Leigh Delamere Services (Westbound) on the M4 in the early hours of last Saturday morning. Bleak. Really bleak. I was on a long drive home from an important football match my team had lost. What I needed was a cuddle, but that was hours away. In the meantime, I’d have to settle for something to eat and, if at all possible, a not unfriendly face to serve it to me. Neither was available.
The M&S was shut. The Costa was shut. Every fast food outlet – Burger King, Chow, Greggs, KFC, West Cornwall Pasty Co – all shut, shuttered, shut. I wouldn’t be eating my feelings after all. The whole place was a mess. A few staff, mainly cleaners, wandered around without any discernible sense of purpose, kind of dazed, quietly reflecting my own despair back at me. In its own mundane way, the scene fell not far short of post-apocalyptic. The few sandwiches left in WHSmith were past their best. I looked around for someone to tell me if anything else was available, but no humans were in attendance. The self-checkout machine was my only friend.
Whatever happened to 24-hour Britain, dotted with cities that never slept, linked by motorways on which you could presumably get something warm to eat in the middle of the night? Yes, as I moped around the blasted heath of Leigh Delamere on this Friday night, in the centres of towns and cities around the country, there were doubtless hellish scenes of revelry to be found. But otherwise, in the dead of night everywhere feels, well, dead. Pubs, at least, could be relied upon to stay open until 11pm. Now, not so much. Everywhere seems to close early and open late. I’m often up early for work, at 6am, say, and even in central London there is precious little open.
Maybe this is for the best. Who wants 24-hour living anyway? Evolutionarily, we’re not equipped for it. Night is for sleeping. So be it. But for the undead, those of us who on occasion have to be up, please can there be somewhere available for us to suckle the milk of human kindness and get something warm to eat.