In the early hours of a motorway service station, I learned that the 24-hour city is over | Adrian Chiles

The M&S was shut. The Costa was shut. Burger King, Greggs and KFC were shut too. Maybe us humans just weren't designed to stay up all night

Leigh Delamere Services (Westbound) on the M4 in the early hours of last Saturday morning. Bleak. Really bleak. I was on a long drive home from an important football match my team had lost. What I needed was a cuddle, but that was hours away. In the meantime, I'd have to settle for something to eat and, if at all possible, a not unfriendly face to serve it to me. Neither was available.

The M&S was shut. The Costa was shut. Every fast food outlet - Burger King, Chow, Greggs, KFC, West Cornwall Pasty Co - all shut, shuttered, shut. I wouldn't be eating my feelings after all. The whole place was a mess. A few staff, mainly cleaners, wandered around without any discernible sense of purpose, kind of dazed, quietly reflecting my own despair back at me. In its own mundane way, the scene fell not far short of post-apocalyptic. The few sandwiches left in WHSmith were past their best. I looked around for someone to tell me if anything else was available, but no humans were in attendance. The self-checkout machine was my only friend.