Saturday 12 July 2008

Is 'Going Out' All It Used To Be?

I don’t know if I am just getting old before my time but I have become increasingly disenfranchised with ‘going out’ recently. I’m not sure if the novelty of going to new places, trying new things and meeting new people when you first started hitting the town has worn off, or if I just need a big night to restore my faith. Here is a list of what I believe is the 50 worst and best things about ‘going out’:


50 WORST:

  1. Hearing the same shit music time and time again, with the DJ putting in his mix tape containing 90s cheese (S Club, Backstreet Boys and 5ive), awful modern R&B (like Rihanna and Nelly Fatardo) and what they perceive as Indie (meaning the Killer ‘Mr Brightside’ and The Fratellis ‘Chelsea Dagger).
  2. Your shoes getting covered in that ‘club grime’ which is a mix of sweat, vomit and cheap vodka.
  3. Hideously drunk middle aged women falling about the places, screeching along to a Madonna track before ending up arse-over-tit on the dance floor.
  4. The smug crowd who think that only they can enjoy themselves, and give you the evils if you even as dare to sing-a-long to a tune or have a dance.
  5. Waking up wondering how you managed to empty your wallet of all its money when you had such a bad night.
  6. Picking last nights clothes up off the floor and finding chilli sauce and garlic mayo in places you didn’t think were possible.
  7. Hangovers that don’t kick in till exactly 3pm the next day, after which you are incapable of doing anything other than monging out on the sofa watching crap TV.
  8. Being trapped as a dance floor gate – where everybody seems to be squeezing past you to go anywhere.
  9. When your friends turn into Harry Hudini the second you walk into a club and you can’t find them again for the rest of the night.
  10. Going to the toilet and being expected to pay someone a pound to turn the tap on for you to wash your hands.
  11. Someone spilling snakebite all over your nice white shirt.
  12. Picking glass out of your shoe every two minutes.
  13. The awfulness of a pint of lager served in a plastic cup – it just doesn’t taste right.
  14. Having to re-mortgage your house for a drink on the weekend that cost £1 when you where in on Wednesday.
  15. Being charged for entry when the drinks are not free when you get inside, or having to pay to get into a bar, especially one you don’t particularly like.
  16. People pestering you to sign up to receive text messages from clubs that end up costing you a fortune to receive when on holiday, only to tell you that Dane Bowers will be live on Saturday.
  17. Clubs charging extra because special Z list celebs are there that night
  18. Never being able to get a signal anywhere until you leave and get a hundred text messages at once whilst you’re walking past a dodgy looking gang down a dark alley.
  19. Everyone has at some point been the only sober person in there group and no matter how hard you try you can’t catch up to your mates.
  20. Being forced to pay a fortune for a taxi to somewhere that is five minutes walk away.
  21. Waking up with permanent marker in every orifice.
  22. Realising what you did last night – or in the worst cases who.
  23. Finding yourself tagged in about fifty photos from the night before, including the hideously unattractive, making an arse of yourself and getting partially/fully naked. The last thing you want to see is a picture of your arse on Facebook.
  24. Vomiting – plain and simply horrible.
  25. Spending the night trying to get even a peck on the cheek from the cock tease you thought you were well on with.
  26. Your mates being swifter than you in shotgunning there girls in a group and lumbering you with ‘the whale’.
  27. Stumbling home alone – how sad and depressing are you?
  28. Even though you’d practised at home and studied the technique for hours, still ending up with half the drink down your shirt when you do a strawpeedo.
  29. Not being able to find a single place to just be able to sit and chat.
  30. Groups of lads to whom chanting is the only way that they can communicate to each other.
  31. The sometimes quiet scary memory loss that cheap vodka can have on the human brain.
  32. Going out with more than enough money to have a good night but still visiting a cash machine at least twice.
  33. Waking up with a big bruise on your side or a cut on your leg and not having a clue how they got their.
  34. Buying someone a drink a never getting one in return. We’ve all bought an attractive girl a drink in the hope of getting something in return and then never see them again; or we’ve all got that mate who disappears like Rio Ferdinand when its time to do a drugs test when its their round.
  35. Being so desperate for another drink that you pay on card – even if they are tequila sunrises and you’re on the Pride of Rotterdam.
  36. Waking up to find your jeans and shirt in opposite corners of the room, with a solitary sock perched precariously on your lamp. Then when you go downstairs you remember the state you left the living room in, with half drunken lagers cans, half eaten kebabs and half destroyed tables all over the place.
  37. The amazing drunken ability to lose or break phones and digital cameras almost as if you meant it.
  38. The awkward dilemma of it being freezing cold outside but boiling hot inside the club. What do you wear?
  39. Some tit thought it would be a good idea to go out dressed up for their birthday, meaning you have to spend the night in uncomfortable, itchy clothes, having stuff robbed off you and then wake up with face paint all over your bedding.
  40. Being stuck with the drunk mate who just won’t leave you alone, chatting shit insistently into your ear.
  41. Spending forty minutes plus queuing up to get the coat your wish you hadn’t brought out with you in the first place.
  42. The awkward conversations you are forced to have when you bump into people you barely spoke to in school on a night out.
  43. Having to walk a paralytic friend home, dragging them home, throwing them into their bed before they are helpfully sick all over you.
  44. When you spend a fortune on one item that makes your fancy dress look sensational and you lose it within half an hour of leaving your house.
  45. Bar staff who think that just because the person has breasts they must be served first, regardless that they just pushed in front of you in a queue you’ve been in half the night.
  46. Having to order about 300 drinks for friends, family members, course mates, associates, chums and well wishers because you managed to get served.
  47. Ripping your best shirt trying to scale a fence whilst being a drunken fool.
  48. Not being able to wear a hat without it being stolen of you by girls all night, who seem to think it’s theirs if they bat their eyelids at you.
  49. Face eaters in the middle of the dance floor – you know who you are.
  50. Men who drink Smirnoff Ice. If it’s on offer sure, but not when it cost more than a full tank of petrol and taste like fizzy aids. I can’t say I have ever looked out of the window on a nice sunny day and thought ‘do you know what I fancy, a nice, ice cold Smirnoff Ice’.


50 BEST:

  1. Dancing like nobody’s watching.
  2. Your whole house meeting on the landing or in the living room to piece together what happened last night.
  3. Finding random mates on the sofa.
  4. Chatting absolute shit for an entire evening.
  5. Devising brilliant plans, ideas and schemes that you know the next day you will not remember or will realise are terrible.
  6. Reading some humorous graffiti in the toilets.
  7. Taking advantage of someone passing out by writing all over them, balancing stuff on them and, in exceptional cases, concocting fake faeces to convince someone they had shit themselves.
  8. The night the DJ seems to be playing your Ipod.
  9. When you go out in fancy dress and everyone loves it.
  10. Checking Facebook next morning to find yourself in a gem of a photo and commenting on it.
  11. Watching your mate strike out.
  12. Drunken karaoke – you can’t sing Wonderwall at the best of times but you convince yourself you are Oasis.
  13. Manufacturing fake photographs – classics include the ‘laughing at a funny joke’, the ‘pointing to something in the distance’ and the ‘pretending to be deep in thought’.
  14. Being so hilarious and generally class that people you only just met that night immediately add you on Facebook.
  15. Staying in a club or bar till closing time, occasionally doing the ‘one more song’ chant.
  16. Knowing the manager/bouncer so they let you in for free.
  17. Finally managing to defeat Noel Edmonds and winning some money on the itBox.
  18. Writing general abuse all over your mates T-shirts and pen raping randoms on nights like Carnage.
  19. Getting into random peoples pictures, or getting a picture with a random, e.g. a random with a boss afro.
  20. Cracking a joke with such brilliant timing and perfect delivery that it becomes legend amongst your group of friends.
  21. Pulling out the old skool dance moves such as ‘sowing the seeds’, ‘the mash potato’ and ‘the water jet’.
  22. When the DJ plays that song you haven’t heard in ages, the one you download the second you wake up.
  23. Enjoying a good rave.
  24. Watching a smashed mate pull something that better resembles a member of the animal family than a member of the opposite sex.
  25. Playing drinking games for hours until everyone is good a smashed.
  26. Pissing yourself to jokes that nobody else gets and probably aren’t even funny.
  27. Waking up with a random balloon, flower, pair of sunglasses or any other type of cool steal from the night before.

  28. The wonderful sensation of winning a drinking race.

  29. Watching your mate tell a girl he would ‘shag her brains out’ because you were playing the ‘Tell Her’ rule.
  30. The rare occasion the DJ plays your request or reads out your shout-out.
  31. Getting good and sweaty, taking your top off and banging into each other in the Drum n Bass room.
  32. Stealing a traffic cone or road sign – you must do it at least once in your life.
  33. Waking up with your phone and a wallet that still has money in it.
  34. Watching scatty kids from four years below you get ID’d as you stroll in unchallenged.
  35. Dancing in a big group.
  36. Being ‘asked kindly to leave’ by bouncers because you’ve been found asleep on the club stairs.
  37. Knowing the bar staff and getting free drinks. Best example of this was a mate who was leaving his bar job and moving away so he gave us bottles of wine free all night.
  38. The ‘what happened last night’ text.
  39. Going up to a group of girls and being the one who manages to pull the fitty.
  40. Seeing someone fall flat on their face. Even funnier when it’s a girl, and even funnier if you know them.
  41. Clinging onto each other belting out whatever anthem is playing. A demonstration of solidarity and awful singing.
  42. Bumping into someone you actually like and haven’t seen in ages.
  43. Over bumming somebody because you’re drunk and for some reason think they are the Messiah.
  44. Getting ‘the mate who doesn’t come out much’ blind drunk.
  45. The very rare instance where you are the one who get chatted up.
  46. Being the drunkest of your friends. Or the drunkest people in the pub/bar/club.
  47. The hungover phone call the next morning where you tell people how big a tit they made of themselves, and they tell you how big of a tit you where.
  48. Challenging another group of lads in the pub to a drinking contest and winning triumphantly.
  49. Having gotten totally sloshed the night before, getting up and getting straight back on it like a true champion.
  50. Striking gold and pulling someone universally regarded as a ‘fitty’.


I write this contemplating whether or not to go out tonight. What to do?


Please comment if you agree with any of my loves or hates and tell me your favourite/worst things about ‘going out’ too.