Well after a good 8 hours sleep off shift I started my shift 20 minutes early at 07:40. I was as always under the false perception that we as grown ups had all sorted this out and we were doing 08:00 until 20:00 shift patterns 12 hours each and overlapping from 19:00 until 21:00 or there abouts for food.

But about an hour or so earlier whilst in the throws of a budding headache the shifts were being discussed and altered again. Hmmm - FFS! I left them to it I need drugs and liquids to stop the flashing worms in my left eye before things got too out of hand. They are now nicely quelled but off course not more than 5 minutes ago yet another discussion about shifts.

At this point I basically laid the cards on the table. “I will walk off the station and go to bed if my shift ends and you are being unreasonable” and “I do not mind covering for you - so you can go to a base ball game BUT I am NOT making myself tired and ill before my fiancee arrives” and “NOT like the DLS bullshit”. I told you and the rest sort out what you want to do and tell me - end of!

To be honest I have NO IDEA as what is going to happen now. I am leaving the station at 20:00 +/- an hour and that is it. If everything stops it stops if that leave one person on the station then I would ask them to leave if they are doing “dangerous gas” work (which we are not).

This is yet another reason why I don’t like doing DLS beamtime - this kind of nonsense is how I end up working 25 hour long shifts and then driving for 4 hours a day later.