At midnight, I cracked my eyes open, confused. Why did I wake up? Then I heard a loud beep, followed by another, and another. It sounded far away.

“Smoke alarm?” I thought. The pitch was too low for it.

I got up, cold, and followed the sound to the spare bedroom in our serviced apartment in Shepparton. The offending noise was coming from the alarm clock. Blearily, I whacked it a few times before my hand found the ‘Timer off’ button.

“Hooray,” I muttered, and padded back to my warm bed.

When the alarm went off again at midnight the next day, I spent half a minute trying to work out how to reprogram the clock, then finally yanked the cable from the power socket.