My family call it Old Lady Clubbing, but my giddy ‘nights out’ have lit up a dismal 2024 | Gaby Hinsliff
Dance till you drop, then home by 10pm – daytime events offer a glorious escape for those of us bogged down by responsibilityLast Saturday night, I went clubbing with friends. Once upon a time, this wouldn’t have been a remotely odd sentence to type, because it was what I did pretty much every weekend. But a lot has changed since then – let’s just say that in my peak raving years there was a Labour government in power, only it was actually popular – and like most people whose happy place was once on the dancefloor, inevitably with time comes the feeling that you no longer belong. Deep down, you still come to life when the bassline kicks in. But you morph from hardened raver to the kind of person who’s always up for dancing at parties and weddings, and then finally into the kind of person whose friends aren’t getting married any more and who spends their Saturday nights giving their children lifts to parties. So eventually you tell yourself sadly that those days are over now, and that clinging on would be a bit mutton-behaving-as-lamb.Well, not any more. Enter what was almost certainly the cheeriest thing about an otherwise lousy 2024: the rise of what is now regrettably known in my house as Old Lady Clubbing, AKA daytime events specially laid on by music promoters for the over-30s. It’s like going back in time, but better: partly because this time round you have learned to wear the big coat, instead of going without and shivering glamorously to death in the queue, but mostly because it starts in the afternoon. The secret of middle-aged socialising, it transpires, is to do roughly what you always did – but earlier: hitting the club at 3pm means being home in time for the 10 o’clock news, and blissfully asleep by last orders. (Though the truly multitasking could do as one of the DJs at Day Fever, the over-35s night set up by the actor Vicky McClure and her promoter husband, Jonny Owen, reportedly sometimes does and cram in a big supermarket shop on the way back.) Even the bar staff love it, one told me, because unlike most nights there’s no hassle: everyone’s just too thrilled to be out of the house.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Dance till you drop, then home by 10pm – daytime events offer a glorious escape for those of us bogged down by responsibility
Last Saturday night, I went clubbing with friends. Once upon a time, this wouldn’t have been a remotely odd sentence to type, because it was what I did pretty much every weekend. But a lot has changed since then – let’s just say that in my peak raving years there was a Labour government in power, only it was actually popular – and like most people whose happy place was once on the dancefloor, inevitably with time comes the feeling that you no longer belong. Deep down, you still come to life when the bassline kicks in. But you morph from hardened raver to the kind of person who’s always up for dancing at parties and weddings, and then finally into the kind of person whose friends aren’t getting married any more and who spends their Saturday nights giving their children lifts to parties. So eventually you tell yourself sadly that those days are over now, and that clinging on would be a bit mutton-behaving-as-lamb.
Well, not any more. Enter what was almost certainly the cheeriest thing about an otherwise lousy 2024: the rise of what is now regrettably known in my house as Old Lady Clubbing, AKA daytime events specially laid on by music promoters for the over-30s. It’s like going back in time, but better: partly because this time round you have learned to wear the big coat, instead of going without and shivering glamorously to death in the queue, but mostly because it starts in the afternoon. The secret of middle-aged socialising, it transpires, is to do roughly what you always did – but earlier: hitting the club at 3pm means being home in time for the 10 o’clock news, and blissfully asleep by last orders. (Though the truly multitasking could do as one of the DJs at Day Fever, the over-35s night set up by the actor Vicky McClure and her promoter husband, Jonny Owen, reportedly sometimes does and cram in a big supermarket shop on the way back.) Even the bar staff love it, one told me, because unlike most nights there’s no hassle: everyone’s just too thrilled to be out of the house.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
