The alarm clock. The blue Oregon Scientific alarm clock, which had served its use now for not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six years. Providing me with the most dreaded sound every single school-morning – failing only when I forget to click the central ‘bell’ button the night before. And how much do I miss slapping the perfectly crafted snooze button on top of the device, giving me six more minutes of ‘heaven’. Or at least that was what it felt like, at 6 in the morning.

But this alarm clock was not just another alarm clock. The frequency of the alarm sound was so intensely annoying that the internal anger built up in your body alone would wake you up. Of course there were times when I hit the snooze button too many times, switched the alarm off altogether, or, simply failing to hear the alarm completely (the morning after that late Geography Coursework night). And there were of course the times when I woke up before the alarm clock even sounded. Fortunately I never received detention or anything because I was late for class. I did once come in late when a fellow student was performing during music lesson back in Year 8. Sorry, fellow student.

Sometimes on innocent Saturday mornings it would wake me up at 6am – perhaps because the clock fell forward, hitting the alarm button, switching on the alarm. For the nights I couldn’t sleep it provided me with a bright blue backlight and a highly disturbing buzzing sound when I press it to check the time every five minutes. For the long years it didn’t break, it continued to serve its task of waking me up for school.

The clock had other notable features too:

• it could synchronise its time with some sort of base station, so that the clock remains accurate with some sort of atomic clock. Oh, it only works in the UK. Useful.
• it could show the day of week (which is not even displayed in the default clock view) in other languages such as German. So it can show a lovely MI instead of WE. Useful.
• In additional to the backlit display, you can also choose to have the time projected onto the ceiling (a faint red blob, especially if you have myopia). Useful.

Nevertheless, the alarm clock that has been useful for so long is now… no longer useful. Because one morning I accidentally swept my arm across the endtable, sending the alarm clock through an acceleration of 9.81 ms^-2. The alarm clock won’t wake me up anymore.

Attention all who took the Cambridge IGCSE English Literature exam in 2009, I invite you to play my sporcle game.