Originally, I was going to mark the New Year, and the first anniversary of this blog, my dear reader (singular), with a review of the past year, and a brief summary of anticipated events in the year to come. However, as a result of my unanticipated and surprisingly enjoyable night out I have decided instead to write a commentary of said night out, in the hope that a reflection on this social nucleus of our time: the nightclub, can prove more revelatory than a tedious recounting of global events from the year passed. A kind of written time capsule, captivating a moment in time to be preserved for the future. The 80s night of blogs.
My evening began in a fashion that suggested worse things to come. While enjoying an Indian takeaway with my mother and grandmother is not inherently a bad thing, at this moment in time I had not any substantial plans for the evening ahead, and when a minor conflict broke out over whether or not my grandmother should return home to get a jar of chutney, or pay 60pence for one from the takeaway (for which price, she maintained, she could purchase two jars elsewhere) I saw my final hours of 2011 stretch before me like a Penrose staircase.
However, a small coup emerged upon my sudden texting, once full of curry, by a friend of mine who was, at that moment, parked outside. Obviously, I couldn't leave fast enough, and leapt in his car before he could push the front seat forward. But once again my hopes were dashed, as we went to the home of someone I didn't know for some awkward four person predrinks, to which I had taken no drinks. After an hour or so of trying desperately to get a kick from hyperventilation, we left for a bar known as a tavern. Now pubs are not my favourite places, and the prospect of one that considers itself to be so authentic as to refer to itself as a tavern certainly does not fill me with joy, nor did the five pound double spirit and mixer. Add to this the DJ who only had the ability to press "pause" on one song and "play" on another, while failing to remember which song he had played only minutes earlier, and you begin to see the reason for my pessimism. However, I was out of the house, in the company of other human beings, so it was already one up on both the year before and my own expectations. Furthermore, I saw a number of people who had been in the year below me at school, but are now somewhat fatter than me as a result of having ballooned, which gave me a smug sense of superiority which, again, was an improvement on last year.
Following a brief interlude in which I attempted, unsuccessfully, to redirect the course of the evening of the direction of one of Norwich's few homosexual establishments, we proceeded to the biggest nightclub of the fine city know as Norwich, via an off-license. However, upon arrival, the length of the queue became apparent to us, and to me as an ill-prepared non ticket bearer with just 50 minutes until the clock struck midnight, I realised my fate appeared to be spending my first minutes of 2012 in a queue to get into a nightclub containing unpleasant people lined up like sardines, sipping on beverages even Midas wouldn't fork out for.
Then came the first piece of true fortune I experienced that evening. For those of you who know me in person, you will know that meeting new people is not something I engage in with enthusiasm, particularly people I expect to only see on on occasion. However, as a result of being suitably intoxicated, I had, through no fault of my own, pre-emptively engaged in conversation and formed acquaintance with someone I did not previously know (he said we had spoken on several occasions, but as a result of suffering from an extreme form of social amnesia I had no recollection of this), who also had neglected to purchase a ticket for admittance to said nightclub. At this point I was fully expecting to end up walking from queue to queue until the sound of the jubilation at a new, unblemished year filled the streets from the packed danceries, at which thought I struck upon the fitting analogy of Mary (of the Bible) going from hotel to hotel but nowhere letting her in. However, I don't have enough sex for the Mary analogy to work. It then dawned on me that this was the first time the story of Jesus's birth had occurred to me over the holiday season, and that it's odd that its only modern relevance is as an analogy for nightclubs. I digress. We abandoned our friends to the club that was more packed than the average tube train and departed to the road know as "Prince of Wales" where all the other nightclubs of any significance can be found.
The first club we came across was ideal. All year round it's deserted, as its total size is little more than an average-sized living room, and they attempt to lure you in with free entry and cheap drinks. New Year's Eve, I assumed, would be a different story, yet I was pleasantly surprised to find it full enough to be lively, but with no queue and free entry and cheap drinks still intact. I suppose the exact same reasons that no-one goes there all year round apply even more on New Year's Eve, as it's not a place many people would choose to spend time, let alone at a time such as New Year's Eve, where many photos that will eventually end up on Facebook will be taken. Nevertheless, a good time was had by all. All I heard from one of my friends who made it in to Sardineia was a text just after midnight reading simply "Grapes news tear". I assume that meant he was having a good time. Or a stroke.
After the "ball had dropped", the DJ clearly decided the greater portion of the club's clientèle were too intoxicated to be able to use self-invented dance moves, so elected to play a series of dreaded "routine" songs. I can cope with the macarena, and the YMCA, while frustrating when everyone looks at me and thrusts me into the middle at its playing, is just about bearable. However, one song that knocks the cheer out of the cheeriest cheerleader is "Saturday Night". This particularly annoying track has a routine that I have never been able to master, and needing to tie my shoelace during the Cha Cha Slide (two hops, anyone?) was frankly a health hazard.
Following that, for only the second time in my life I was forcibly thrust to the front of a conga. This isn't as fun as it sounds, when one is left with responsibility for the happiness of thirty drunkards. It is also surprisingly difficult to get rid of a conga. You try walking away. It's like trying to lose your shadow. If your shadow was a line of thirty overweight girls in clit-length mini skirts. Furthermore, this was the first conga I had been in since the release of the Human Centipede, and I was suddenly horribly aware of the similarity. At least if my film-induced fears came true I was at the front.
Eventually, after much of this sort of malarkey, I left the club in search of something that can be loosely termed "food". Even if there's a rapture, at least I won't be hungry. On the way home I was asked for directions to Nando's, and instilled with the goodwill of a thousand drunkards I offered my best guess, and waved in a general direction other than the one I was travelling in. If that's not good citizenship, what is?
There's a lot of criticism of nightclubs, drinking and youth culture in general, and New Years Eve should be the worst example of this. However, as I looked around I didn't see immoral sin or antisocial behaviour, I saw complete strangers linking arms to Cotton-Eye Joe, acquaintances hugging at midnight, and people buying drinks for their peers without any care paid to reciprocation. 2011 is over, and was good (For personal reasons. Globally it was a shitter.). 2012 sees the Olympics, some sort of royal thing, and the possibility of a Mormon President. It's all down hill from here.
I thank you, my dear reader, for a year's loyalty, and I look forward to getting 7 people accidentally stumbling upon my blog a week for years to come.
My evening began in a fashion that suggested worse things to come. While enjoying an Indian takeaway with my mother and grandmother is not inherently a bad thing, at this moment in time I had not any substantial plans for the evening ahead, and when a minor conflict broke out over whether or not my grandmother should return home to get a jar of chutney, or pay 60pence for one from the takeaway (for which price, she maintained, she could purchase two jars elsewhere) I saw my final hours of 2011 stretch before me like a Penrose staircase.
However, a small coup emerged upon my sudden texting, once full of curry, by a friend of mine who was, at that moment, parked outside. Obviously, I couldn't leave fast enough, and leapt in his car before he could push the front seat forward. But once again my hopes were dashed, as we went to the home of someone I didn't know for some awkward four person predrinks, to which I had taken no drinks. After an hour or so of trying desperately to get a kick from hyperventilation, we left for a bar known as a tavern. Now pubs are not my favourite places, and the prospect of one that considers itself to be so authentic as to refer to itself as a tavern certainly does not fill me with joy, nor did the five pound double spirit and mixer. Add to this the DJ who only had the ability to press "pause" on one song and "play" on another, while failing to remember which song he had played only minutes earlier, and you begin to see the reason for my pessimism. However, I was out of the house, in the company of other human beings, so it was already one up on both the year before and my own expectations. Furthermore, I saw a number of people who had been in the year below me at school, but are now somewhat fatter than me as a result of having ballooned, which gave me a smug sense of superiority which, again, was an improvement on last year.
Following a brief interlude in which I attempted, unsuccessfully, to redirect the course of the evening of the direction of one of Norwich's few homosexual establishments, we proceeded to the biggest nightclub of the fine city know as Norwich, via an off-license. However, upon arrival, the length of the queue became apparent to us, and to me as an ill-prepared non ticket bearer with just 50 minutes until the clock struck midnight, I realised my fate appeared to be spending my first minutes of 2012 in a queue to get into a nightclub containing unpleasant people lined up like sardines, sipping on beverages even Midas wouldn't fork out for.
Then came the first piece of true fortune I experienced that evening. For those of you who know me in person, you will know that meeting new people is not something I engage in with enthusiasm, particularly people I expect to only see on on occasion. However, as a result of being suitably intoxicated, I had, through no fault of my own, pre-emptively engaged in conversation and formed acquaintance with someone I did not previously know (he said we had spoken on several occasions, but as a result of suffering from an extreme form of social amnesia I had no recollection of this), who also had neglected to purchase a ticket for admittance to said nightclub. At this point I was fully expecting to end up walking from queue to queue until the sound of the jubilation at a new, unblemished year filled the streets from the packed danceries, at which thought I struck upon the fitting analogy of Mary (of the Bible) going from hotel to hotel but nowhere letting her in. However, I don't have enough sex for the Mary analogy to work. It then dawned on me that this was the first time the story of Jesus's birth had occurred to me over the holiday season, and that it's odd that its only modern relevance is as an analogy for nightclubs. I digress. We abandoned our friends to the club that was more packed than the average tube train and departed to the road know as "Prince of Wales" where all the other nightclubs of any significance can be found.
The first club we came across was ideal. All year round it's deserted, as its total size is little more than an average-sized living room, and they attempt to lure you in with free entry and cheap drinks. New Year's Eve, I assumed, would be a different story, yet I was pleasantly surprised to find it full enough to be lively, but with no queue and free entry and cheap drinks still intact. I suppose the exact same reasons that no-one goes there all year round apply even more on New Year's Eve, as it's not a place many people would choose to spend time, let alone at a time such as New Year's Eve, where many photos that will eventually end up on Facebook will be taken. Nevertheless, a good time was had by all. All I heard from one of my friends who made it in to Sardineia was a text just after midnight reading simply "Grapes news tear". I assume that meant he was having a good time. Or a stroke.
After the "ball had dropped", the DJ clearly decided the greater portion of the club's clientèle were too intoxicated to be able to use self-invented dance moves, so elected to play a series of dreaded "routine" songs. I can cope with the macarena, and the YMCA, while frustrating when everyone looks at me and thrusts me into the middle at its playing, is just about bearable. However, one song that knocks the cheer out of the cheeriest cheerleader is "Saturday Night". This particularly annoying track has a routine that I have never been able to master, and needing to tie my shoelace during the Cha Cha Slide (two hops, anyone?) was frankly a health hazard.
Following that, for only the second time in my life I was forcibly thrust to the front of a conga. This isn't as fun as it sounds, when one is left with responsibility for the happiness of thirty drunkards. It is also surprisingly difficult to get rid of a conga. You try walking away. It's like trying to lose your shadow. If your shadow was a line of thirty overweight girls in clit-length mini skirts. Furthermore, this was the first conga I had been in since the release of the Human Centipede, and I was suddenly horribly aware of the similarity. At least if my film-induced fears came true I was at the front.
Eventually, after much of this sort of malarkey, I left the club in search of something that can be loosely termed "food". Even if there's a rapture, at least I won't be hungry. On the way home I was asked for directions to Nando's, and instilled with the goodwill of a thousand drunkards I offered my best guess, and waved in a general direction other than the one I was travelling in. If that's not good citizenship, what is?
There's a lot of criticism of nightclubs, drinking and youth culture in general, and New Years Eve should be the worst example of this. However, as I looked around I didn't see immoral sin or antisocial behaviour, I saw complete strangers linking arms to Cotton-Eye Joe, acquaintances hugging at midnight, and people buying drinks for their peers without any care paid to reciprocation. 2011 is over, and was good (For personal reasons. Globally it was a shitter.). 2012 sees the Olympics, some sort of royal thing, and the possibility of a Mormon President. It's all down hill from here.
I thank you, my dear reader, for a year's loyalty, and I look forward to getting 7 people accidentally stumbling upon my blog a week for years to come.
