7.00am. Moto Birch Service station, M62 west bound.

Even a spring sun rising into a cloudless blue sky does little to dispel the nightmare ambience of Birch motorway services, a grey breeze block cube emblazoned with a crap Picasso pastiche logo surrounded by concrete parking lots and petrol pumps.

A lone, malevolent looking carrion crow scavenging on the discarded remains of a KFC meal is the only visible wildlife that has ventured into the zone from the glittering frost sparkled fields that surround.

We are parked up just outside of Manchester so that Simon, our bus driver, fulfills his legally enforced rest break while the convoy of trucks ahead of us manoeuvre into position at the arena to unload pa, lights, wardrobe, and most importantly facilities to cater breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supplementary snacks and hot drinks to the seventy odd people travelling between the venues.

A steady stream of people enter the Moto complex and leave with stuff in throwaway containers. Scores of generators run in the trucks around us keeping the occupants warm while their mandatory hours off the road are clocked on tachographs. Everything about this place screams wrong, screams of the creeping insanity of 21st century lifestyles.