For the best part of pstub, then read on

IF you follow this column (in the loosest possible sense of the word "follow", rather as Alice followed the Wonderland Caucus race), or even just happened to accidentally read the article in question from underneath some battered cod, you'll remember I wrote a few weeks ago about not getting any sleep.

You'll want to know, then, that despite a half-hearted ticking off from my father and small fortune spent on Pro-plus tablets, the nocturnal antics haven't ceased.

Interestingly, though, I seem to have re-set my body clock.

Now my brain can cruise along quite happily until about 3am before it starts muttering "I say old girl, a nap wouldn't go amiss'¦", then retires to the land of duvet until lunchtime, should my schedule (or the ever-active building fire alarm) allow it.

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Of course, this new order of things means I'm living completely out of sync with the rest of the world.

My "morning" is enjoyed while normal, non-student citizens are coming home from school or having mid-afternoon conference calls, like living in a parallel universe of Spike Milligan design. I keep expecting my kettle to start talking.

The most interesting result of this new perspective on the world (more interesting than the constant urge to remark "good gracious, is it REALLY that time already?" 47 times a day, in any case) is that my friends and I appear to have reconditioned our stomachs along with our sleeping cycles.

"Breakfast" is more likely to be a bowl of chilli noodles than Frosted Shreddies, eaten at 3pm with that smugly decadent air that only students can get away with (and only then because we have an anvil of debt hovering over our hedonistic heads, waiting to bring us crashingly back down to earth the moment they hand us the diploma).

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Lunch is a similarly skewed affair, appearing at around the 8pm mark as a cheese toastie or other such delicacy, and dinner pushed almost into oblivion as it has a place only in an evening

devoid of social activity.

Dinner goes hand in hand with cleaning one's room or decamping to the common room to watch Property Ladder.

Dinner is what you are doing when you should be out doing something better. Dinner has lost its cred.

However, swooping in like a jazzy uncle at an otherwise dull wedding reception, we have invented the revolutionary fourth meal of the day. Actually, 'invented' is something over an over-statement, being that students have been indulging in this meal since the dawning of time'¦we have merely christened it.

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Short for 'post-pub', since the concept originates with the casual snacking one inevitably does when returning home in a blurry state of mind, "Pstub" has evolved into a cult craze.

It all began when we realised we were all doing far more regular and substantial eating in the wee small hours, on returning from clubs and suchlike, than we were during the day '” while cooking in daylight seems little more than a chore, done to reassure your mum so she can reassure granny who can reassure the hairdresser's cat that you're getting your vitamins, cooking at 4am suddenly acquires a mystical novelty value.

The rules are simple: to qualify as pstub, it must be eaten between 10pm and 7am, and it must "hit the spot". After this, anything goes.

We've done kebabs (rookie pstub, little imagination involved), baklava (exotic pstub, extra points when bought from Brick Lane rather than Marks and Spencer), curry, fish fingers, pasta, hot dogs, sushi, soup, kedgeree, a roast dinner and a steak and veg pie that came pre-prepared in a tin.

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And the best part of pstub, before you start tutting and sending me leaflets on nutrition, is that everybody knows that food eaten when it is dark, when you are standing up, outside (fresh air counterbalances badness), off other people's plates or after dancing, has no calories.

Thus as pstub fulfils so many of these criteria, it is officially the guilt-free meal. Hurrah.

Pstub, then, has gone rapidly from a toast-and-jam level to full-blown culinary competition, with kudos for the most extravagant feasts.

I've found myself actually consuming less in the day so I that when pstub-time comes round I can really let rip, and it's no secret that the best bit of many nights on the town is covertly discussing what joys we can dig out for pstub upon our return.

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By devoting a page on Facebook.com (it's the new myspace, hadn't you heard?) to the joys of pstub, we are evangelising beyond the streets of London to devotees up and down the country.

I fully intend to have the term immortalised in the Oxford Dictionary within the next three years. Spread the word, folks '” pstub. It's good eatin'.