One question Guinness....how do I get a posting to Rivendell?

Spare a thought for your companeros a mere ten miles down the road, in the metropolis. A night spent with a ring side seat, watching the disintegration of civil society.

Two thirty in the a.m and I'm listening to Shaznee, or was it Charlene complaining about the "harassment" she's receiving from her ex-partner, the father of young Dylan and Kirk. I use the term father in its' loosest sense. Let's just say he was there at the conception, that much has been proved by the DNA tests, although he has no recollection of the event having been three sheets to the wind on Stella Artois at the time. More children's toys around my feet than you'd see in Toys 'R' Us. My boots millimetres away from the three day old remains of a chinese takeaway.

"Now Shazzer, just run this one by me again, how exactly is he harassing you?"

"Well, it's like, he keeps texting me, asking me about the fiver I owe him, you know, I swear darn, if you don't sort him out, I will."

Sigh....."Do you answer his texts then Shazzer?"

"Course I fuckin do (voice rising to a level only audible to the neighbourhood's resident Staffordshire Bull Terrier)."

And so on and so forth and on and on, until such time as I'm forced to take my pen out of my pocket, just so she thinks I'm going to do something about the "harassment", but really so I can get a breather from the incessant noise emanating from her overactive gob.

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next. Swept away on a tide of human detritus, as we all slide inexorably towards the nations plug hole, to a soundtrack of Simon Cowell and reality TV. Human rights, human wrongs, what does it matter?

All the time, that nagging voice in the back of my head. Is this what it's come to? Why exactly did I join this job? Why the fuck couldn't I have gone to university, lost myself in academia, detached myself from real life. Never had to meet Shazzer and her ilk. And all the time knowing that I will be dead by the age of fifty eight, having shortened my life working sodding night shifts, whilst Shazzer lives to a grand old age, with the staunch support of the National Health Service. God bless Clement Attlee, God bless Nye Bevan. Deliver us from evil, lead us not into temptation, let us move foward, into broad sunlit uplands. Makes you weep doesn't it boys and girls.

Bet when Jake Arnott wrote "He Kills Coppers" he wasn't referring to Bob in human resources who devised our current shift pattern.

Then all of a sudden it's 7 a.m and time to go home. After the drive up motorway one, meandering semi-conscious over all three lanes, car misfiring (I really must get that sorted). Home, home to a faulty boiler and a few hours of fitful sleep, with the sunlight streaming through my curtains, after a bowl of bran flakes and a bottle of Yakult.

That's the thing with nights, plays havoc with the metabolism. The things I could tell you about my bowels.......