Day 1 Excited by the prospect of nonstop, superfast weekend travel, people from all over the country head to London in the hope of a 24-hour party. Pubs, clubs and theatres are packed, revellers safely transported home at all hours, and the giddy atmosphere results in a long-held tube travel rule being broken: people speak to each other!

Day 20 Tube carriages are the new illegal warehouse parties.The Victoria Line is an endless conga of gurning and tie-dye T-shirts. Trying to find the right carriage at the right stop becomes the 2016 equivalent of tracking down a convoy of cars around the M25 during acid house’s heyday. In fact, everything feels like the acid house heyday; people are throwing club nights everywhere: in parks, in bins, even in Chorleywood. Bottles of water become legal tender. Rumours that Bez now dwells within the Central Line tunnels become urban legend.

Day 98 Veteran DJ Carl Cox insists on becoming London’s night mayor, moves back from Ibiza and declares Totteridge & Whetstone the new San Antonio.

Carl Cox, London’s new ‘night mayor’. Photograph: handout/Handout

Day 365 After-hours culture is booming, flying in the face of 2015’s club closures. New forms of entertainment are taking off: 4am book readings, 5am folk festivals, midnight avocado-fuelled yoga raves. The year’s biggest selling book is a list of excuses to leave nights out now “I’ve got to get the last tube” isn’t a thing.Gyms are open 24 hours, but are only used for showering as no one’s actually been home for 16 weeks. Secret Cinema is themed around “your bedroom” and is a massive hit. They don’t even show a film – it’s just somewhere you go to have a rest. The ticket price is £300.

Day 560 The capital is knackered. Caffeine is available on the NHS, while Fomo is a recognised anxiety disorder. The tabloid press fuel worrying rumours that humans have evolved to be able to see in the dark. Netflix’s reign has ended; “a night in” now an alien concept to everyone. The nookie buzzphrase of 2017 is “Walthamstow and chill”. Keen culturists are flying in from all over the world to sample the late-night opening of a Toast Cafe. With no set end to the night, Harry Potter And The Cursed Child now lasts 10 hours; Rihanna takes her “turning up late” habit to new extremes and starts her stadium gig at 3.45am; 24-hour culture is deemed a success.

Day 750 Other cities have followed suit. Basingstoke has a night tube connecting each of its 247 roundabouts. Exmouth is now an unlikely cultural hotspot due to the town’s seagull problem being mistaken for immersive theatre after a misprint in the Guide. Everything’s connected – you can even get a night tube between Carlisle and Hartlepool. By law, everyone must have their own club night. Central London has been floodlit, and midnight sun experts are brought in from Norway to help everyone keep it together. The new “falling asleep and waking up in Morden” is “falling asleep and waking up in Stoke-on-Trent”. The economy’s in ruins. Everyone agrees the night tubes weren’t such a great idea. A YouGov petition to have them banned reaches 60m signatures, but instead the government hands control over to Govia, which immediately suspends 95% of trains to “improve reliability”. Normality resumes ■