would very slowly be tilted from underneath, meaning you gradually become aware of sleeping on a slope. It'd hopefully get uncomfortable enough before it tipped you out onto the floor. If not, it'd be a grand laugh for anyone else nearby.

Having said all that, when I inherit billions of pounds (I have really thought this through, sadly) I'm going to employ someone to wake me up at 8 in the morning, purely so I can shout "Fuck off!" and go back to sleep.


Oh yes.


I'm beginning to wonder if you could have a guess at my essay deadline timetable by compiling all my random, crappy posts.

The water pistol idea is not as good as you might think. I once woke up by accidentally pouring a glass of water over my own head in my sleep, and it was a quite horrid experience. My girlfriend laughed at me about it the whole day.

I have a brilliant out-of-bed-getting aid, called "a wife". If it weren't for her, I'd be late to work every single day. Mind you, she's also the main reason I want to stay in bed, so it's a bit of a catch-22.

That clock is a fantastic idea.

I do what I think a lot of people do now: alarm clock next to bed and mobile phone alarm set at the other side of the room.

The problem is that the clock has a snooze and the phone doesn't. You'd think walking across the room to switch the mobile phone alarm off might wake me up. Oh no. I just toddle back into bed and continue to hit the snooze button on the alarm clock for almost an hour.

Roll on mass production of Clocky!

>I once woke up by accidentally pouring a glass of water over my own head in my sleep, and it was a quite horrid experience

I once sleep-poured a pint of water over my girlfriend at the time who was sleeping next to me. Didn't get any on me, and put the glass back down, apparently calm and smiling.

I don't remember any of it - I was sound asleep.

And Derek - I feel your pain. I used to set the alarm clock on my PC, on the other side of the room, to make me get up. It never really did. The only thing that can really wake me up is sunshine.

Yeah, sunshine works a treat. For years, I worked a 10:30-to-7 and a 10-to-6:30 shift, which were just great. Not out of work too late to do anything with my life, but able to wake up at a reasonable hour and never had to leave the house before sunrise.

Back to bloody 9-to-5:30 these days. Bugger.

I have the opposite problem: since I went self-employed six years ago and no longer needed an alarm clock, my body decides that it's time to get up roughly two hours before I'd actually like to get up. And it's real "hello, I'm wide awake" stuff. Haven't had a proper lie-in for several years. Gah.

And you're reduced to posting comments on blogs at 8:26.

I was posting comments on blogs at 5am the other morning. Sad, I know.

Yes, terribly sad. Sad, sad, sad.

[coughs]