Victor is unable to sleep. Things get so desperate that he contemplates opening Ronnie and Mildred's Christmas present from last year.

It's late but Victor can't sleep. Tossing and turning, waking Margaret, pontificating and moaning about anything and everything in his frustration - from fitted sheets to the mystery of always finding a teaspoon at the bottom of a washing-up bowl - absolutely nothing is making him drowsy. He's given fresh chance for complaint when he discovers the garage has still not sorted his over-sensitive car alarm: it goes off when an owl defecates on it!

Considering the very nature of time itself, he concludes that nothing exists because everything merely used to exist or will exist later on, and the present becomes history as soon as it's happened. The couple discuss each others' eccentric friends: one of whom has a morbid fear of spiders and therefore feels uneasy whenever they hear the cat-flap, and another who's scared of toilet seats and so carries her own around with her.

Victor's car alarm is triggered again, but he finds the remote has now stopped working and he has to trudge down from bed and out to the street to stop it ... whereupon he loses his slipper and manages to pick up something far less pleasant on his foot.