Wake up call

Yesterday in The Independent newspaper I read an article called Final Demand that claimed the clock is ticking for many gadgets once considered indispensable to us as technology moves on: home landline, remote control, standalone sat nav, phone boxes, dvd/Blue-ray and the good old alarm clock!

Call me old fashioned but I still use a traditional bell-ringing alarm clock to wake me up each day. As someone that loves sleep, I've never liked being woken and at two years' old I threw an alarm clock down the toilet in protest! However it is the only sure way to bring me into consciousness and so today at 7:30am I was woken by the familiar bell as I return to work from the Christmas break.

Perhaps for the first January in my entire working life I didn't want to throw the alarm clock down the toilet at the thought of 'going to work'. My current role as Interim PR Officer at Leeds Castle in Kent means I work at a venue nicknamed 'the loveliest castle in the world' by art critic and explorer Lord Conway in 1913.

The 900 year old moated Castle set in 500 acres of beautiful Kentish parkland is quite simply a wonderful place to work and I have pinched myself every working day of my 11-month contract as to how lucky I am.

The clock is ticking with six weeks left on this maternity cover role at Leeds Castle as I search for a new PR job in the travel and tourism sector. I will be very sad to leave this enchanting place - and my wonderfully talented colleagues, many of whom I now consider friends - but for the time being I will enjoy every moment and not dread the ringing bell of the alarm clock each morning as so many people do in these modern times of gadgets and grey office jobs.