D.A.B. is B.A.D.

Having long suspected that the conventional signals were becoming weaker in order to covertly force people to buy new radio equipment, one day not long ago, Spouse and I finally succumbed to widespread and intensely irritating government advertising and purchased a new DAB radio alarm, much more compact than the old set and carrying with it the promise of bright new digital radio stations.
It was duly installed on Spouse’s side of the bed (no gender discrimination here, just the practicality of the siting of the electrical point) in place of our existing radio alarm, now a grand old lady of some 30 years. She was state of the art then, way back in 1979, with her bright LED display and touch-operated snooze button, full of hope and promise as we moved with her into our new house, looking forward to the arrival of our second child.
She served us faithfully for many years, until recently we noted that reception was becoming a bit fuzzy and stations difficult to find. Concluding that the old girl was becoming a victim of the government plot to convert everyone to ‘digital’, we were forced to go for a much-vaunted DAB set.
Spouse, who in reality could hardly wait to install this crème de la crème of IT (boys and their toys, you know what I mean), duly waded through what seemed to me to be a very complicated instruction booklet, set the two alarms (very useful we thought as different household members rise at different times) and lay back to enjoy the new technology.
My first indication that all was not so rosy came on the very first night, when, as is my wont, I woke in the early hours and squinted at the clock to ascertain whether it was worth trying to get back to sleep. Quel horreur! Through bleary eyes, all I could see from my position at the far side of the bed was a dim glow of light from the new piece of kit. As the mist dispersed, it did not reveal an alien light-ball escaped from one of my more interesting dreams, but I saw that where I used to be able to see the time clearly displayed in bright green LED, there was now only a slash of light and a greyish blob which may or may not have been the time. Had my vision deteriorated so much overnight? I had certainly not been doing any of the things sure to wreck one’s eyesight, and I ALWAYS eat my carrots! By varying the angle of my head I eventually managed to distinguish the figures on the clock. By this time I was wide awake so got up anyway, and placed a torch by my side of the bed for future time-telling use.
Next morning I was duly woken by the first alarm coming on as set at 6 a.m. My daughter and I were due to get up at that time but my spouse was going to rise when summoned by the second alarm. As I have done for years, I reached across him to turn it off. My arm flailed about, and I slapped the top of the set; but still the music played. Aha! Where once there was a touch sensitive ‘snooze button’, now there was a selection of 4 buttons. Which to choose?
At that time of the morning I was understandably reluctant to rake out the handbook (and too bleary-eyed to read it anyway), so I resorted to pressing all the buttons until it stopped. Unfortunately this resulted in me not only more or less suffocating Spouse as I leant across the bed, but also turning off the second alarm, to said Spouse’s eventual cost. Although I think I may actually have detected a flicker of interest as my ample bosom obstructed his airways. Anyway he turned over and went back to sleep with a smile, and was NOT woken at the appointed time as I had apparently managed to upset the DAB thing and it was obviously sulking.
By next night I had placed my little old battery operated travel alarm on my side of the bed, with its luminous hands and reliable and easy to operate alarm. I also took to taking my mobile phone to bed and setting the alarm on that too.
Such progress! Now, instead of having one fairly old-fashioned and slightly- larger-than-suits-today’s-taste radio alarm, our bedside tables were cluttered with the new and over-complicated DAB; the old travel alarm; my mobile and a torch.
So life continued awhile. Then one afternoon I went into the bedroom and detected a distinct hum. It sounded like the fridge or freezer downstairs playing up as they do at times. Further investigation revealed this was not the case, but the hum was definitely coming from the bedroom.
I wondered – had Spouse taken up secret midnight drinking and surreptitiously had a small fridge installed under his side of the bed to cool his lagers, in the sure knowledge that my notoriously perfunctory housekeeping skills would never have resulted in it being discovered? More sleuthing could find no sign of any form of cooling unit upstairs, and exaggerated usage of several cans of DDT type spray (doubling the local chemists’ annual turnover in that commodity) resulted neither in the appearance of a large flying mutant wasp clutching its throat in its death throes, nor in the mass murder of a large swarm of mosquitoes.
Further observation (as I hung my head out of the bedroom window choking and searching for fresh air, before I became the only victim of my own chemical warfare raid), revealed it was coming from the wretched DAB. Now more sleepless nights followed as I lay awake listening to the thing, plotting revenge and the re-installation of the old set.
As I glared with hatred at the machine sitting smugly on the bedside table, its semi-circular display panel now seeming to smile gloatingly at me with the malignant smile of a halloween lantern – I reflected on my late-night Internet research which showed that the hum factor is a common problem with this so-called new technology: - so, I ask myself, why are we being forced to buy into this new system? Isn’t there enough noise pollution already? As far as we have heard, the new digital radio stations are rubbish anyway.
I am at present planning a guerrilla raid on the bedroom while my husband is out, kidnapping the DAB and replacing the grand old lady, who is at present in exile, enjoying her retirement safely locked away in a wardrobe.. My mobile, the travel alarm and the torch can go back to their usual places, and we can hopefully enjoy our sleep without the constant buzz. Well, not THAT buzz anyway.
Progress? You tell me.