#1. Dancing.

I will start off this, my first blog, with some information about myself. I am tall, I cannot grow a beard, I like nothing better than my own company and loud music, I sleep a lot, I like to play scrabble, my favourite food is cheese and I have no particularly notable talents. However from this list there is one significant omission. Lots of things annoy me.


As you may be able to guess the very first topic for my blog is dancing. I'm not saying that I don't appreciate dance as a medium, nor do I dislike those who have a real ability in it. I was as impressed as anybody by the magnificence of Diversity in that recent nation-wide talent contest (yet another concept i despise, but I will speak of that another time). No, what i despise about dancing is that where ever i go, whatever I am doing, someone is trying to persuade me that all I should want to do is 'have a good old boogie'.


Those of you who know me well will know that I do not enjoy the experience of a night club. So picture if you will, the following scenario of the average night out. First of all the pre-drinks. I hate this phrase. If I have a drink before going into town, it is not a drink before the night has started, this is the part of the entire evening's experience that I enjoy the most. Anyway, pre-drinks have happened, then comes the journey into town. If we were to walk it would take 5 minutes, however there are women in the party who have already lost feeling in their legs due to the 'pre-drinks' and all the other 'men' in the group want to use this alcoholic soiree as a way in to a meaningless sexual embargo with these legless women. So first a member of the group elects themselves to count around the room to gain an accurate idea of how many taxis we will need to get us all in to town. However this always ends up in a shouting match between the more boisterous members as this person is unable to count and be polite at the same time.


We jump forwards, past the taxi journey which takes twice the time as it would if we had been walking, the argument between a drunk lady with taxi driver for not turning the radio up and the stopping at a nearby garage so that the cigarette junkies can take stock so that they look even more of a wreck than usual. So now we are in town. The first place we visit is your run of the mill bar, with an obnoxious bouncer checking your I.D. despite the fact you are clearly not 17 years old. You get in and immediately can't move due to unbelievable amount of people crammed into this small space (alarm bells ringing, as if a freak fire starts everyone will surely die). Before you know where you are you lose your friends who rush to the bar to continue their steady rise into inebriation, so are left more alone than you feel comfortable with. To set the scene a little better it is worth saying that at present the music in this bar is too loud to have a decent conversation, though no one is in a right state to hear what you said even if it were quieter. The queue for the bar takes a good half hour, only to receive a watered down version of the drink you ordered anyway. In any case, you are sipping away leisurely, when a more sober member of the party informs you that you are leaving in a minute.


After a walk half way across town you arrive at night club, where there is a queue longer than the building itself, the people in front of you saying they have already been there for an hour. With this you suggest that you go somewhere else, but are met with scowls, as this is everyone’s ‘favourite place in town’. After queuing for what seems like an age you finally get in, past yet another bouncer who left his personality in his other coat. You go to the bar, now empty of all alcohol due to the waiting in gale force weather to get in and all you can hear is the same generic song as everybody is releasing at the moment. On the dance floor you see all of your female friends acting like whores and all of your male friends trying to pick them off like a rhino hunter in Tanzania. You are left to sit at the sides and wait for people to get bored of dancing and talk to you, but by then they are so drunk that they use a vocabulary consisting of fewer words than a Fisher Price Play-Centre.


The above scenario had this blueprint for the majority of my time at university, and it is why I very rarely went out. The fact is I enjoy my friends company by talking to them and responding to them, but this isn’t possible because of one thing. Dancing. If dancing was taken out of these nights there would be banter and fun times, as it is, it is dull. If I like a song I like to sit down and tap my foot to it, not pretend I’m a backing dancer on the songs video, or try to gain the sexual favours of a drunk woman, by moving in a way that a man should never do.


Sorry for the rant, but it is something you will be reading a lot more on my blog. Sweet dreams.