Urgh! Do you know what the worst thing about being nearly 30 is?
It's having friends the same age as you.
Friends who are panicking about the fact that they will soon be leaving their 20's behind and suddenly feel a desperate urge to recapture and hang on to their "youth".
This afternoon I got an e-mail from a friend who is turning 30 in a few weeks and wants to celebrate.
Whats wrong with that, you grumpy bugger? I can hear you wondering to yourself. It's a milestone, right? Who wouldn't want to celebrate it?
It's not that I mind celebrating, in fact I'd be rather put out if we didn't ... it's how she wants to celebrate that I have the problem with.
She wants to go clubbing.
*weary sigh*
I'm so over clubbing. I started going when I was barely 16 (I looked mature for my age and never got asked to provide I.D ... which is a bit disturbing when I think about it now) and by the time I reached 21 I was totally sick and bored of it. I do it once in a while now, mainly to keep my friends off my back, but I don't really do it by choice. Clubbing holds no attraction for me, it's hardly the height of my social ambition to spend an evening wedged up against total strangers, sipping a tepid cocktail whilst being deafened by the sound system and ogled like a piece of prime steak! I'd much rather go for a nice meal and drinks in a bar.
Now before I get accused of being a killjoy and old fashioned I would like to say in my defence that I like to have a good time as much as the next 29 year old, single, woman. I like to have the occasional drink (or three), I like music and I like to chat and I LOVE to dance! But clubs (at least the clubs in this town) prohibit the enjoyment of any of these activities.
Wait! Maybe I should briefly fill you in on the 'club' situation in this town before I continue?
OK, there are basically three main clubs, all within walking distance of each other but all attracting very different clientele. The first is the acknowledged hang-out for teenagers and early 20's, you can recognise it by the thumping dance/techno music, heavy presence of police cars, broken glass and puddles of vomit outside.
The next is the 'swingers' club, this is where the middle aged flock to at the weekends, dressed like mutton they spend the night flirting with the bar staff and doing the "embarrassing mum/dad" dance to old 60's and 70's tunes, generally kidding themselves that they've still 'got it' while contradicting this delusion by saying things like "Hey! We can still show the kids how to party!" or "They don't make songs like this anymore!"
Third and lastly you have the club I ended up in. This is where the late 20's and 30-somethings congregate, packed like desperate, horny sardines, battling off the fear of impending middle age by trying to convince themselves and everyone else that life is still one big party, all to a soundtrack of classic 80's, 90's and 00's music.
It never ceases to amaze me that so many people put themselves through this ritual week after week, just by looking around you can see the discomfort and panic in their eyes. THAT'S why people drink so much, it's liquid courage to deaden the senses, otherwise it's all one big awful ordeal. So why DO they do it? Because they all realise that they HAVE to put themselves through it week in, week out, in order to find the partner who will free them from this social torture for ever.
Anyway, back to my bitching ... yes, you can drink in a club ... if you take out a small bank loan beforehand or are willing to risk "Rohypnol spritzers" from strange guys; yes, you can chat ... if you're skilled in the art of shouting and/or lip reading and yes, you can dance ... as long as you consider dancing to be shuffling restrictively from one foot to the other whilst getting pushed and jostled by all the drunken louts who are flailing around without any regard to the welfare of others, all the while wilting into a soggy, unattractive mass from the heat of the lights and the bodies of your fellow club-dwellers.
I mean seriously? Is that fun?
And if all that wasn't ghastly enough, I have to deal with my friends thinking that all they have to do is get me inside a club and I will magically find the man of my dreams, when the truth of it is nothing is more unlikely. Being quite shy, (shocked? it's true) especially around men I find attractive, it's difficult enough under the best of circumstances, let alone with all the previously mentioned horrors to contend with.
I mean let's face it, you don't exactly get the cream of the male crop in clubs. And before people start booing and hissing at me for saying that ... I acknowledge that no doubt there are some truly lovely men out there who club regularly, (my best friends met in a club, were married 3 months later and are still extremely happy after 7 years), it's just not MY experience.
Let me share one of my experiences with men in clubs from a previous night out:
The scene: crowded club, I'm sat at a table with a couple of female friends the others having gone to buy drinks or to go to the bathroom etc, feeling pretty dispirited, not to mention bored and tired; he's clearly very drunk, not at all my type and has been trying to catch my attention all night despite my rather obvious disinterest. Failing to catch my eye he catches my friend's and uses that as an excuse to come over (clutching a bottle of beer in both hands, most of which seems to be down the front of his shirt and on his shoes ... at least I prefer to assume it's beer):
Him: Alright ladies? (said whilst staring at me, or rather my breasts)
Friends: Yes, fine thank you
Him: What's your names? (still staring at me)
Friends: (general mumbled responses while trying to catch my eye, obviously thinking the whole situation hilarious)
Him: (pointing at me with one of the beer bottles) What's your name?
Me: (with a very heavy sigh and pained look gives name)
Him: that's a fucking average name
Me: thank you!
Him: Why you so fucking miserable?
Friends: (hearty snickering)
Me: (mentally say's "Because I have a drunken schmuck in my face who is making me extremely uncomfortable") I'm just tired
Him: You should cheer up! (belches) You're a pretty girl! You've got great tits!
Me: thank you!
Him: Come and dance
Me: No thanks
Him: What?
Me: I said no thanks
Him: Why not?
Me: Because I don't want to
Him: You need to fucking cheer up, come and dance with me
Me: I said no
Him: Why not?
Me: I'm not in the mood, and it's too crowded and warm
Him: Well let me take you somewhere else (belch)
Me: No, thank you! I'm not interested
Him: Why not? We don't have to have sex straight away
Me: I said no!
Him: You just need a bloke to sort you out
At this point I gave my friends the filthiest look I could manage and hissed that unless they got rid of him I was leaving. Fortunately the men of the party returned and he stumbled off having been squared up to by the largest and most intimidating of them.
That's the small town, Norfolk club scene.
But what my friend wants is to go clubbing in London. Specifically to a club called The Church which was where we celebrated her 21st birthday. Going with the whole church theme it's open on Sunday mornings/afternoons, allowing hardcore clubbers the opportunity to be smashed off their faces for the entire weekend if they so choose.
Now to be fair, as far as I remember, it was actually quite good fun. If I have to go clubbing then I would much prefer to do it in London and I was half-heartedly accepting my fate as not being so bad, when I received another e-mail.
It was from another friend from the list of those the original e-mail invitation had been sent to.
It said:
"OMGOMGOMG! We HAVE to talk her out of this ASAP! Went last year with friends and it is a DISGUSTING DUMP"
I groaned out loud. Now I was going to get put right in the middle of a dispute about something I didn't even want to do in the first place. But ever the diplomat I e-mailed friend #2 back and said that I reluctantly had to admit that I'd had fun the last time, and if that was what friend #1 wanted to do then maybe we should just bite the bullet and indulge her.
A reply soon came whooshing into my inbox.
Apparently the club we went to in 2000 has radically changed. It's moved location for one thing, and whilst it's still the biggest haunt for hot Aussie guys it's also full of misogynistic a-holes whose idea of a fun time is to drink until they barf over each other and anyone unlucky enough to be standing nearby, groping and molesting any female that takes their fancy, while a DJ plays substandard music and a resident stand-up comic demands that the female clubbers get their tits out. Throw in a middle-aged stripper, who my friend described as "such a skanky ho, she makes Amy Winehouse look like Shirley Temple" and there you have all the ingredients of my worst clubbing nightmare.
Urgh! I'm getting too old for this!
I think I might have other plans that weekend if we can't talk her out of it.
On a side note ... I don't remember all the details of my friend's 21st celebrations, however I do remember vividly what my friends and I now refer to as "The Magnificent Poo Incident"
*Warning: If you happen to be eating whilst reading this, you might want to look away and come back later
Having spent a rather tipsy weekend in the capital we started to make our way home by train. As is often the way I was convinced before getting on the train that I didn't need to use the bathroom. I felt fine.
Ten minutes into the journey my bladder started to twitch.
By the time we got to the underground station near my friend's house, approximately 20 minutes later I was fit to burst and only prevented an accident by hopping from one foot to the other, uttering the mystical chant "IneedtopeeIneedtopeeIneedtopee", which everyone knows gives you 5 vital extra minutes before embarrassing yourself.
I dashed off the train at the speed of light straight into the ladies toilets, and slammed into a cubicle.
What I saw there made me stop in my tracks. My straining bladder all but forgotten.
On the back of the toilet cistern, almost the same width as it, was the most humongous poo I've ever seen.
Whoever had done it had obviously been so proud of their handiwork that they'd wanted to share its magnificence with everyone. They'd laid a line of toilet tissue on the top of the cistern and then lovingly placed the poo on top of it, displaying it to glorious effect.
I was stunned.
I looked to see if I'd wandered into the Gents in my haste, surely no woman was capable of such a thing! But no, it was the Ladies alright.
It was too good/heinous not to share and I dutifully called my friends in, and I figured it was what the woman (built like a Russian weightlifter in my mind) would have wanted.
We stood there slack-jawed in awe for a couple of minutes.
It's magical spell was only broken by one of my friends gasping that she thought she was going to throw up.
And so it passed (pardon the pun) into legend.
