Ba Humbug

I've been setting my alarm clock this evening prior to my "all expensive paid" trip to Milton Keynes tomorrow morning. We have to get up at 4:20 am. Not good. I hate getting up before the sun. Never mind, the usual amount of car door slamming and loud talking from the kids will make sure that the neighbours are not asleep at that time too.

Of course I have no usual alarm clock, mine is manufactured by "Oregon Scientific", gets the time signals from a nuclear bunker near Rugby and emits a faint "Silence of the Lambs" whistle as it glows to tell you the time in the dark.

And tonight it was showing "Ba" on the left hand display. I thought that it had got it's little silicon brain skewed, and had defaulted to a day of the week setting for a language where Ba means Saturday. I reset the machine several times and laboriously re-entered the alarm time and stepped through the language options. And each time, the accursed Ba came back. And the display was a bit faint. Stupid clock.

After a while it dawned on me that Ba is short for battery. Oh yes. A couple more AAAs (I always have a stock of batteries - we have been known to run out of toilet paper but never batteries) and we are back in business.