The death of the nightclub will put an end to murder on the dancefloor
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Version 0 of 1. In possibly the first confirmation ever that though the arc of history is long it does indeed bend towards justice, news arrives that the nightclub, site of one’s most miserable teenage experiences, is dead. Nearly. According to the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers the number of loud, overpriced, sticky-floored, filthy hellscapes has fallen by almost half – from 3,144 10 years ago to 1,733 now. People are staying away in droves. All sorts of reasons have been adduced. The smoking ban. Student loans and the price of everything, including property (so the spaces that once made perfect clubs are being snapped up by developers). My first drink in a nightclub – stinking, grotesque Camden Palace – was £7.25 years ago. If I’d invested the money instead, I could be living in eight-bedroomed splendour by now, and very far away from Camden. Related: UK clubs are closing – this is how a nightlife revolution begins | Dave Haslam Add to the list Tinder, Spotify and all the apps that can stream entertainment and chlamydia right to your door without the effort of going out; the array of other choices – pop-up restaurants, secret cinema, vlogging your blackhead-popping; the fact that it’s too dark in night clubs to Instagram your fun; and the enduring truth that clubbing is, by and large, not fun. This is the first true triumph of nerd culture; the closing down of an entire genre of gathering sites that a certain type of teenager was traditionally dragged unwillingly to every Friday and Saturday night, in a desperate, futile attempt to become part of the cool – which is to say, socially-skilled, energetic, outward-looking, unembittered – crowd. It never worked, it never could and now – God, cultural and economic forces willing – it will never have to. It thrills me to my soul to think that generations will now grow up without being forced through this singularly unedifying rite of passage. The arc bends not just towards justice but towards introverts. It almost makes me want to dance. Almost. The patient will see you now A pain in my upper chest for 18 months has finally been diagnosed as gall stones. (Doctors know it by the five Fs – fat, fair, female, forty and fertile – apparently. It is the condition that likes to add insult to its injury.) The ultrasound technician sounded delighted when he scanned across my gall bladder. “They’re packed in there! Packed!” So I returned to my GP to find out what happened next. “What happens next?” I asked. “Do you want it taken out?” “I don’t know,” I said, somewhat taken aback. “I sort of thought you would tell me.” “We could take it out,” he said. “Well – should we?” I said, hoping that by “we” he meant a cadre of qualified professionals in a sterile environment elsewhere, and wasn’t planning just to have at me now with a rusty penknife while I bit down on a leather strap. “We could leave it,” he said. “But should we? Won’t it get more painful if we do?” “Probably.” “Then I think,” I said, after a pause I had hoped he would fill with a large amount of informed medical opinion, “I would like it taken out, please.” This happened to me a lot when I was pregnant: some grudging information; a dearth of actual advice. When did the medical profession become so frightened of disseminating its knowledge, of showing its expertise? I almost long for a lunge with a rusty penknife and the sense of confidence that would at least display. Is it fear of litigation that has cowed doctors so? Are we in some shaky transitional stage between old-fashioned autocratic imposition and genuinely egalitarian interaction? Or have they just given up the fight against internet factoids and patients that come to them already convinced of their diagnosis and firm in their choice of treatment? Does anyone, anywhere have the answers to anything any more? |