Mine begin with the opening of one eye and then, cautiously, the other and the grateful recognition that I have fallen asleep in my bed and not on the lounge in front of the television set.

Well usually, but not last week when I opened one eye and realised that I was staring at the carpet, head dangling from the side of the lounge like a baby hanging out of a pram.

It was dark outside but was it pre-dawn or late night or had I slept through an entire 24-hour cycle and missed a day's work? Fortunately, it was late night but it took at least three heart-thumping minutes for me to work this out.

Both eyes open, I swivel one to the left and focus on the bilious green digital read-out from the bedside clock, sigh, roll on to my back, stare at the ceiling for five minutes and wonder what it would be like if I had enough money to support a lifestyle which only involved working one day a week.

Then I slide on to my feet, stagger around the room, bounce off the wall and go to the bathroom, taking care to stub my toe on the slight lip in the floor. While this is painful, it helps wake me up. It's also helpful for the people living in the apartment next door who know, when they hear the "s--t!" word screamed at the beginning of each day, that it must be 6:05am.

I turn on the shower and the water blasts me in the eyes, not because I want it to but because there is a fault in the showerhead which every morning I promise myself to have replaced. One day I'll do it, the problem being that by the time I've finished showering I have forgotten about it until reminded again the next morning.

Then I iron a shirt, struggling with the ironing board which refuses to fully extend without a titanic battle which often involves wrestling it to the floor and applying a headlock.

Then I get dressed and put on my shoes and wonder why my feet are trying to walk in different directions. After a while I realise this is because I have the orthopaedic support inserts I wear in the wrong shoes.

Then I go over to the bedside table and wonder why there are black spots all over the carpet beside the bed. I get down on my hands and knees to investigate and realise they are the sultanas I'd been eating in bed while reading the previous night. Further investigation reveals another half kilo of sultanas scattered among the sheets.

Then I reach out and put on my watch which is what I did last week. No watch! It was gone, but I always put it beside the bed.

If I wake up and it's still on my wrist then it's Saturday morning and I've had a few quiet, convivial drinks with some learned colleagues the previous evening and have been overtaken by extreme weariness within moments of walking through the door.

It was not, however, on my wrist. So I got back down on my knees and looked under the bed, finding two more sultanas and a pair of extremely tatty slippers but no watch.

It takes two minutes to search my apartment. Houses have thousands of places into which items of value can be sucked by the invisible vacuum which operates in every home in which I have ever lived, but not apartments.

Apartments, particularly those which are decorated according to the minimalist philosophy like mine, are extremely difficult places in which to lose things.

No watch.

I had, to be honest, been to a Christmas gathering the previous evening but it is just not possible to lose a clunky, blokey watch and not notice it. I'd managed to keep this particular watch for five years during which time I'd lost 30 pairs of sunglasses, varying sums of money, two sets of house keys and several pairs of trousers.

The loss of the trousers should not be misconstrued. It's not as if I have arrived home sans culottes, as it were, for while I have been known to be forgetful, even I would notice if I had misplaced my pants.

Their loss, rather, is due to my habit of carrying items intended for the dry cleaner around in the car for several weeks before actually delivering them for cleaning. Somehow, during this time, pairs of pants occasionally disappear.

I don't know how this occurs but it does and I accept it as one of the life's little mysteries. Never before, however, have I lost a watch.

I have now been 48 hours without a watch and the constant glancing at my bare, watchless wrist is driving me to the edge of dementia.

Perhaps it's a message from above. The Almighty is telling me to by myself a new watch for Christmas.

Having read of the rising popularity of cosmetic surgery as a gift, I was considering shouting myself a "procedure" for Christmas. Liposuction, nose reconstructions and penis enlargements, the newspaper reported, are much sought after this year.

There isn't enough of me these days to liposuck and one decent "whoosh" would reduce me to a skeleton. I'm happy enough with the nose and having spent a lifetime convincing myself that size doesn't matter in the other regard, am not inclined to sign up for an enlargement.