Last week I worked almost 55 hours in four days in order to cover my work up until Thursday evening. Then I turned up my tunes, turned off my laptop and prepared to hit Butlins in Minehead with all I could muster.

The individual responsible for booking the Manchester coach to Somerset, unknown to me and my associates when we first contacted them for seats on the vehicle, seemed overly eager to make the most of things, so by 7.30am on Friday morning we were cruising out of Central Mancunia half asleep, while he cracked on with my friend’s Jagermeister. Amusingly, when we left Camp Rave on Monday it was this very same early riser that kept us all waiting some 45 minutes to set off home.

Anyway, BLOC Weekend, as it’s known, consisted of untold hours worth of dancing in various obscure locations (Jumpin’ Jacks, the `family pub’, a bowling alley) to varying degrees of pounding rhythms- from brutal techno to rude-boy Funky. We stayed in a chalet, grabbed an horrific amount of sleep (some three hours in four days) and abused our bodies with flat beer in plastic cups.

On Tuesday I dragged myself out of bed after allowing some serious sleep back into my brain, and finished up my copy from the weekend – harder than it sounds I assure you of that. It’s undeniable that I was feeling the strain, but I turned my work in on time, and gave myself a pat on the back before going out to play five-a-side. Another impressive feat in my eyes.

By Wednesday I was pretty much back to being right as rain, and wondering how I managed to get away with it all quite so easily? Was it my shocking ability to cope with endurance test weekends such as this, or these little tablets I’ve been taking? I know where my bet lies, after all, I’ve been living with me for quite some time now.

To claim to feel great would be a lie, suffice though that I’m less tired than I should be given 2010′s current pace,  with a greater ability to wake after a solid day and night of work which may be a result of the tablets. So far so good then, however the next two weeks could be the real test; a solid schedule of nocturnal activity culminating in a trip to Minehead on the 12th for BLOC’s annual assault on Butlins- three days of 6am finishes, solid techno and broken beat dance with me trying to find my things.

So, what am I hoping for from this? Well, my job- in the loosest possible sense of the word- regularly sees me seeing 6am, on consecutive nights, in rather unhealthy situations. And when this isn’t the case I sit alone in a room dimly lit with eco-friendly light bulbs and a window that rarely catches the sun after 10am, with only the constant intake of cigarettes and not from concentrate juice to break up the day.

It’s therefore more of a case of harm reduction, than reaching my pinnacle of health. Sure, I’m active- with dancing and five-a-side the main moments of movement in my week, but I’m not what you would call ‘a picture’. So if this can make those forced wake-ups easier, and get my brain into gear faster before the next day’s work then I’m sold.

Here’s hoping it does.