n 1965, we moved to a new three-bedroom council house with a garden and a lot of green in front of it. My father still did his two weeks of days and two weeks of nights but he had learned to cope: this was now normal life, a human being can get used to almost anything. Then the factory managers came up with a plan to change to a three-shift system: one week days, one week afternoons, one week nights. ‘At least it’s only one week of night shift,’ my father said, but it was yet another disturbance to his sleep pattern. Sleep disruption, as torturers in prison camps know, produces disorientation and then compliance. At Hoover, productivity increased.