It’s early in the morning on New Year’s Day 2022. I’m in a room full of people—some I know and love, some I don’t know too well, some I don’t know at all. Jools Holland is on the TV, muted but with the subtitles on, while Mall Grab thuds through a speaker. I’m sipping prosecco from a red paper cup, thinking about how much I missed parties and going out while we were in lockdown.
As I lived in a tiny, rural town pre-university, the first few times I went out required catching a train to the nearest city; Worcester. My friends and I would religiously stick to the same routine each time: totter to Sin on New Street; stagger up to Bushwackers (better known as “Bushies” or just “Bush”) at 1am; then finally retire to McDonald’s and conclude the night by eating hot fries out of a grease-stained, brown paper bag. I enjoyed clubbing, even then, when “Will Griggs on Fire” was played at least three times a night and the dress code demanded that all girls wear heels.
But my love for going out really began once I started university. I’d heard that Leeds had “good nightlife,” but I didn’t really know how nightlife could be “good.” I soon found out.
The first, most immediately noticeable improvement was that girls were allowed to wear trainers in clubs. My university friends and I still cringe when we look back at our freshers’ week pictures: there’s one particularly bad snap that captures me in an H&M miniskirt and suede ankle boots, pouting next to my new (now old) friend Beth who is dressed in a grey bodycon dress and five-inch heels. When we arrived at the student union that night, we clocked that most people had opted for jeans and trainers. The next day I stuffed my three pairs of heels into the back of my wardrobe, where they remained until I moved out of halls.
It wasn’t just the trainers policy that made Leeds’s nightlife so great. There were the different venues and club nights, where I discovered my enduring love of disco, and the ritual of picking up a portion of cheesy chips and gravy from Crispy’s on the way home.
I loved it all: the scramble to buy a second-hand event ticket through Facebook; dabbing on sparkly eyeshadow while sipping on a can of Red Stripe; pre-drinks to the tune of inoffensive Spotify playlists. Then the taxi there, followed by shots at the bar; gossip in the smoking area; pep talks in the toilets. Even the next morning would somehow be a part of the experience, debriefing in front of the TV with ham and mushroom pizzas hot on our laps. My love of partying is inextricably bound up with the fact that going out was how I forged so many solid friendships. It was how we bonded.
And yet, despite clearly remembering how I’d promised myself in the depths of lockdown that I’d never say no to a party again, all I could think while perched on my friend’s sofa in the early hours of New Year’s Day was: “I want to go home.” I shivered—the door was half-open to reduce the risk of Covid—as I fantasised about slipping away, ordering an Uber, and getting into my nice, warm bed.
I caught myself dreaming of ducking out and wondered: have I become boring? Having repeatedly insisted throughout lockdown that things wouldn’t feel truly “normal” until I could party again, I was suddenly confronted with the possibility that I had gone from being someone who would stay up two-stepping until six in the morning to someone who would choose a solid eight hours of sleep over anything.
A guilty part of me likes the mundanity of my current routine. I like that my weekends are primarily for cooking indulgent meals and burning scented candles and binge-watching The Sopranos. Some people have dubbed the pandemic the Great Accelerator, so is it that I’ve simply prematurely aged out of going out? Sometimes I think to myself, curled up in bed watching Netflix on a Friday night: are my clubbing days over for good?
But of course, they aren’t. Although my friends are scattered across the country nowadays, and we go out once every three months as opposed to once every three days, it’s still just as magical to be in a crowded bar, clutching their hands, singing (terribly) along to “Don’t You Want Me.” Sure, some days I’ll be sound asleep by 11pm, but other days I’ll be in the kitchen at a house party, sinking extra-strong vodka and Cokes, itching to get back on the dancefloor.
