Alarm Clocks, Cuckoo Clocks and Time in General

This is a photo found on the website of The White Swan Guest House (Á Hvíta Svaninum) in Reykjavik, Iceland. I thought it was hilarious but then what are vacations for?!?!

Á Hvíta Svaninum ræður þú ferðinni, það er ekki okkar að setja þér tímamörk.

I’m not fond of alarm clocks and I've encountered people with the same issue. The one I have (that works) is a wind up clock. The racket from that thing was so bad once that I put it in the next room! I was trying to sleep but the noise was keeping me awake. There have been other times where the alarm would ring and the thought of taking a hammer to it came to mind. Good thing there wasn’t one handy because I would have put the alarm clock out of its misery. There have been other times when I’ve awakened and spent the next hour or so looking back at the clock unable to return to sleep. Back in the early 1980s (my mother was still alive at the time) a friend stayed over for the night and slept in the spare room downstairs. That room had a fully functioning cuckoo clock on the wall in the corner near the couch that opened up for sleeping. When my friend was comfortable and had fallen off to sleep, this clock rang. Midnight was something awful for her. It didn’t bother me because I slept through all that noise but then I didn’t share my bedroom with the clock either! Now I sleep with out a clock and just get up when I’m awake but that might change once I’m back to work. The electric alarm clock with radio that I have is broken. It didn’t last too long after I had bought it. I only lasted six months or so as opposed to the old one that lasted for years and is probably still working at a friend’s place in London.