Don Your Way: Funny shift patterns have shot my body clock to bits

I don’t tell you this in the way of looking for sympathy.I know lots of you out there work weekends, early mornings, late nights, anything but the standard 9-5 that so many of us seem to operate to these days.

My body clock is so tuned to waking up at the normal 6am start time that I’ve been rolling out of bed at roughly the same hour every day.Admittedly, one morning I’d forgotten to turn my alarm off so that accounts for that little blunder.I’ve also been driving into work, rather than catching the train, simply because it’s a little easier and avoids the morning rush hour.Which consequently means I’ve been spending a lot of time on the M18, the M1 and the Sheffield Parkway, listening to a lot of Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 and contending with a lot of bad driving and cars seemingly intent in nudging me into the cones (no bad thing, I hear some of you cry).The upshot of all this is that the road journeys, the funny hours and different routes have been a bit of a breath of fresh air.But working a 2-10 shift (as I have been, I’ll bore you with it again) means your normal plans for lunch and dinner (or dinner and tea if we’re being all Yorkshire) go out of the window.It’s generally too early to have much (and nothing too heavy before you set off), its difficult to cram in a meal around 6pm at your desk and by the time you roll in late at about 10.30pm it’s too late to want to eat anything significant liked a big plated up hot meal.The upshot of all this is that I’ve been fuelling up at the start of the day by having a bit more brekkie than normal.Why have a rushed slice of toast and a quickly gulped coffee en route to the train when you can have something a bit more substantial.So this week, there’s been cereal, fruit, porridge and (whisper it) a nice slap-up full English one morning.And to counter the early morning excess, there’s been plenty of fruit, carrot sticks and hummus and the like to tide me over at my desk as the day drags on into the dark hours and the sun sets.I’m not entirely sure what it’s doing to my already bulging waistline (other than increasing it) but it’s certainly allowed me to take a slightly more leisurely approach in the morning rather than a frantic dash. It’s given me a fresh perspective on those who work unsociable hours.