How to use the online alarm clock
Eight in the morning has a very particular meaning in Britain: it is when GP surgery phone lines open, and when everyone who wants an appointment that day rings at once. Setting an alarm for a minute or two beforehand, so you are dialling as the line opens rather than joining a queue already forty deep, is one of the more practical uses this site gets.
The stock market opens at eight as well, and with it the working day for anyone in the City whose hours follow the exchange rather than the office. Rush hour is at its heaviest, school gates open shortly afterwards, and the roads around every primary school in the country fill up for twenty minutes.
Because so much of it is a queue — for a phone line, a train, a parking space — the difference between an eight o'clock alarm and one at ten past is not a matter of a few minutes' lie-in. Every minute in this hour has a page of its own for exactly that reason.
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