Rob Rinder: I am in total awe of every Londoner who works nights
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I’ve been doing some presenting on Good Morning Britain recently and to say Good Morning to Britain, you actually have to get up in the middle of the night.
It doesn’t matter how well you try and prepare, rising and shining at 3am is… challenging. In my salad days I’d occasionally find myself conscious at that hour (still up from some sparkly evening out), but now that I’m in my cheeseboard days, it’s a shock to the system, a full-on sucker punch to the Circadian rhythm.
I mean, it’s OK finding yourself awake just before cockcrow with someone enjoyably bouncy, but when it’s just a cab honking its horn in the dark outside your window, well, it’s rather less fun.
Of course, once I arrive at the studio, the delight of the work and the pumping energy gets me through. But, by 10am I’m hit by exhaustion so complete that it feels like somebody’s flicked an “off” switch on the back of my head.
After day three, I fell fast asleep on a bus and ended up in Stoke Newington (I don’t know what I was doing on a bus either). As I woke up (and wiped off the drool) I suddenly found myself thinking “what about the amazing people who do this for their whole lives?”
To be honest, I also felt pretty embarrassed. Why hadn’t I thought about this before? For too long I — like so many others — was guilty of a haughty indifference to those who labour away so that we can have the things we need.
The men and woman slogging away through those long hours of the night deserve far more recognition. They’re the ones keeping our lights on and driving delivery vans, cleaning our streets and restocking our shops and — of course — heroically working in our hospitals.
Sure, lots of people choose to work through the night but for thousands of us it’s the best-from-a-buffet worst option. And they shoulder all the impact that this will inevitably have on their health and their ability to spend some quality time with their families.
This isn’t supposed to be some patronising pat on the head (a condescending sort of “bravo you”), it’s more an astonished “how do you possibly do it?”. It is, as well, an acknowledgment that we all too often forget those who are somehow keeping our nation running, particularly in these tough times.
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So, as I write this (my eyelids propped open with matchsticks, pouring pasta sauce over my breakfast cereal), I’d just like to send out a massive and heartfelt thank you to each and every one of them. I hope more people will choose to take a moment out of their day to appreciate what you do all night.