Working in a 24-hour economy

"Budgie? Budgie, hello!" he barks into his BlackBerry. "Yes, fresh six-pounders. Yes, white as paper. Thirty-five trays? Fine."

Brogan is president of the traders' association of the wholesale market in Blochairn, north-east Glasgow. He is one of around 500 people who graft through the night, making sure that Scotland does not run short of cabbages and capsicums, tatties and toms. "This place," he says, sweeping a hand round the huge warehouse, "is a village that no one knows, right in the heart of the city."

Six days a week, while Glasgow sleeps, Blochairn is busy. There are, on average, 2,000 vehicle movements in and out each night, shifting 300,000 tonnes of fruit, veg, fish and flowers over the course of a year. Around midnight, articulated lorries arrive bearing international fresh produce. This is transferred into the smaller vehicles of the traders, and dispatched to shops and restaurants around Scotland. Overheard conversations are in a mix of Urdu, Dutch and broad Glaswegian. For an unattractive industrial space just off the M8, the market feels tremendously cosmopolitan and exotic.

Vibrant too: the primary colours of the fruit; the pink and silver of salmon in the fish market; the fork-lifts that dart around like dodgems, many containing, in their darkened cabs, the glowing ember of the driver's fag. It's a very masculine place, thick with rough humour to keep you going through the shivering dark.

In the Market Take-Away, a man awaiting his roll and sausage flicks through a tabloid, anxious to read the latest revelations regarding a certain golfer. "Aw-haw!" he crows, delighted. "Therr the Tiger again!"

"How many's that noo, Wullie?" asks his pal. "He must be up to 14 or sumthin."

"He's gaunny keep gauin' until he reaches 18," says Wullie. "A wummin fur every hole. Then he's gaunny buy a clubhoose tae keep them in."

Approximately 3.5 million people in the UK work shifts; the proportion is likely to be higher in Scotland, with its greater number of public-sector, fisheries and oil workers. As Britain continues to develop as a 24-hour culture, the numbers of people working shifts will increase. Also, in a recession, people will take whatever jobs they can get, even if that means working through the night.

A market trader's job can be demanding. Getting up in the middle of the night; working 12-plus hours and going to bed when the rest of Scotland is up and about – that's a shock to the system at first. "If you get through the first month you've got a chance of making it," says 48-year-old Donald Neilson, co-owner of Vallance fish merchants in Blochairn market. "Quite a lot of people fall by the wayside after a week." You have to make psychological adjustments to get by. "We like to think of ourselves as getting up in the morning," Neilson laughs. "Mentally, we don't like to think of it still being night."

Most established traders will tell you they enjoy it. Often they are the second or third generation of their family in the business and have moonlight in their blood. Some laugh off the challenges. "When that alarm goes off at half-past one," says Stevie McColl, 42, from the depths of his hoodie, "and that big warm bum is under the duvet next to you, and you have to put your foot down on that cold floor..." He trails off with a shudder. "Listen, you never get used to it. You just grow accustomed."

Working through the night can have serious health consequences, many believe. Scientists have linked it to cancer and heart disease. According to a 2009 paper by Professor Andrew Watterson, an expert in occupational health based at Stirling University, exposure to light at night time reduces the body's levels of melatonin, a chemical produced in the brain. Melatonin is thought to play a key role in the immune system. Night work may also increase fatigue levels, caffeine and tobacco consumption and make it less likely that the worker eats well and takes sufficient exercise.

Stuart Scott, a wholesale flower seller, drinks between 20 and 30 cups of coffee a day. He keeps a vending machine next to his phone and has memorised the codes. When a colleague offers to buy him a cup, he says, "Aye, please. An 819." He's totally buzzing; his neatly knotted tie seems like a valve keeping the energy in. The 36-year-old gets up at midnight and works here until noon, then spends the afternoon visiting clients. He goes to bed at 7pm and his children, aged two and three, read him a bedtime story. Five hours of kip is a recent improvement.

"I wisnae feelin' very well," he explains. "I was gettin' black-outs, feelin' dizzy. I went to see a doctor and telt him the way I work. He says, 'Stuart, what you need to do is go home and go to sleep.' So that's what I've done, and since then I've had no nosebleeds, no headaches – I've been great."

He seems to love his business. A jockey until he got too heavy, he likes a gamble, enjoys the excitement of buying flowers by phone auction and taking a risk that he'll sell them. Talking about Blochairn, he goes into a kind of reverie. "I don't know how many times I've ran up to the toilet, I'm havin' a pee, it's the middle of summer, two o' clock in the morning, the dawn's just comin' through, and it's silence. Then you see a plane flying through the sky and you think, 'Christ, that would be good to be up there.'"

He grins. Downs his coffee. "Then you come back doon here and it's, 'Where the f***'s ma roses fur the weddin'?'"

AT 10.15pm, in the remote region of Galloway Forest Park known as 'the wilderness', a roe deer is standing on a hillside in the last moments of its young life. In the glow of the spotlight, it is possible to make out antlers just beginning to poke through the fur on its head. It was the eyes that gave it away, though – flashing in the darkness when Gareth Rae, 38, the wildlife ranger manager, swept the hill with his lamp as he drove, steering left-handed, along the bumpy forest trail.

Now Rae's colleague, 63-year-old Andy McMahon, unfolds himself from the front passenger seat of the Land Rover, moving quickly and quietly for a man just a shade under six and a half feet. McMahon leans his rifle on the bonnet and examines the deer, 100 metres away, through the magnifying sight. He fires, the bang startling in the silent dark, and an instant later there is a thump, indicating that the animal has been hit. It lopes a few yards to its right, but soon falls dead – one of around 2,000 deer culled here each year by the Forestry Commission.

Does McMahon think he shot the deer through the heart, as intended? "I'll tell you better," he says, "once I've seen its heart."

He pulls on blue protective gloves and strides up the hill, through the bracken and snow; with him are another ranger and a labrador bitch.

Any deer killed has to be gralloched – gutted – within an hour of its death, in order to prevent the meat being contaminated. The culled animals are all sold as venison. In the light from a torch on his hat, McMahon cuts the deer open where it fell, steam rising from its still-warm body, then drags it back to the vehicles. The pluck – heart, lungs, liver – and other innards are left lying on the hill in a hot, psychedelic pile. A feast for eagles and ravens.

The Forestry Commission culls deer principally in order to reduce the damage the animals cause by eating commercially important conifers. Stalking takes place during the day, but there is a need for some night shooting because deer will only come into certain areas of the forest after dark; also, with fewer people around, it's safer to shoot. The Deer Commission for Scotland's code of best practice specifies that at least two people should go out on these night-shooting trips, and three would be even better. That's for reasons of safety and efficiency, but there's a lot to be said for having a companion with you.

Most rangers will spend the day on their own, but the experience of being solitary at night would be much less pleasant. These are level-headed people who know their beat well, but the massive Galloway woods do have an undeniably spooky quality, and it would be only human to find them a little daunting. With two in the truck, though, it's fine. And a big guy like McMahon has no problem with the physically taxing side of it. He shrugs when asked how he copes, as if it never occurred to him that shooting an animal, then walking up a hill at night to retrieve its heavy body, could be exhausting. "I go out about one night a week," he says. "Any more than that and you get tired and your eyes begin to see less well."

One might expect, given how often they kill them, that the rangers would lose all empathy for the deer. Not so. An hour or so after his first kill, McMahon shoots a red deer, but this time misses the intended spot. The bullet makes a wet sound on impact, indicating that the animal has been hit in its guts. Oddly, horribly, it just stands there for ages. It is, presumably, in a lot of pain and distress, but it's at an angle that prevents McMahon getting a second clear shot. He leans on the bonnet, frustrated, until, eventually, after a long 20 minutes, he is able to fire again and kill.

"Andy was really pissed off there," says Rae. "Maybe when you're young it's all about the buzz of the shot. But as you get more experienced and mature, what becomes important is a good, clean kill and the animal being dispatched as quickly and humanely as possible. That's satisfaction."

When McMahon is finished gralloching the deer, he nods at this. "Oh, aye, you've got to feel for them," he says, washing his hands in the icy water of a burn. "That was quite distressing, actually. See if I ever wound an animal? I'm in the dogs all day."

It is after midnight. Time to go home. McMahon has a plate of mince and tatties waiting for him. He'll be back out stalking at first light. Meanwhile, fresh flakes are falling through the midnight sky, covering the blood and the tracks, the echoing gunfire long faded back to silence.

IT'S 3am on Saturday, chucking out time for Glasgow's nightclubs, and there are hundreds of people in the taxi queue outside Central Station. It's freezing. The punters have hoods up, scarves round their faces, layers of fabric they pull aside every few moments for bites of sausage roll from the late-night Greggs. The chat varies from pleasant greetings – "Hi, ya junkie bastert!" – to anxious soliloquies – "Ah hope he'll go as far as Auchinleck."

Surveying this scene through his windscreen is Jack Clyde, 58, who has driven Glasgow taxis, the iconic "fast blacks", for 40 years. He has silver hair and eyes that have seen it all, mostly at night. He works from 8pm to 4am – prefers this to the daytime traffic, even if it means, during winter, exposure to little natural light. By the time dawn is breaking, he's on his way to bed, or in it already. The transcendental beauty of a sunrise is not for him. "The romance of the job is long gone," he says. "If I get through my shift without any aggro then I'm happy."

We drive around the city centre for a while. Between 3am and 4am is peak time for taxis. There can be 20,000 people out on the streets, drunk and wanting to get home. Everyone smiles and waves at the taxi. At 3.30am, every driver is a popular celebrity, though that changes when the cab passes. "They'll throw chips at you," says Clyde, "if you're lucky."

At 3.45am, a young woman in a puffball skirt and lace top weaves, texting, down Hope Street, which is as icy as the Cresta Run. For students of human foibles, driving a Glasgow taxi at night is a pretty good job. The only drawback is that you must, eventually, let people in to your cab. Clyde takes pains to emphasise that most members of the public he encounters are absolutely no problem, but a minority can be trouble. "After 10pm, that's when the night-time economy kicks in," says Clyde, "and you've got to be cautious about who you are picking up. You have two or three seconds before you stop to form an opinion of whether you want them in the cab or not. The Glasgow public aren't stupid. They're up to every trick in the book. A lot of them are very funny, but you've got to be wary. You could end up in a lot of trouble if you picked up everybody who puts their hand out."

Alcohol is the main problem. Clyde has developed, over the years, a sixth sense for who is going to vomit, who is going to be violent and who is going to drone drunkenly on about the Old Firm. His worst moment came on 12 July 1973. He picked up a man near some pubs at Govan Cross, but asked him to leave the cab after he started singing The Sash and swearing. The consequence of this small act of self-assertion was that Clyde found himself having to drive for his life as the offended passenger slashed a cut-throat razor at him through the open driver's window. "By the skills of Jack Clyde and the grace of God go I," he says. "I should never have come out of that one alive."

These days, he still gets the occasional aggressive customer who won't pay, but he doesn't bother challenging them. It's not worth the price of the fare. "If you are argumentative, obnoxious or even go the wrong route," he says, "in Glasgow, you'll not live long."

OUTSIDE the Galloway Forest Observatory, it's dark. Not just dark, though. Somewhere way beyond the implications of that word. The trees on the horizon are black shapes against a black background, a skyline by Rothko. Standing here one Thursday evening, it's as though light and colour never existed.

Except for when you look up. It's thought that 7,000 stars are visible from this spot, thanks to the lack of light pollution – which is why the forest was, late last year, named a dark sky park by the International Dark Sky Association. Look up and you see the spectral smear of the Milky Way, and the constellation of Orion, the hunter, with the glowing red nebula in his sword. It's overwhelming. At moments like this you remember that darkness is not simply absence of light. These stars suggest feast, not famine. You devour them with your eyes.

For Dr Robin Bellerby, chairman of the Wigtownshire Astronomical Society, the stars were what persuaded him to move here, near Newton Stewart, in 2002. Driving up from Brighton to view the house, he parked in the drive and fell asleep. He was woken in the small hours by a deer knocking against the side of the car. "Then I could not believe the skies that I was seeing," he says. "The sky sold me on the house. I bid for it straight away."

Bellerby is 68, tall and broad, with a white beard. He designed and helped build the observatory in the grounds of his home. It looks like a large green garden shed, but its prosaic appearance belies the worlds within. When the roof slides back, eight telescopes regard the heavens.

Since the forest gained Dark Sky status, the Astronomical Society has been bombarded with enquiries from people wanting to visit the area. "The funniest call was yesterday," Bellerby laughs. "A coven of witches wanted a recommendation for the best dark place in the middle of the park, where they could hold their ceremonies."

Several members of the astronomical society are out tonight, despite the sub-zero temperature. "In summer, you don't observe because the night's only about two hours long, and the midges will have you as well," Bellerby says. "The best time is winter. Yes, it's cold, but that's when you get the really clear skies.

"There's the Plough," he continues, breath clouding in front of his face. "I'm pretty sure that's Capella. Pegasus is over there in the cloud. The Andromeda galaxy is right above your head."

"If you want, there's Jupiter," says his colleague, Brian Rice, as if offering an hors d'oeuvre.

Astronomers grow used to late nights, or at least very early mornings. Venus, for instance, is visible at around 5.30am. The two hours before dawn are also the best time to see the international space station and weather and spy satellites. Sometimes, in order to witness a once-in-a-generation meteor shower, Bellerby and his colleagues will stay up all night.

Spending time with them is to arrive at a new understanding and appreciation of the night. It is a challenging and sometimes melancholy context in which to work, but the dark and cold can also be a space for small moments of intense self-awareness. You feel alive more vividly in the hours when most people are asleep; you can sense the pulse singing in your blood and the frost tingling on your skin. From the Andromeda galaxy to Blochairn market, the night-shift is worth staying up for. r

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, January 17, 2010