Pizza & ice cream, night shift & the election.

05/05 - I managed to stay in bed until 1500 exactly today, which I reckon is about right for this odd lifestyle that has been forced on me by night shifts. The first email I received invited me to go for Pizza a-gogo with Dan and a few others, and I got it just after I had eaten the rest of my mammoth chicken sandwich from yesterday. Oops. I chatted to Kelly for about two hours, on and off, consulting with her about her grand plans for a Come Dine With Me style dinner she is putting on for her Dad. The plans are very impressive and thoughtful, although when we talked about it I had only just woken up, and so was a bit confused and not as enthusiastic as I maybe should have been.

Dinner was quite a disappointment, Love Me Dos has changed owners recently, and the previously cheery owner has been replaced by a pinch-faced man who is far too stingy for my liking. We used to arrive any time before 1930 and get unlimited pizza served cheerily to us. Instead the surly man seemed to be begrudging us our fair share - he cooked the pizzas from scratch, which was good, but then only gave us about half a pizza each, which was less good. At one point the bloke who wasn't the owner came up and asked us how much more we wanted, to which we replied 'same again' as we were barely getting into our stride. Nothing happened for a while, the owner went outside and had a glass of wine and a fag, and eventually we asked him about our other pizzas. He told us it was now outside happy hour and that he might be able to rustle up two more platters for us, but that that would be it. This is not pizza a-gogo, even I was not yet full and I had an enormous sandwich before I left the house. After our ice cream we left a little disappointed - I doubt that 10 of us will be going along again.

I managed to catch the first 45 minutes of Ghostbusters before I had to run off to my shift. What do I see when I get to my desk? "No physics this night" - bugger.

06/05 - Tonight's shift has passed a lot quicker than last night. I have only just got to the point where I start writing here and it's 0549, only an hour or so to go. I have had a sandwich (philadelphia, merguez sausages, cherry tomatoes, rocket, mustard and probably some mayonnaise too), a coffee and about half a pack of sour glowworms and have just about enough sugar in me to make it to the end of shift. The weather is still awful by the way, 6º and cloudy outside with a maximum temperature of 8º today. A good day to stay in bed.

I ran a couple of errands on my way home - first I went to the hotel where my Mum and sister will be staying to make sure they get twin beds, then I pretty much walked home (Geneva is very busy at 0730 in the morning), stopping off at Zoe's flat to pick up an airbed. I had that horrible feeling while I was walking home that you get when walking home from a club after dawn - the walk of shame. I managed to sleep until about 5 o'clock, waking up feeling lousy and a bit down. This feeling has not really subsided, so I was rather grumpy when I went for dinner (Mike Wong's pad thai, a little too big for one portion, which left me stuffed and sleepy) and then off to my French class. I arrived very early for my shift and decided that I could either sit about and wait for 2300 or I could start my shift half an hour early, relieving the previous shifter - I did the latter, knowing that I would be grateful if someone did the same for me.

07/05 - Well, the screens said we would have some beams and some physics by 0230. This was then changed to 0330, then 0430, then the beam was got rid of by 0500, meaning that, yet again, nothing happened tonight. I have been actually doing some work during this shift, as well as keeping the live coverage of the election running in the corner. As of 0607, the seats stand as follows:

Conservative 230 seats

Labour 175 seats

Liberal Democrats 36 seats

I just did some quick sums though - the current vote split is 37%, 28% & 23% respectively and based on these proportions, under proportional representation 10 of the remaining seats would be Conservative, 7 Labour and 113 would be Lib Dem, according to their vote share. However, this leaves 80 more seats, and the BNP appears to be getting about 1,000 votes in each seat which is a bit of a worry. That's about 3% of the vote, or 20 MPs if proportional representation were introduced - maybe it's not such a great idea after all.

I only have to make it through one more hour of night shifts, then no more for a couple of weeks. Phew. I just hope I cheer up before Mum. Clare and Hannah get here.