I WOKE up cuddling the alarm clock/radio the other morning.

I have no idea why but I couldn't really deny it because when I woke up I shouted: "Oi, I'm cuddling the alarm clock!" in a surprised manner.

That is always a bit of a giveaway to your wife sleeping next to you.

I told her that it was the first time I had done anything like that; that I didn't know what had come over me; and that she had my word that it would never happen again.

I assured her there was nothing between me and the clock/ radio, I was old enough to be a grandfather (clock) and we had to think about the children — and the dog. She took it very well, I thought.

A bit too well if truth be told because I don't think a normal person would wake up cuddling a clock/radio — and I certainly don't think a normal person's wife should accept such illicit cuddling as a benchmark for acceptable behaviour.

However, her brushing it aside as nothing to worry about and just one of those things that happen in any marriage, and anyway she always thought I was barking, left me time to concentrate on how I got to be so close to the clock/radio, which is as ugly a piece of work as you could hope to sleep with, having luminous green figures and lots of knobbly bits.

Normally it sits where all such instruments sit and that is on the bedside cabinet. It makes a fearful noise around about 6.15am but a quick slap usually settles it and nothing else is heard from it for 24 hours.

Certainly it is not the sort of appliance that I could have a long-term relationship with, not like a vacuum cleaner or perhaps a spin drier.

Actually, I have found myself spending more and more time with the spin drier recently as it is in our "conservatory" (dump) where I have to go for a smoke, even in this freezing weather. I know it's wrong and it's going nowhere — it's not even on wheels — but I think it understands me.

So, I could only think I had dreamed a dream and this had involved cuddling a timepiece or similar and the clock/radio was the nearest thing to hand. What an earth kind of dream involves clock cuddling is hard to imagine, probably best not to even try. Just as well I didn't dream about the cuddling the double wardrobe!

As far as I know I have never dreamed about the clock. I would be more certain if I could just be a little more sure of what I do dream about — that's if I dream about anything.

I sleep. I wake up. I get up.

I once thought I had a really good idea as I was dropping off one night and wrote it down. When I saw it in the morning it appeared to have been written by a three-toed sloth who had a faulty pen and had been away when they taught writing at sloth school.

Now if I have a really good idea, which happily is very rare, I tell myself to remember it and leave it at that.

So far I have remembered nothing which may say as much about my memory as my ability to come up with bright ideas.

But the really worrying thing is that if I did dream about the clock/radio and grab it, what does it all mean? There must be some deeper, inner significance. What would Freud say, or Jung, or my children?

Do clock/radios have some special significance? Am I a closet chronologist?

Dare I sleep next to a clock/ radio again? How will I get up in the mornings?

Time may be running out and I am getting a bit sleepy.