Don Your Way column: Easy like Sunday morning? Not when you're on the weekend shift!

“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” Steve Coogan’s fantastic TV comedy creation Alan Partridge once said.
Darren Burke - working the weekend shift.Darren Burke - working the weekend shift.
Darren Burke - working the weekend shift.

"What a great song. It really encapsulates the frustration of a Sunday, doesn't it?,” said Norwich’s most cringeworthy creation when discussing the famed U2 song.

"You wake up in the morning, you've got to read all the Sunday papers, the kids are running round, you've got to mow the lawn, wash the car, and you think "Sunday, bloody Sunday!".

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As was pointed out to Alan at the time, Bono and co’s classic is actually about a massacre in Derry in 1972.

But I must admit, I shared Alan’s misgivings when I stumbled out of bed just before 7am this morning to kick start the second of a two day weekend shift on the Free Press news desk.

Leaving the warmth of my bed and my other half soundly sleeping and starfishing across the mattress, I blearily flicked on the laptop, logged onto my emails, Twitter and Facebook, inbetween slapping on the coffee machine and taking a peek into the deserted streets outside.

With only Radio 2 and the autumnal darkness outside as friends, working an early shift on a weekend feels like you against the world.

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Of course, I know many people work weekends, unsociable shifts and in far more miserable conditions.

I’m grateful that I can at least do the majority of my job from the comfort of a chair at the dinner table which acts as a makeshift weekend office.

In between the breaking news and run of the mill stuff, my partner Giulia has been keeping me powering on, cups of coffee and beautifully cooked full English breakfasts helping to fuel the news in Doncaster as it comes in.

I’m not complaining by the way.

I love my job and keeping you all informed with what’s going on in my home town, the town that I was born in and the town that I love.

But having had a bedtime after midnight last night, it certainly was a bit of struggle finding that energy to get going this morning.

Better send the Red Bull.