Last night was a late one but before I went to bed I remembered to set my alarm, repeating “five to five” over and over in my head whilst washing, etc.

This morning I woke up with the alarm and did the usual routine which ended with checking a few pages on Teletext, waiting for it to be ten minutes past. At ten minutes past I set off on the way to work with the birds, mice and other animals singing me a happy son...actually, forget that, I’m not in a Disney cartoon. At ten past five in the morning there’s not much happening in the world - although much more than you might suspect if you’ve never been around at this time on a Monday to Friday.

One thing I did notice was a few houses lit up on a new property development but paid no attention to them. I did see somebody walking along with a bicycle and then was distracted for a moment; the next I saw, the bicycle was on the pavement with no sign of the person. Curious about this (the bicycle had lights still on) I watched and a few seconds later a boy came out of a garden and got on the bike. He had a bag of newspapers and it was the earliest I’d ever seen a paperboy in the morni… something wasn’t right. The lights on the houses, the paperboy, the fact nobody seemed to be driving into the car park.

Seems that repeating “five to five” to myself all over again, I’d set the alarm for 5:55am and not 4:55am. I’d not noticed at all and was only certain once I reached work, oopsy.