Don't mess with the routine.

Every day at 6:11 my alarm clock goes off, happily telling me that it’s time to start my day. I then happily ignore it and put the snooze on.

Every day at 6:16 the snooze on my alarm clock goes off, telling me more firmly that I really should be getting out of bed by now.

Then, at 6:17 I check Facebook on my phone (naturally!) to see what excitement has happened since I last checked it, seven and a half hours previously when I went to sleep, no later than 22:40.

All this means that by 6:19 I can be in the shower and by 6:31 I can be sitting down watching Bill and Sian on BBC Breakfast, munching on a Pop-Tart and feeling a lot more human and a lot less like the walking dead.

Needless to say, this is a well oiled routine that demands the upmost of respect in order for me to have the type of uber successful day that befits a young professional such as myself, and if this routine is out by even a minute it can cause an absolute disaster. Say for example, if I decided to let the snooze on my alarm kick in again I would get up at 6:21 which means I would then be in a massive rush to get showered and dressed in order to be sitting down with Pop-Tart in hand by 6:31, which would then mean that I would still be sitting there when the Irish weather girl who tells you, in an unnaturally perky voice for such an ungodly hour, that it will be raining today, and pretty much every other day in the Great British future which really gets my goat. This is turn would mean that-I-didn’t-leave-the-house-until-seven-which-meansthatsI’llgetstuckintrafficandbelateforworkandhaveaprettyFUCKINGMASSIVEMELTDOWN!  

(And breathe!)

I’m sure you get the picture?

Anyhow, as it happens, last Friday morning played out exactly in line with the daily routine which meant that I was about to leave my flat at 6:50 by the clock on the cooker and head down to the car.

Now, in the days leading up to Friday I had been having some problems with the electric clicker to raise the metal security door and let me out of the garage (all of this had been compensated for time wise by getting up at the first ring of the alarm at 6:11 rather than the more desirable 6:16) which meant that a few precious minutes would be lost whilst clicking. Well today, after the previous weeks average of two minutes clicking time I realised, much to my trepidation, than the minutes were slowly ticking away, threatening to mess up the routine.

After five minutes of clicking I resorted to hitting it hard on the steering wheel of the car as that, in the past, had worked.

Not this time.

After ten minutes I decided that I would get out of the car and try and find the receiver for the clicker’s remote. Again, no such luck.

Whilst all this was going on the radio in my car went from playing the usual chart toppers to Scott Mills gleefully announcing the first play of a Christmas song on BBC radio this year, and so, to the warbling tones of Mariah Carey telling me about all I want for Christmas at 6:55am, in OCTOBER, I saw red.

So I swore. Then I swore louder, and then more explicitly. And then I kicked the door just for good measure. I even tried asking it politely to open, much to my own disgust.

None of this made the blindest bit of difference mind you; the garage door was still well and truly shut.

Desperate time call for desperate measures: I was going to have to phone school to explain my current predicament. As most of you know, I had previously been sent home from school for ripping my trousers so this should not come as a complete surprise.

I’m stuck inside my garage so I will be late, was the message I sent to my boss.

Good luck in there! was the reply I received a few minutes later, containing considerably less sympathy than I was hoping for. The fact that this excuse wasn’t even questioned obviously shows that they were more than familiar with my idiocy already.

Anyway, after a further half hour of sitting there getting more and more irate, making an angry phone call to my building manager (who is a relatively butch chap, yet his calls go through to the answer phone of a husky voiced Brummie called Sally) I was eventually saved by the arrival of a man in a Audi with a correctly working clicker and I was once again free!

I’ve escaped! was the message I sent to my boss to let work know I would be on time after all.

Think of the blog was the reply.

And so I did.