Bugger Bodmas

Well I enjoyed that. Possibly the most relaxing Christmas & New Year break I can remember. Jane & I had already done lots of prep, so Christmas dinner was a doddle, and after that it was lots of fun and games.... A far remove from our times in the hotel and pub industry, when we would work ourselves into the ground by January 1st.
Apart from one or two lessons sprinkled around New Year, I didn't really start back to work until last week, when I kicked off with Kim's Pass Plus. She passed her test with me last summer and had talked about doing the Pass Plus course, but it was only when a friend was in an accident after losing control in the snow that she decided learning how to properly control the car in such conditions would be a good idea. So it was bad luck then that the two days over which she had booked her course were so mild that almost all the snow had gone. I thought our best bet would be to drive to the ski resort on the Lecht, in the north Cairngorms. But even at that altitude the snow had almost gone. Never mind, I did what I could to make the course as challenging as possible and she made me very proud with her driving (apart from some 'unusual' steering techniques she seems to have picked up).
The trouble with taking time off, is that it is not always easy to spring back into the routine. I always used to be much more of a night owl than an early bird. From the age of about 12 I used to stay up late, listening to John Peel on my headphones. Then I stupidly went and got a part-time job delivering newspapers. I found it such a struggle getting up in time.i  had a really vicious Binatone radio/ alarm clock that would easily wake me, but I would just switch it off and fall back to sleep. I ended up going to the rather alarming extremes of putting the alarm on the far side of the room, then tying my ankle to the bed with some string. The theory was that, by the time I had undone the knot and had switched off the alarm, I would be fully awake.
Since becoming a driving instructor, my internal clock had shifted a few hours earlier and I have no problem getting up early these days, I even enjoy it. But I was reminded of my morning struggles yesterday morning:
Sometime, soon after getting this phone, I must have had too much time on my hands, because I tailored the alarm clock on it to a ridiculous extreme - I set a different mp3 as the alarm each day. So Sundays I am woken nice and gently by The Velvet Underground's 'Sunday morning'. Mondays are almost as gentle with The Mamas & The Papas 'Monday Monday'. Tuesday it's 'Ruby Tuesday' by The Rolling Stones. Wednesday it's The Undertones and 'Wednesday week'. Then David Bowie wakes me with 'Thursdays child' and, on Friday, I get 'Friday I'm in love' by The Cure. Finally, Saturday is a bit of a raucous awakening with Elton John's 'Saturday night's alright for fighting'. Now I instantly know what day it is when I wake up - genius!
But, typical of me, I couldn't simply leave it like that. Over Christmas, on a few days, I had regressed to my old habit of turning the alarm off and going back to sleep. So the other day I discovered another option on the phone's alarm where the alarm could not be switched off until I had solved a mathematical puzzle... A slightly more sensible challenge than trying to untie myself from the bed. At least, I thought it would be...
Do you know B O D M A S? This is an acronym to tell you in which order the different functions of an equation should be completed: Brackets, Of, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction. So yesterday's puzzle to switch off the alarm was '7 + 5 x 6 = ?'. Easy. Using Bodmas, I should do the multiplication before the addition. So, 7 + 30 = 37. Nothing. Mick Jagger kept singing (Ruby Tuesday). I entered my answer, '37', again but the alarm kept going. The Stones were well into the chorus by now and I still couldn't turn the thing off. I even tried 12 x 6 = 72, but it didn't like that answer either. Jane seemed to find it very funny that I couldn't switch my #*@&ing alarm off and I had to resort to switching the phone off completely before I could get silence.
I didn't think Jane would continue to find it amusing if it happened every morning, so I switched the option off last night.
Tomorrow morning I will give it another try, but if David Bowie manages to get to the chorus before I solve the puzzle, I will not be held responsible for my actions.