At half five in the morning there are very few things that would be capable of waking me up. Unless I am working a nightshift. This just to reassure my bosses, in case they start thinking I am as useless as I know them to be. Freak circumstances aside then, at half five in the morning I am dreaming of Avril Lavigne with the sound muted.
   In the past I have been known to sleep through a thunderstorm that apparently would have rocked even the Dalai Lama's world, a minor earthquake and two junkies threatening to stab one another. Sleeping is my ultimate pleasure, sex only occupying the number two spot because I have the blissful tendency of nodding off immediately after.
   At that time I won't wake up should the telly explode, a dog be strangled or veiled Arabian princesses be belly dancing around my bed. A very limited number of things can administer such sacrilege. The Israeli army bulldozing my house down, my upstairs neighbour and his amphetamine-addicted circus of rhinos, and my new alarm clock.
   I know it's an alarm clock because it says so on the front. And it tells the time. Apart from these details I could have sworn it was an electronic chemical alert for high-risk poisonous substance producing armament factories. I'd like to think the noise reaches the cunt upstairs but unfortunately his bedroom is not above mine. I think it's his impersonation room, where he cavorts with live chimps and his plastic girlfriend.
   It is playing the spilt Ebola supply tune to the beat of an evacuate immediately message. My response to this is to groan pathetically, turn and scream into my pillow in agony. Then I roll over onto a limb, not mine, only to be told off in no uncertain American terms and receive a punch in the, what they call, noodle.
   Of course the American language is very prominent in our lives at the moment. There's NASA explaining that despite a rusty spaceship falling apart over Texas it still needs to send seven people into orbit at the same cost of feeding a couple African nations for a year. Personally I think that if we have to shoot people out of the earth's atmosphere there are a few I'd like to elect ahead of computer experts and fighter pilots.
   Then there was the most famous American, Ms Michelle Jackson, explaining his face is the natural result of puberty. Never has being in my twenties felt like such a relief. Back in Texas meanwhile authorities explain that DNA is simply too inconvenient to consider before sticking a poisonous needle in someone's arm. To top it all off the American ambassador to Great Britain, Mr Blair, is on the telly all the time.
   So no shortage of Yanks. It's just a rarity to encounter them in my house. My bed, even. Still, with transatlantic relations being at what some experts might describe delicately as very severely fucked up, I feel it is my duty as a citizen to at least attempt to keep things up. Perhaps rolling my thirteen stone on top of her while a chemical alert is screeching away in her ear was not the quickest route to improve international ties.
   Then of course this is Scotland and we can't have these foreigners thinking we are a bunch of romantics up here. I mean, what are we? French? Anyway. I have managed to reset the alarm, apologised and was then pushed out of the bed. My bed, you will remember. Americans feel at home wherever they go and as is usually the case with me and women, I am not wearing any trousers.
   Quite literally. Fortunately at half five there aren't any people walking the streets. Or so you'd think. Politely I wave at the milkman, observe it is pissing down for a change and decide to prepare by having a shower. Showering at quarter to six in the morning consists of holding onto the wall while my state very slowly changes from my subconscious realising life is crap to becoming fully aware of the fact. I hate mornings.