Dom Davis (The Blog)

Having been awake for some stupidly large number of hours due to me deciding I wanted to go clubbing on a night with an extra hour in it (self inflicted, no sympathy) I need to keep myself occupied and my brain active so I don’t fall asleep and miss my county (never mind my stop). To this end I shall list a number of lessons that people should have learned last night:

1) In a club with a strict no photography policy, while you might get away with mobile phone pics, you’re not going to be left unchallenged when you pull out a ruddy great big SLR with huge flash gun. One assumes you’ll be picking that up at the end of the night now.

2) Men who are overweight should not take their tops of and expose their chests. Ever. No matter how hot it gets. End of discussion.

3) Men who think they are trim and in shape should not take off their tops and expose their chests. You’re not quite as trim as you think.

4) Men who are trim and in shape should not take off their tops and expose abs and 6 packs. Bastards!

5) Covering your friends in beer on the train on the way to your Halloween party greatly reduces the number of friends you have.

6) Banging on my window at Witham station while I snooze on my way to London is not big, nor is it clever.

7) Ripping the signs that say “out of order” from the cash machines won’t suddenly magically make them work. Not even if you remove all of them.
Brave though it was to wear a g-string and fishnet top with those trousers (male, and not dissimilar build to me, which is something you want to hide rather than flaunt) you might want to check for labels. They glow under the UV light and the visible label on the thong was very disconcerting.

9) The clocks went back an hour last night. It happened after 01:59. After this time some, older time pieces may need manual intervention. Asking “are you sure” after enquiring about the time and canvassing a large number of people (presumably so you can take an average, or go with the majority vote, or something) really isn’t needed.

10) And last, but by no means least, this is Slimelight. The fact you’re not peeing into a trough after wading across a floor covered in piss, beer and puke while women (and men) check their makeup is a small miracle. You’ve got your own, men only toilet, it’s relatively clean and there’s even a thing of hand soap by the sinks. Accept that hand towels or a working hand drier is too much to ask. I take my own little towel. It Comes in very handy.

Todays best phrase was overheard in the gents toilets: ” Dude! How is your makeup not running?”. Given it’s Halloween you would be forgiven in thinking that it’s not a completely off the wall question. Let me take it completely off the wall, therefore, and tell you they weren’t in costume. At least not a Halloween one. They weren’t in drag either

And now I must leave you and change onto my bus replacement rail service

So as a coda to the stag do, which is handily happening on a Saturday evening in London, I decided I’d go to Slimelight one last time. As previously mentioned this is going to require some planning, but I think I’ve covered all angles.

Getting to London won’t be an issue as I’ll be there already for the stag.

Organisation of people is easy. The Best man has been informed (with YouTube examples) of the type of music, the dress code (there is one, and it’s quite strict) and the fact that this is not part of the official stag do. People can either come, or not. Their choice. I plan to be there all night.

Which leads us to the big question mark. Will I last all night? I’ve got this covered too. Since I now have the body of a professional sportsman¹ I’ve moved out of the ‘fat burning zone’ and into the ‘cardio training zone’² at the gym. Still, even with my training regime general fatigue and tiredness may be my undoing, bedtime is 9pm these days after all. Should the land of nod beckon then there is a hotel room booked where I can crash and die.

Even the problem of will I be needing a train a club chuck out time or hotel checkout time had been solved, although using brute force over ignorance. Booking the train well in advance means it’s l not hugely expensive so I can afford to have seats booked on two trains.

Not quite as simple (or cheap) as when I lived in Colchester but as a one off I think it’s a pretty fool proof plan. Be interesting to see how well it holds out on the day

¹ Darts player
² No, I don’t have a clue the difference is either, I just assume one makes you thinner quicker and the other helps you get used to going for longer.

I’ve always enjoyed clubbing and have been a regular patron of a few dark and dingy holes in my life. I go clubbing to dance which means, unlike most people, I go sober [duff kidneys] and alone¹. Given the latter I need to be damn sure there is going to be decent music because a night of watching pissed people dance to crap music is bad enough when drunk and in a group. I also like the patrons to be older because being the only non member of staff in their 30s is a bit tragic. Mix those requirements with my taste in music and these days I’m limited to about 3 clubs in the UK which means I just cut to the chase, go to London and patronise the grandaddy of them all: Slimelight. 8+ hours of terror EBM, agrotech, power noise, darkwave and just a soupçon of goth with the odd bit of industrial, coldwave and 80s cheese thrown in for good measure (you’ve just got to love alternative genre names ).

Since Slimelight is open all night I used to get a train from Colchester at about 10pm, get there for just gone 11, dance the night away, leave at 7:30am, get the tube back to Liverpool Street, catch the first train home and die. Readers of my old blog may even remember the entries written in an attempt to stay awake after a night out.

In those days I was younger, single, unemployed and only an hour or so away from London. These days I have a fiancée, a job and live 3 hours from London. Not only is going to Slimelight a marathon effort but it also cuts into precious Zozo time and would leave me dead for a week (unless I had Monday off to recover too). Sadly I think my clubbing days are over and it’s time to hang up the glowsticks, put away the black tshirts with fluorescent slogans and leave the dancing for family events in the future where I can embarrass the kids.

In order that I go out with a bang rather than a whimper I’ll be heading to Slimelight one last time for a post stag dance-a-thon, the details of which are a topic for another entry.

¹ I don’t know many (any?) people who would really want to go to the clubs I go to and I’ve found people to be notoriously unreliable come 11pm on a Saturday as they’ve generally been drinking. Much easier to go alone and tell people who might be interested where you’ll be if they want to show up. That way they can also head off with the people they came with if they don’t like it and not ruin my night