Three in the morning has a folk reputation in Britain as the hour when sleep goes missing and worries get loud, but it is also a genuine start of the working day for a slice of the country. New Covent Garden market is trading, bakery ovens are at full heat, and the newspaper and parcel networks are moving stock towards the shops that open at six.
Airports come alive around now too. Ground crews start their shifts before the first departures of the morning, and passengers on the earliest flights from Gatwick or Manchester are already in the car park having left home in the dark.
In late June the sky is starting to lighten in the north of Scotland by this point, which makes 3 am feel entirely different in Inverness in midsummer from how it feels there in January. The countdown to the next occurrence resets daily, whichever of those two it happens to be.
Common questions
Is anything actually open at 3 am in Britain?
Yes — wholesale markets, bakeries, hospitals, 24-hour service stations and the parcel and newspaper networks all work through it.
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