Anything Can Happen In The Next 5 Minutes

Last Saturday morning my presence was required at a TV puppet show rehearsal. I'd duly set my alarm clock early, only to sleep right through due to it no longer displaying the time as either AM or PM. I was about 5 hours late, but at least it got my attention at a quarter past 7 seven that evening.

This morning I was supposed to be helping Joy Puppet Theatre with some performances at 3 local schools, starting at Rutherford Primary School in Te Atatu North, at 8:30am. Last night I therefore set my alarm clock for 7am, in good time to catch my bus at 7:45.

This morning I awoke to find my alarm clock silently chuckling that it was "8:01."

Yup, I'd let the puppets down twice.

In the toilet I checked the time again, and discovered that it was still 8:01. I was either breaking records in there, or taking about 12 hours. Then I realised - 8:01 was the time the alarm was set to go off at. I must have knocked the switch onto SET ALARM TIME in my sleep, and then leant on both the HOUR and MINUTE buttons once, accelerating each of them by one, from 7:00 to 8:01. Which meant that the actual time now could be anything.

Flicking the switch back, I was mightily relieved to learn that it was in fact only 5am-ish.

Breathing a huge sigh of relief, but still not entirely trusting my clock, I headed back to my room and double-checked this miracle of time-travel against Alex's clock - it was 10am. Suddenly all the stress was back again. In a few minutes I'd gone from being unforgivably late, to heroically early, only to be condemned all the way back to even more unforgivably late again. A window in my room would really have come in handy here.

In the end I went all the way down to reception in my pyjamas, where Mark told me it was just gone 5am. All my relief was back. After all that drama, I could now get up early, shower, eat and arrive at the school fresh, fed, and ready to regale the kids with a puppet experience they'd never forget.

Well, you know what I did.