2am-3am: One clock we never beat

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Every time Brendan Fields imprisons himself inside the service station for the night, he asks the same question: "Why am I doing this?"

For four years he has worked the graveyard shift at a BP station in Rotorua, and still his body clock cannot adapt.

He is not alone. Sleep experts say people who work nightshifts never turn into physiological night owls.

As hard as they try to turn their lives upside down to fit with their work patterns, the rest of the world reminds them that day is not a time for sleeping.

Researchers at the Sleep Wake centre at Wellington Medical School say the body clock tries to pick up cues to stay in step with the 24-hour day, and gets mixed messages.

When night workers drive home in the morning, the sunlight is a major sign to their body clock that it is time to be up and about. It gets even more confusing when they try to live normal lives on their days off.

Once Mr Fields finishes his shift at 7 am, he often sleeps only a few hours, and naps again before heading back to work at 11 pm.

"I want to go back to working like normal people, but finding another job in the daytime isn't easy," he says.

For those who turned in before midnight, the deepest phase of sleep comes between 2 am and 3 am. The brain slows to two brain waves a second - when you're awake, it can race up to 50.

This is also the most desolate time on the clock. It is the dead of night, neither here nor there - far past midnight and still nowhere near dawn.

Those who have bucked the body clock's urge to sleep find it the loneliest time.

And it is compounded if you work alone. Not that baker Yvonne Kauer seems to notice, as she skids from oven to mixer to benchtop in a cloud of flour.

She toils alone in a central Auckland bakery for five hours until 3.30 am, when the pastry chef arrives.

Under a back-to-front baseball cap and a dough-spotted apron, she kneads more than 500 loaves, buns and bagels each night.

She uses her body clock to bake bread - she never needs a timer. She instinctively senses when the croissants are just crisp enough, when the rye has risen and when the doughnuts need flipping in the fryer.

She learned the art of breadmaking - one of the original early morning trades - in her native Switzerland before coming to New Zealand to bake seven years ago.

"I couldn't understand a word of English. I had to learn fast," she smiles.

Now she lives in the Bombay Hills, where travelling to and from work is a breeze - there is no such thing as a snarl-up on the Southern Motorway at 5 am.

While she is filling her baking quota, there are bigger ovens firing elsewhere to give the nation its daily bread.

Almost 200,000 loaves emerge from Quality Bakers' Auckland bakery in East Tamaki between midnight and 8 am every day. The first truckload heads off at 3.30 am.

While food is being whipped up to sustain a nation for the coming day, there are still grumbling bellies to satiate during the darkest hours.

In the Stamford Plaza Hotel in Auckland City, it is not unusual for guests to request the priciest items on the menu at 2 am.

A lone room-service attendant and a single chef are at their beck and call all through the night. They will order a $790 bottle of Cuvee Dom Perignon Rose - the most expensive bubbles in the house - or a $70 Havana cigar.

The Moon Light menu serves up caesar salads, gourmet beef burgers and double cream gateau with berry coulis.

Tips are not usually paid in cash these days, although the odd American visitor still hands over a few greenbacks in appreciation of a late-night feast.

At 3 am, the room-service attendant walks by all 332 rooms in the hotel to collect the breakfast orders swinging from the door handles.

Food is also the main fuel drawing sleepy-eyed customers to the service station in Rotorua in the middle of the night.

People are stopping not for petrol, but pies, at 2 am.

"I sell hardly any petrol at night," Mr Fields says. "Everyone wants cigarettes, pies or a drink."

For his own safety, he has to lock himself inside the station's shop from just before midnight until 5 am. He serves from behind a thick glass window.

"It's like being in a prison."

* Tomorrow: 3-4 am, when the truckies rule the roads.

NIGHT FILE


1. Lifeline receives between six and 12 phone calls a night on its 24-hour counselling line in Auckland (522-2999).

2. Thirty-five bakers work through the night at Quality Bakers' Auckland ovens to produce 200,000 loaves of bread - 58 per cent of Auckland's bread requirements each day.

3. About 1200 vehicles cross the Tauranga-Mt Maunganui toll bridge between midnight and 6 am every day - when it is free.

4. A quarter of a normal night's sleep for an adult is spent in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - when the brain dreams and brain waves travel as quickly as when you are awake.

5. New Zealanders buy 20,000 burgers at McDonald's between midnight and 6 am on a typical weekend night.