Open all hours

Sat­urday night, and as the sound of the city carous­ing itself into a state of drunken obli­vion drifts through my open win­dow, I’m pon­der­ing an equally out-of-my-head concept. I’m think­ing of doing some­thing that I haven’t really had cause to do since I was a stu­dent — a work­ing all-nighter.

What’s happened is this. I have some­thing to do for work, which due to tech­nical incom­pet­ence on the part of my desktop com­puter, a loom­ing dead­line and not enough hours in the week, will have to be car­ried out at home in my own time. But that’s not all. There’s also the website-updating favour (I know, I know, I’m too nice) that I’ve been prom­ising a good friend now for about two months, and which also has a dead­line far too close for com­fort — next Friday.

And as I sug­ges­ted in the pre­vi­ous post, there are simply not enough hours in my life at the moment.

So there you are. It’s back to the glor­i­ous stu­dent days of stay­ing up all night — usu­ally on a diet of toast with Mar­mite, plus incred­ibly strong black cof­fee — simply in order to get the bloody work done. This time, of course, it’s not essays about Rus­sian Con­struct­iv­ist Theatre or the his­tor­ical role of the phal­lus in drama (oh, how I wish it was), but rather lots and lots of image-grabbing from DVDs, Pho­toshop­ping, and build­ing mul­tiple web pages.

Oh, and there’s also the small mat­ter that I’m older and (appar­ently) wiser, and I know that this is a ridicu­lously daft idea because I really do need my sleep. For­tu­nately, how­ever, I’m not listen­ing to the oft-underused rational part of my brain much at the moment; it tends to go on a long hol­i­day when I’m immersed in the gradual pro­cess of going utterly loopy.

Will I do it? Will I just give up and go to bed? Will I fall vic­tim to the curse of watch­ing dis­astrous Sat­urday night TV, or to the lure of the bottle of whisky stand­ing in a corner of my bal­cony? Or will I just engage in a mind­lessly repet­it­ive task because I don’t want to be doing what I should be doing (as in the slightly wor­ry­ing couple of hours I spent clas­si­fy­ing tracks in iTunes last night. Why? Because I could. Because they were there. Because I am mildly obsess­ive and extremely anally retentive).

Who knows? The answers may be forth­com­ing, they may not. I’ll do the best I can to keep you informed, how­ever, because I’m very skilled at pre­tend­ing that you’re inter­ested in the minu­tiae of my occa­sion­ally some­what strange life.

7.46pm update: But before I com­mence with work­ing through the night, I need to go shop­ping. Night shop­ping. Ooh. How excit­ing. And there’s that new Tesco super­store which has just opened across the road. I haven’t been there yet. How excit­ing x2. This is thrill­ing, edge of the seat stuff. I might linger know­ingly in the fresh fruit and veget­ables sec­tion. Try hold­ing me back. Try stop­ping me from shop­ping. No, you can’t, can you?

9.02pm update: Tesco was unima­gin­ably thrill­ing, in that it sud­denly reminded me why I tend to order shop­ping online these days — because I hate super­mar­kets. How­ever, the retail exped­i­tion has helped me in my quest for an all-night work­a­thon thanks to one of my pur­chases; yes, it seems that Tesco sells an own brand ver­sion of Red Bull in a bottle. Of course, I’m very well aware this strangely-coloured liquid is evil, evil, evil — but needs must.

Any­way, it’s now decision time — do I start the tasks for my friend first (more pleas­ur­able because at least it’s a favour that I’m doing because I’m so thor­oughly nice), the tasks for work (with the huge risk of fall­ing asleep while watch­ing DVDs in order to grab images), or do I give up and go and see what’s on telly? Hmm.

More later — if I man­age to stay awake (doubtful).

11.44pm update: Swear viol­ently at com­puter. Swear viol­ently at DVD. Swear viol­ently at Pho­toshop. Swear viol­ently at try­ing to grab images from DVD. Swear viol­ently at everything. Drink cof­fee. Gah. Con­sole myself with thought that all of what I’m doing would have taken ten times longer with my old desktop PC as opposed to my fant­astic new whizzy laptop. Small mer­cies. God, I’m tired.

3.49am update: The good news is that I’m still here. The bad news is that the last two hours have been spent com­fort­ing a rather needy friend on the other side of the Atlantic via IM. I know I should have said that I was rather busy, but I have a ter­rible dif­fi­culty turn­ing down needy friends. My only con­sol­a­tion is that as said needy friend ini­tially called me up on the phone to ask if I could log on to chat, I would have been awake now any­way. My agenda for tonight is really not going to plan.

I’ve sud­denly real­ised how extraordin­ar­ily dull this rather, um, time-sensitive entry is going to be to read in the future. Sorry.

6.09am update: Sleep? Sleep is for wimps. Who needs it? It’s gone six o’clock in the morn­ing and I’m fine. Fuck­ing fine, actu­ally. Really. Fuck­ing. Fine. Yes, I’ve got sting­ing eyes and RSI, but apart from that, noth­ing. How­ever, I do need to offer apo­lo­gies to my friend, because I’m doing the ‘work’ stuff first. While this makes me feel very prac­tical, it also makes me feel very guilty and unfaith­ful. Then again, I haven’t slept since 8.00am yes­ter­day morn­ing, so what do I know?

I might have some (more) cof­fee for break­fast soon. Woo, rock ‘n’ roll. Life on the edge. Hur­rah. Pass the ibuprofen.

8.41am update: I have a sud­den over­whelm­ing urge to dig out Sunday Morn­ing by The Vel­vet Under­ground and fall lan­guidly into bed as it plays on a con­stant loop. But I can’t, and I won’t.

Spot­ting that it was a bright, sunny, slightly chilly autumn morn­ing, I decided to wake myself up with a quick walk around the block. Unfor­tu­nately, most of the quick walk involved me screw­ing up my eyes and inwardly scream­ing, “The sun! The sun! Make it stop!”

Pro­gress through­out the night has been … determ­inedly aver­age. It would have been bet­ter had it not been for that des­per­ately needy friend in New York and a jar of very insipid instant cof­fee. So I think I’ll be work­ing for most of today too, before col­lapsing into a deep sleep — or just col­lapsing — at some point this evening.

But here endeth the most tedi­ously self-centred blog post ever. What have I learnt from my first work­ing all-nighter in years? Any­thing? Well, yes. I’ve learnt that I’m too old for this, and that my desk chair is really not very com­fort­able at all. Good morn­ing, world.