things I’ve learnt while on the nightshift

- Children walk to school in the late evening when I’m getting ready for bed.

- Plumbers come at 2am, stay til 6am, wander off for half an hour and don’t give a second thought that you might want to be in bed.

- Shops are never open.

- If you go to the supermarket there’ll be no-one on the roads, and you’ll share the shop with surly nightshift workers or overly helpful and apologetic staff who aren’t used to dealing with customers.

- 1pm (2am) has an eerie orange glow of light pollution, that can make it seem like just a very cloudy day...

- You’ll never get a parcel delivered into your hands again, it’ll always be waiting for you next door.

- Seven coffees a day is normal, although it’ll just prop you up and not make you feel awake.

- It'll really annoy you when people want sympathy / praise for ‘staying up really late, like until 4am’.

- You get so used to it being light when you sleep that if you do go to bed when it’s dark you’ll leave the light on on purpose.

- If someone not on the nightshift asks you to, you might go to the theatre at 5.30am.

- You'll never know what the hell time it is, when to sleep or eat, because it's dark at 1pm, and light at 3am!

- For some reason it’ll suddenly be acceptable to drink in a morning, and taboo to drink in the evening...

- People never update anything on Facebook or on forums, but then while you were sleeping suddenly everything on there has changed.

- You’ll probably eat Chinese / Pizza / Roast Dinner / Fish and Chips for breakfast sometimes.