VIEW FROM A QUEUE

Standing waiting in a queue for a night club has to be one of the best times of your life (or is that just me?) I would waiver my doorman privileges unless Kerry made me due to the rain or in need of the loo. If you have ever been a doorman you had an unspoken rule that the nightclub door staff would let in other doorman as a sign of good will and statue in the pub and club social scene, this usually goes with the doorman hand shake, hug (manly one) and the usual mock fighting, things you are not taught on today’s S.I.A badge scheme.

Sometimes on a lovely night or if I was with a large group of people, you would go to the back of the queue, because you can’t take the piss out of the door staff and get your 15 closes friends in because your breaking the doorman code.

As you would wait in the queue everything would happen and the whole world would pass you by.

Firstly, the dodgy fashion parade would take place featuring your select group being the judging panel of Americas next top model, you would watch the world go by and basically pass comment on the fashion sense or lack of it on the queue catwalk. You would always get the two best friends, one being in a skin tight stretchy dress in some lime green colour like she fell off the set of Wham, and the other girl in the exact same dress but 6 sizes bigger giving the look of Ursula out of the little mermaid.

You then would have the group of borderline old enough to drink lads with their clothes that they got from mam’s catalogue, which they would be still paying off so don’t want to spill a drink on it or get it ripped during the fight they have booked in 10 minutes after being in the club. We watch as the little group make their way to the front of the queue, after firstly trying to look sober and secondly reciting their ‘birthday date’ just in case they get quizzed on it by the switched-on doorman. Upon reaching the door they keep their heads down pay the money and run in like they are dancing to Madness “One step beyond”, once inside they spread out, two getting the cheapest specials in while the rest fight their way to the toilet while the eagle scouts of the group find out where the group of ‘fit’ lasses are in the club.

Speaking of fit lasses, you well always find them working the queue. You know the type of girls I mean; they look amazing as if they have just stepped out of New Looks shop window. They smell amazing and they are showing off their amazing figures to everyone and anyone most likely with their bingo top (Eyes down for a full house) on and short figure hugging skirts. Armed with these weapons of mass distraction, it does not take long for them to vet the queue to find their target audience and swoop in using all their feminine charms. The targets would be a small group of lads that would love two good looking lasses even standing by them (they smell so nice). They would then laugh at the rubbish chat up lines and general boasting from the lads and touch their arm from time to time (ooh she touched me); then they would not put up a fight as the lads pay them in and get them a drink.

The lads would think they are in with a chance of romance only for the girls to just drift off once they have their free entry and free drinks like two kunoichi (female ninjas) leaving the lads wondering if their pulling skills were slipping and would they ever see them again!

One thing most people would agree on is that they hate when people push in. You would see a couple of kids searching the queue for a distant relative or a mate from football, then jump in pretending to talk to them just to make themselves more comfortable. The queue behind them would sometimes point them out to the doorman, which would end up with the whole group being kicked to the back of the queue or tension would build up between the likely lads and people behind them then threats get thrown. Then more than likely punches resulting in much of the queue being kicked out for fighting were the rest of the queue just move forward thanking the stars that they are closer to the front.

Sometimes you get a group of mouthy lasses and you find yourself having a slanging match or verbal tennis as I call it in switched on self-protection. This starts with a couple of words and can get quite heated and always bitchy, sometimes it turns quite nasty, there is a fine line between fun and nasty comments. I remember one occasion when my friend was dying under the hail of abuse from a thin blonde haired girl with a blue denim shirt dress with a belt around her middle and fringe that was turned over and rock hard. So, I jumped in on the rap battle saying “don’t get angry just because you have your dad’s shirt on and your something about Mary hairstyle” she was gobsmacked, at this point her friend stepped up but I was too quick for her before she gives me a mouth full, I pointed to her glittery high heels and said “The last time I saw shoes like that a house fell on your sister!” mic drop! Sometimes my comments would get me chased when I stepped over the line, but that was the fun of it!

The golden girls are usually heard before being seen in the queue, the high-pitched helium voices that have been steadily getting higher and higher after each wine drunk and armed with little bottles in handbag they laugh and carry on in the queue trying to catch the eye of the doormen so they can get a free pass, they are like cougars in the wild stalking the young lads and cheekily pinching their bottoms as they passed by. The pack would get to the door and flirt their hearts out, if they did get a free pass they would cheekily kiss the doorman involved and off they went to strut their stuff, dancing around their handbags. Speaking of dancing, the oldest swinger in town is an older gentleman that modelled his clothing style from Saturday night fever and still thinks he is in the movie. You will find him in the queue latched on to some couples that are too polite to tell him to push off and they have to listen to his patter about the girls he had dated, his failed marriages or near misses in relationships all the while boasting about what a good partner he would make but in reality his best partner is his mirror, he still calls all his friends by nicknames and you mostly find him by himself whistling to young girls and shouting hey sexy and anything and everything and then giving the doormen manly handshakes as if they were his long lost friends. Once in the club he will stand at the highest spot “birdwatching” and will be seen walking home chips in hand shirt open and medallion glinting in the moonlight.

When you have been standing for a long time and there is no movement in the queue people start taking about giving up going for food and then home, will it be chips, pizza, kabab, or a burger, 9/10 food wins and you leave the queue promising you will get there earlier next time, but you cheer yourself up with a burger and chips and a can of coke. Sometimes the kebab shop is like the wild west but that might have to wait for another blog.

If you did get into the club sometimes you get a drink, have a little walk around or lap of the club it sometimes does not live up to all the hype and you realize you should have just went home after spending money to get in money on a drink you probably did not need and you missed the last bus home so you have to pay for a taxi, so that extra hour on your night cost you more than the rest of your night before clubbing.

The amount of time you hear people going on and on about not going clubbing, but then they end up clubbing anyway. I had a standard joke when I went out because I would always keep emergency money tucked away in a safe place in my wallet, so at the end of the night someone would like to go clubbing but Kerry and I would be going home, so someone would ‘borrow’ my emergency money nearly every time I went out leading to the fact that my emergency money went clubbing more than I did.

When you finally got in the club sometimes it did not live up to the fun you had in the queue, just for the record I don’t miss clubbing there is a stage in your life when you love going but I am too old for all that now, but I will never forget the clubbing days whether working at them being in them or waiting in a queue.

Until next time

Big love from the AFC