It’s not that I dislike nights, exactly, for themselves. The actual experience of running the department at night is way better, in many regards, than running it during the day. No politics, or at least, far fewer politics. The actual shift itself is often pretty good.
The problem is, of course, the unutterable harm it does to me. The exhaustion, the attack on my immune system, and oddly it turns out that when I’m working nights our house becomes a tip.
I’d not made the connection before, because I’ve almost invariably done regular nights. Recently though I had a run of day shifts – and my agency work I’ll almost invariably only do days – but when I’m on days, Kathryn and I work as a team. We cook together, and clean together. The evening plan is to cook a meal together and often as one of us is prepping veg, the other is washing up. Switching over the dish washer. Cleaning the kitchen.
Of course, when I’m on nights suddenly there’s 3 or 4 days when we barely see each other. It completely screws with the system, and suddenly we find we’ve a sink of washing up to do. It’s frustrating and yet another one of those subtle ways that nights screw with your life.
