Four o' clock in the morning and still we cannot sleep

[venta]

An issue of burning topical importance:

[Poll #1937072]

Comments

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Annoying for the first few hours and totally ignored for any subsequent nights :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

You're so adaptable, you humans ;)

[erming.livejournal.com]

How many of your friends don't recognise no rest by New Model Army?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Probably quite a few, but I think that the percentage who will recognise it will be way higher than the national average :)

One kudo to you.

[erming.livejournal.com]

The curious in me wonders if you keep track of kudos awarded and if there ever was a league table of kudos?

[venta.livejournal.com]

In theory yes, I rank all my friends by kudos. In practice, no, not got the least clue :)

[sammason.livejournal.com]

I probably wouldn't recognise any song by NMA!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

But what IS the evil that you've done?

[venta.livejournal.com]

<whistles innocently>

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Ticking usually fine - I tend to adapt quickly and stop noticing it. (Though I know of some who can't.)

Chiming, not fine.
Westminster chimes on the quarter hour, very bad indeed.
A cuckoo that comes out every bloody fifteen minutes can sod right off and is in serious danger of being permanently stopped. Yes, this has happened to me, and now when I visit they switch off the cuckoo for the duration. Still don't understand how it doesn't disturb them.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Oh my word, that's happened to me too. My uncle had a phase of collecting cuckoo clocks and setting their times 5 minutes apart so that he could enjoy each one. When we stopped overnight, I was given the sofabed so I got the full Monty of those bloody clocks, on the hour and every quarter hour. This became my evidence for what a good girl I was, aged 15 - it never occurred to me to vandalise those clocks.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

One of my student days landladies was so proud of the cuckoo clock her soldier son in law brought her from the Black Forest. Personally, I felt it was his act of revenge.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

... not as good as five ticking clocks in my bedroom?

(I grew up in a clockmaker (which actually means clock repairer)'s household, and they were everywhere.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Wow! I love the sound of ticking clocks, but was starting to think I was the only one in the world :-)

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Do you have a favourite kind? I like the old-fashioned ones which remind me of my grandmother's kitchen clock.

[venta.livejournal.com]

My great-aunt used to have a lovely old clock which had been a station clock (my great-uncle was a station master). It seemed to tick incredibly slowly, with a really low, deep note. I had hoped that I might end up with it one day, but it went round a few relatives and then developed some kind of hideous and non-recoverable insect-infestation in its woodwork and had to be pensioned off :(

In my bedroom when I was little I had something which looked like a grandfather clock, but was about 8" tall (and probably plastic, I think). It had a slightly bent pendulum and ticked with a limp. So I don't mind quirky ticks, either.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Both of those sound excellent! Pity about the woodworm, which I suppose it will have been.

I'm now looking at a YouTube link in which Johnny Cash sings 'My Grandfather's Clock' but there's something wrong with the sound on my computer.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Worse than a ticking clock - a ticking clock with a pattern that means every 90 seconds it Does. Not. Tick. I could never get to sleep in my maternal grandparents' living room when I was a child (on the sort of occasion where all the grownups have the beds and the kids are stuck in sleeping bags anywhere they'll fit), I always had to move out into the hall where I couldn't hear it any more.

I can sleep next to cattle auction houses where the solitary cow left behind moos all night, I can sleep next to train lines and motorways and all-night supermarkets, I can sleep among long barrows and under trees in the woods. But I cannot sleep comfortably with a ticking clock unless it's muffled somehow.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I find all regular domestic sounds soothing.

I have been known to set the washing machine underneath my bedroom going late at night to lull me to sleep.

Does that make me a freak?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think on the list of reasons I might call you a freak, it's not even worth mentioning :p

White-noise-ish sort of sounds are apparently good for lots of people to go to sleep (especially babies), so I don't even think it makes you particularly unusual :)

[shermarama]

I usually sleep easily and completely, but I'd muffle or remove a ticking clock before I even tried. I'm not a big fan of fans for the same reason, unless they're properly white-noise-ish with no regular clicky-ticky component. I just latch on to the rhythms, my brain spinning counterpoints to them, and then there's no chance. It'd be like trying to sleep with someone whispering interesting tidbits of juicy gossip to me or something; it's not the volume, it's that some unignorable part of me wants to listen.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have a lovely, unusual clock which davefish gave me and which used to live in our spare room. It now seems to live in the hall after a number of guests evicted it so they could sleep.

[davefish.livejournal.com]

Well I do often find myself evicted so someone else can sleep.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Weird, actually. I /used/ to find the sound of a ticking clock soothing. Then I had one particular alarm clock (while at secondary school) that kept me awake and seems to have sensitised me to them ever since.

[rapperaddict.livejournal.com]

Hideous things! I haven't had a ticking clock in my bedroom since I first scaled my shelves to retrieve and dismantle the one my parents put in my room when I was 6. Can't even stand a watch in the room. The clock in the house next door chimes the hour and the half hour and, despite knowing what time it is, I still have to count the chimes every time. I feel they deserve to be punished with my fiddle practice...

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

A long-ago former housemate of mine once came back drunk from clubbing and decided she hated the ticking of the kitchen clock so much she took the battery out and hid it. The next day she had no idea where she'd hidden it, and was very apologetic. It didn't bother her normally, but I suspect she'd been trying to sleep on the sofa because the stairs were too difficult. There was another memorable occasion when she woke me up by banging on the door because her key wouldn't work properly, because she couldn't coordinate well enough to get it in the lock. She didn't drink too much or too often, or become horrible or anything, she just lost coordination in a spectacular fashion while otherwise appearing only mildly tipsy.

Also, my Olympic Games Maker watch (it has no numbers! But it is too bright to lose) is incredibly loud for something so small. It is excellent for that situation on a train where somebody sits rather too close and gets in your personal space because you just put your hand up near your head (and therefore by their badly-placed, irritating head) as if you're casually resting it on your shoulder, and in about a minute's time they move.

[venta.livejournal.com]

No numbers? I mean, I've had watches with no numbers, but it seems an odd choice to issue to Games Makers. Does it have markings at all for the hours?

Nice use for it, though!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

No numbers and no marks to show the hours! There is a 2012 logo at 3 o'clock but that's it. This is indeed rather less helpful than it could be. It is made of a nice sproingy material though.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

With any predictable sound at night, unless really loud, I soon stop noticing it. And/or hear it as a soothing, 'time for sleep' sound.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

CEB bought a new clock after my complaints about Mr. TICK, but it turned out to make a steady mechanical growl.

Since every device I own knows what time it is, I don't see the need. In the bedroom I typically have cellphone, Psion, at least one cyclecomputer.