h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The latest in a seemingly unending stream of gimcrack personality assessments:

Your bedside table says a lot about you! Your personal characteristics, unfettered, unselfconscious, spontaneous, are shown in what you pile up on the nearest horizontal surface next to your pillow.

Here's mine:

1 lamp, china base, blue shade
3 asthma inhalers, various flavours
1 lidded travel mug 1/3 full of tapwater
2 cotton buds (unused)
2 tissues (crumpled but clean)
2 foam earplugs
1 radio controlled digital alarm clock
1 tube hand lotion
1 pair of tweezers
1 tub Vaseline
1 recharger base of baby listener unit (baby listener itself AWOL)
1 engagement ring

Any conclusions?

So what do you have on your bedside table, and what does it say about you?

A lamp, a lava lamp, a box of tissues, a bottle of ribena, an oil burner, a clock, a bulldog clip and a tv remote.
It says it all really

Very well then:

1 Captain Scarlet Alarm clock (broken)
1 Star Wars: The Phantom Menace alarm clock (broken)
1 Travel alarm clock (not broken)
1 Digital watch (not broken, and not made by Timex either, thus robbing me of a Blues Brothers quote)
1 Handkerchief
1 Red anglepoise lamp
1 Pair spectacles
1 Paisley-patterned spectacles cleaning cloth

And before you ask, if I moved the broken alarm clocks I wouldn’t have the right ‘tactile landscape’ to be able to find the working one.

It is a beside shelf rather than a table...

Alarm clock, lamp, glass of water.

Don't think that says anything about me really - couldn't fit anything else on there!

Hmm. My apostrophes seem to have turned into cartoon swear words. Odd.

hmm...well I'll try to remember but its a little cluttered to say the least and our friendly cleaner has the habit of dumping more junk on it too

Mini Hifi (reserve alarm clock and radio provider in the mornings)
Alarm clock
Mini Hifi remote control
Tv remote control
Sky remote control (we've got out tv set up to show whats on the sky box but that means we can't change channel without our new gizmo that transmits the remote signal into the front room)
Desk Lamp (with energy saving lightbulb)
Bassetts soft and chewy raspberry flavour multi vitamins
Pills
Ice cream tub containing miscelaneous toiletries including a box of cotton buds)
Pile of magazines mainly new scientists
Deoderent
Reciepts and labels from clothes
Small space reserved for my specs at night(next to alarm clock - so my hand can grope from alarm clock to hifi to light switch to glasses)
Various empty glasses
Tub of vaseline and bottle of baby powder (for my poor ickle feet)

There is probably a bundle of pens and stuff under there somewhere.

Any books I'm reading are kept on the floor...but I don't get to read in bed much anymore because hubby can't sleep with the light on (unlike me who can sleep with the lights and radio and tv on).

I think thats more or less everything.

I haven't got a bedside table. Does that mean I haven't got a personality?

Ummm, travel alarm clock, three out of date packets of anti-hystamine tablets, several pounds in out of date French coinage, a pair of sunglasses, a large pile of post I mean to do something about, a Best of Dr. Seuss book, a Scented Camel Dung Burner as picked up in a souq, a set of A4 envelopes and a two year old whisky miniature. Oh, no, I drank that. There might be more, but it is all I can think off at the moment.

OK, as close as I can remember:

One bedside lamp of the functional variety
One travel alarm clock
Catch 22 (the book)
Three apples
A box of six eggs

Well, it starts off fairly average as far as I can tell. Not quite sure what the eggs are doing there. I will get round to putting them in the fridge in the kitchen sometime soon I'm sure!

This is quite illuminating - and not just the lamps!

Scorpion - I love the term 'tactile landscape'
Rachie D - Come on - if you don't have a bedside table, you must have a pile of junk on the floor next to the bed?

I'm surprised we've found no contraceptives yet

*points to pills*

aah - *those* Pills!

Points to bruise on bottom where my contraceptive injection went in yesterday

I don't even have a pile of junk under my shelf - trying to sell my flat so junk and clutter is NOT ALLOWED!

Well, I'm even more cliched now that I think about it, and sleep on a mattress on the floor. So I don't have a table, just a space full of stuff.

So my space of stuff is filled with :

2 partially filled-with-water glasses
A whole heap of books (probably about 10-11 or more).
A pad of WH SMith narrow lined A4 paper.
A cartridge pen (black ink).
Bookmarks.
A wee tub of vaseline.
My guitar amp, on which I place my spectacles at night.

Me table?

Phone charger.
Nail clippers.
A printout of the Tao Te Ching, and some accompanying notes on Taoism.
Glass of water.
General bits of A4 paper of some importance, the importance of which has been lost, but I cant throw them just in case...
Neck Chain
Betnovate skin cream-for my eczema/psioriasis
Vaseline for me skin too...

at the amount of vaseline

Alarm Clock
Long Dark Teatime - DNA
Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
Two Cerebus cartoon Books - Dave Sim
Lamp
Hankies (Clean)
Also Betnovate skin cream-for my eczema/psioriasis (a red one and a brown one)
Nail Cream & nail file
I think That's it

Re posting 10 - Well, maybe! I couldn't possibly tell you what's there though!

CD/radio/alarm
Photo of granddaughter, in metal frame
Chocolate orange hidden behind photo
Half-full water jug with glass that fits on top
Lamp with black wrought-iron stand and conical white shade
Small lump of amethyst
Plectrum

Very neat and tidy....unlike the chaotic drawer beneath it, which is a jumble of underwear, receipts, betnovate, moisturiser, nailfile,lip balm, petty cash, inhalers, vitamins, small lavender bags that lost their scent in the distant past and broken drawer dividers from a failed attempt to organise said chaos.

Vaseline is necessary for healthy skin dammit.

What filthy minds some researchers have.