simont | (no subject)

Calling last night; in the usual sort of way, I stayed sober and left early in the vain hope of getting a decent night's sleep, and in the usual sort of way two good songs got played just as I was trying to say goodbye to people and I had to wait for some of them to get off the dancefloor, and in the usual sort of way I therefore got home not quite early enough to get enough sleep. This is starting to become a habit…

Talking to Gareth yesterday, it occurred to me what's changed most about the Calling. It's that nothing interesting happens any more. When I talk the next day to someone who missed it, the best I'll say about it is ‘it was fun, lots of nice people and some good music’.

I'm sure that when I started going it was a lot more eventful. People would get semi-accidentally knocked over in amusing circumstances; completely unexpected people would snog each other (not just in the raise-one-eyebrow ‘oh, I didn't know those two were involved’ sense, but in the full-on mindboggling ‘she snogged who?!’ sense); random inappropriate people would show up in bunny slippers; back in those days the Superdupervixen joke was still new and funny; hell, I met lark_ascending there, which I suppose wasn't of much interest to anyone else but it was rather good for me. There was a fairly good chance that if someone who'd missed it asked me ‘how was it?’ the next day, I'd be able to tell them something which would actually make them wish they'd been there.

Now it's just a bunch of goths drinking, smoking and dancing. And yes, a lot of them are lovely people I don't see enough of and this is sufficient to make me turn up regularly, but it isn't the way it used to be.

I wonder if something really has changed, or if it's just me starting to show the first signs of old age by thinking everything was more fun when I was younger. *sigh*

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's not specifically that you're getting older. It's that everyone's getting older. People - or at least our friends - don't tend to get as hammered and do daft shit anymore.

Could it be less fun because you're sober? It's difficult being one of the few sober people around.

The whole "she snogged who?" thing just gets dull after a while, particularly when there are people around who obsess about their sex lives to the point where they seem unable to do anything else.

Age doesn't make things less fun, just different things fun.

Surely there should be some new young Goths there each year, an inexhaustible supply, to provide you with novel tales? If they're all just sitting there, obsessing about their sex lives, maybe they should do something about it.

But a lot of the old goths don't leave, and so the fraction of oversexed youth gets smaller.

The really young ones, also, aren't as likely to be allowed in as they were in A Previous Venue.

I'm pretty sure the different atmosphere there these days is at least to some extent a function of the venue. The Calling at the Q Club felt like it was at home, relaxed and having fun. The Calling in the Kambar feels like it's at a stranger's house, invited but not feeling totally welcome.

I may be over-interpreting.

You're not the first to mention that. When I originally discussed this with Gareth he partly blamed the venue, and I certainly think there's something in that.

One major thing I miss from the Q is the comfy padded seats along the walls. It sounds like a little thing, but it made it a lot more convenient to sit with someone and chat (and it felt a lot more natural to casually put your arm round them on those seats, which I suspect contributed to at least some of the extraneous snogging I mentioned :-). Also people are more likely to have the energy to do daft stuff if they've had a proper sit-down in between. Or maybe that was just me.

Hm, yes. comfy couchy seats good.

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Snogging Goths

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