#oneaday, Day 87: Staying Up The Latest

I don’t know why I like staying up late. Perhaps years of doing so have buggered up my body clock beyond all recognition. But I know for a fact that I can happily occupy myself until two, three in the morning without feeling any ill effects. Okay, sure, sometimes actually getting up the next morning is a traumatic experience, but for the most part there are few ill effects.

I’ve even pulled a couple of all-nighters in the past, but usually only when necessary. Okay, sometimes when I’m alone in the house and there’s a really good game/film/DVD box set to get through. But mostly when it’s necessary. The last one, I think, was before a trip over to Toronto to meet several members of The Squadron of Shame. We’d recorded a podcast shortly before our trip, so being chief edit dude, I took it on myself to get it done before the trip. And I did.

I think my favourite staying up late memory, though, is the time I was at university and received a text message from a friend at approaching 2AM.

“Are you awake?” it said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Good,” came the message back. “Because we’re downstairs. Want to come to the beach?”

I turned off my computer – I think I was playing Baldur’s Gate II at the time (a game I am yet to finish, incidentally) – and headed downstairs. Sure enough, there was the car, ready to go. And we did indeed head to the beach.

Now, those of you who know Southampton will know that, despite being on the waterfront, there are no beaches. So “going to the beach” involves a not-inconsiderable drive through the New Forest, which gets rather dark at night-time. Still, we made it safely in the end, and found ourselves on a completely deserted beach after 2AM.

It was strangely eerie and beautiful at the same time. The night was cold but clear, so the moonlight lit up the beach quite nicely. It wasn’t the nicest beach in the world – very few beaches in the UK are any more – but it was our private little hideaway for that short amount of time we spent there.

No-one had the guts to actually go for a swim, but a few among our number had a paddle before running out rather quickly due to the extreme coldness. Eventually, we tired of the dark beach and went home having not really achieved anything, save putting a memory in our minds that will last for a very long time.

There’s a How I Met Your Mother episode called “Nothing Good Happens After 2AM”. It is nonsense. Awesome things happen after 2AM.