Midnight is for gamblers. They drive across from Nottingham and Derby to play the slot machines, replenished during the day by hurried amateurs. A one-armed bandit called Sizzling 500 churns out coins for a heavily tattooed, gold-toothed pro in a baseball cap and Bermuda shorts. "It's alliops," he grumbles. The witching hours are for mysteries, too, some perhaps best left unsolved. Why has that burly, shaven-headed man wearing baseball kit sat alone beneath the glaring lights for several hours, leaving abruptly at one in the morning? What is that convocation of men around a jeep discussing in the car park? Why, at two o'clock, has a busload of beautiful Asian women, well-behaved children and gently patriarchal men in blue shalwar kameez, all oscillating between Urdu and English, appeared at the coffee counter like a technicolour hallucination?
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