Back when I partied : One epic night in 2006

Hello all

Recently I embarked on a very rare night out for the 18th birthday of my friend Michelle, and the next morning I was exhausted so decided to go on a nostalgia session and in this session I remembered one of the most epic nights of my life.

It was April 2006 and Ellen had organised a night out at Cubes for her birthday. For those of you who aren't from Lincoln, Cubes is pretty much the only rock venue in Lincoln, and given that I was heavily into my rock music at the time, it was just inevitable I would go. Infact, I spent most Friday nights out at Cubes, I loved the place, even though it was a shitehole and that they seemingly never cleaned it. Ellen then stipulated that she wanted all the lads to go as schoolgirls........an interesting turn of events but you know what, I was game for it, afterall, it was a laugh.

I wasn't on my own in this as all the other lads, with the exception of Rik and Jim found themselves dressed as a school-girl by the end of the night. Dan Svarc didn't know about the dress as a school-girl theme, so when he entered he was dragged (literally dragged) by three girls into the bedroom of Ellen and turned into a school-girl.

Left to right - Dan Svarc, Darren Glendinning and myself

I thought to myself, you know what, fuck it, might as well milk it.

Whilst all this is going on, we realise that we still need Charlie to turn up, fortunately she didn't live far from Ellen so we just walked to get her. Myself and Darren (Charlie's boyfriend at the time) made the short trip and it was past several van loads of builders....which you can imagine lead to several interesting comments given that, well as you can tell, I had a very bushy beard at the time. I didn't care though. I was only 21 at the time and didn't really care what people thought, which was probably for the best.

After everyone has finally gotten ready we make the journey into town and towards Cubes before Darren then remembers he has forgotten something as he was one of my best friends at the time, I say I'll go with him. We have a good laugh at his flat and take the piss out of the way each other looks (as you can tell from the video) On the way down the Cubes from his flat we walk past a lot of chavs, drunk chavs, but surprisingly there were no comments from them, although the bouncers on the doors at Cubes did give us a few strange looks.

Eventually in Cubes and the nice progresses epically. Due to the fact we stand out in our school-girl outfits, we get a lot of attention, including the DJ playing "Dude Look Like a Lady" by Aerosmith within seconds of us walking in, and a lot of young ladies flirting with us all, which was quite strange. Darren on the other hand looked relatively convincing and had several older gentleman flirt with him, completely unaware that he was actually a guy. It was quite amusing.

Back at the time of my life I was quite socialable and was joining in with the party on the dancefloor.....which is something I rarely do these days, and the only disappointment of the evening is that Cubes was dead. There was only about 30 people in there, which included about 15 of us, and two of my friends from football at the time, Dave and Luke, the latter of which gave an extremely shocked reaction when he saw me dressed as a schoolgirl.

Rik - As you can tell, he didn't join
in the schoolgirl theme.

As I said earlier, I was massively into rock music at the time, virtually none of which I listen to these days because, well, quite frankly I got bored of it, but hits from System of a Down, Linkin Park, Adema, Kid Rock and various other names from around the rock scene at the time are blaring out as the night continues.

More men are flirting with Darren, and even Svarc gets a few men interested in him. One of the most amusing moments of the evening came at around midnight when myself and Darren are in the toilet and then a random bloke walks in, sees two guys dressed as schoolgirls taking a piss and you could tell that he didn't know how to react, after about 20 seconds he scurried into the cubicle. Myself and Darren had a bit of a chuckle about this.

The night is finally starting to come to an end and it's been a great night but the randomness doesn't stop there, oh no. We're walking home over Pelham Bridge and we want a group photo so we all stop in the middle of the bridge, and this random guy patiently waits for us to take the photo but that's not enough for various members of the group as we invite him to join in the photo, so now, in an evening that was well and truly random, is a guy who none of us know in the group picture of those of us who were left at the end.

Since then I've only really kept in contact with Charlie and Ellen, both of whom I see on a semi-regular basis. I rarely talk to Darren or Svarc, I don't think I've ever shared a conversation with Rik, although me and his girlfriend (Debbie) get on quite well.

Also, I went back to Cubes recently for the first time in a long time and you know what? Nothing has changed. It's still a shitehole and still stinks of sweat and wet-denim, but it's our shitehole. The best nights of my life were spent there and I will never forget them.

I've never been happier than when I was with that group of friends the 2005-2007 period was the happiest I have ever been. Those days were awesome nothing will ever compare to it.

The end of night photo
Random guy, RIk, two girls I don't know, Ellen, Dean, Svarc, another random girl, myself and Debbie.