Nightshift/dayshift

Nightshift screws up your body, as anyone on a rotating work schedule knows. This morning I woke with a hangover- that leaden, thick-headed, sluggish feeling- despite having ingested no toxins whatsoever yesterday save a pepperoni pizza, and having slept a good 8 hrs. It's not surpising that both nightshift and poor sleep are associated with increased mortality. (PubMed: shiftwork mortality). What's worse is I earned just 31% of usual pay despite all the usual circadian disruption, because the patient DNA'd (did not attend). Meanwhile, I'd amended plans for the previous and following days to allow daytime sleep both before and after the shift. Home early (11 pm) after the abortive shift, I was wide awake and battering off light fittings when everyone else in the world was sleeping decently. Bah.

Still, a brisk walk up the Braidburn this morning with Heather and the Reekster cleared the head. Road closures meant we had to go by a different entrance than usual, with a route climbing Blackford Hill. I kept up on the way out but begged for the flatter route back, and Heather took pity on my whining. She's very good to me.

On the way back, we were checking out the allotments on the side of the hill and spying into the grounds of the big detached houses backing onto the park, featuring enormous conservatory extensions and heated outdoor swimming pools. We're eating brambles along the path, and Reekie making friends with a half-malamute puppy at the burn. Indian balsalm (which has a strange segmented stem like bamboo) was spreading invasively in the boggy land in the trough of the hill, scabious growing in the grazing meadow and H. spotted a tiny brown frog up high on the hill, far away from the pond. Where was s/he going, so far from still water? I discouraged Heather from taking her/him home to her garden pond, because I heard once that frogs return to their ancestral ponds to breed, and the poor mite would be confused by transposition.

In one allotment was a stand of fennel-fronded asparagus, and in another a row of artichokes, turning to flower like giant thistles. For eating, they're best harvested before the bloom emerges from the choke (seed bed), but maybe these were being grown for their architectural floral value.