So I went to this nightclub Filth the other night. Before you get confused, let me clarify something: that was the name of the nightclub. Filth. When I entered, I figured that they’d either named it ironically, and inside would be all gleaming surfaces and shiny mirrors, or they’d just used the name as a replacement for ever needing to clean the place.
Guess which of the two options the management decided to plump for?
Well, there was what appeared to be brown seaweed growing out of the urinals, and when I rested my elbow on the bar when getting a drink, the surface was so sticky that it actually took off a layer of skin. Plus, there was a protozoan moss and a microsystem of small mushrooms growing out of one of the ‘leather’ bound benches around the edge of the dancefloor. So decide for yourself.
To be fair, nightclubs in Oxford aren’t renowned for being classy places. From the thrills of Oceans & Collins (the dancefloor smelt like cold sweaty vagina and they played an hour and a half of cheese to really bring the night to a slammin’ close) to the wonders of Escape (a bottle of Corona cost £3.80, the dancefloor was a small room roughly the size of a religious man’s anus, and they played an hour and a half of cheese to really bring the night to a slammin’ close) to the throbbing ecstasies of Coven (the floor was literally two centimetres high in rancid water in which I slipped over and badly bruised my bottom; then I walked into the girl’s toilets by accident and found a discarded eyelash curler and it didn’t even make my eyelashes look like Kate Moss’s did in that advert… and they played an hour and a half of cheese to really bring the night to a slammin’ close), Oxford is going to be more remembered for its sleepy spires than for its temples to the House of Drum and Base.
But I think that Filth just manages to push it over the line, into the realms of ‘they’re just taking the piss now’ by being located inside a shopping centre. Yep, the first thing you see when you walk up the steps is not a snappily dressed bouncer, not a long queue of the rich and powerful, not a pair of burning incense torches to really make the night go off well, not even a small poodle being carried triumphantly aloft inside Paris Hilton’s vagina; nope, you see a closed Curry’s Digital. And a washing machine, just inside the Curry’s digital, mocking me, just because I didn’t know how to use the washing machines in college and they made my yellow tshirt go a bit grey.
I guess perhaps all this would have been funny if I was to take it in the right tone of mind, but as it was I was in a bad mood when I walked up to the gate. I’d walked down with Aime and Max, and had essentially had some sort of argument. I can’t remember what it was about, and I’m pretty sure that I was in the wrong, but the most important thing was that I was in no state to argue back properly (due to the miracles of incompetent student bartending, I’d managed to get a triple vodka lemonade for the price of the single, and greedily drank it as fast as I could to avoid the long arm of the incompetent student bartending law). And anyway, I was annoyed because they both suddenly turned on my like vicious little chickens and if there’s one thing I CANNOT STAND, it’s people who act like chickens in an elongated metaphor. But WHATEVER, I get it, they were both a bit drunk and silly, I forgive them, we can all try and get on with our lives ok. I’ll get over the undue wounds I have suffered at Aime’s malicious and barbed tongue. But the sitch is, I was in a mood when I went in, a bit drunk, with a headache. So imagine my reaction at seeing THIS waiting for me inside:
Ha ha ha. No, not really. Instead, what I saw was more along these lines:
That is to say, it was crammed with people. None of whom were wearing hats or looking at a tram. In fact, quite a few of them were GIRLS and I was like “hmm” to myself. I mean, I withdrew the “hmm” and replaced it with a kind of “strangulated vomiting inside my own mouth” noise once I saw some of them up close. Like, seriously, there was this one girl who was offensively ugly. It was like somebody had set fire to a bulldog and then put out its face with foam latex mixed with acne and braces. I actually recoiled, screaming YEUGH when she came close to me to go to the bar or the toilet or the stables, whatever, I don’t want to know. The encounter actually left me with a cold sweat. However, after I bit I realised that there were actually quite a few hot girls there (the ugly-hot ratio was still like 70-30 BUT that’s a damn sight better than most of the rest of Oxford).
This raised a problem.
I don’t really like nightclubs filled with hot girls. That sounds counter intuitive but it’s true because then it’s like HERE IS A DELICATESSAN OF DELIGHTS FOR YOU, THOMAS, A BUFFET OF BUFF, AND NOW JUST MAKE A CHOICE and this is difficult because I am a picky person. Like if there was only one really hot girl and the rest were all dogs, then I could just quietly admire the hot girl from afar. But as it is, there are so many hot girls that I’m always like “Come on Thomas, don’t break out the A-Material yet, there could be an even HOTTER girl around the corner”. So I keep strolling in little circles like a deviant. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that I essentially have NO A-Material; I just have to hope that the girl in question falls for my natural charms and good looks.
This is exacerbated by the fact that Slightly Drunk Thomas is like an eternal optimist when it comes to girls; if a female happens to look at me for more than two and a half demiseconds, I pretty much say to myself “Ok, we have a connection here, there is undeniable chemistry, she has spotted you amongst all others; she may be grinding that 6ft4 rugby player with the mullet and the huge biceps, but her heart is set on you”. And then I’m like cool, that’s the eighth girl tonight, I’m a magnet today. But then, if the girl in question does actually start dancing vaguely in my direction, I’m like shit. She wants to dance. Perhaps she likes you. Fuck. What are you gonna do? Look at her. She keeps looking at you. She’s clingy. She wants to pin you down. She’ll probably try and curtail your swinging bachelor lifestyle, make you stop staying up til 1 writing your blog and stuff and instead force you to go WALKING THE PRAM IN THE PARK and IRONING STUFF and SEWING. SHIT. And is she really worth it, REALLY, Thomas? Look at her; one of her eyes is a bit square and her left nostril is bigger than her right. Is THIS the girl you want to give up all of your freedoms for? Get out, now. It’ll be crushing for her now, but in the long term it’s better you do this now than in two hours’ time, when she has had a chance to fall too deeply for you.
The upshot is that, twice last night, I was dancing with one or another random girl from another college, then I stopped stock still, gazed at her with an expression of undiluted terror, mouth agape, skin clammy, then did a swift 180 before sidling off into the undergrowth of writhing bodies and flagging bosoms like a spooked guerilla. Eventually I decided that I was getting a headache and couldn’t be doing with the whole ‘girls’ thing and figured that I’d just go cruising for chicks at a poetry contest or something and went to dance with Matt and da kru.
Time passed, and before I knew it, it was 2:45. IN THE MORNING. The club was thinning, and the clientele had thinned somewhat. Gone were the hot girls, probably off with their rugby players and their suckers who didn’t know that they were gonna end up married before they knew it. What was left was the pathetic losers and the cheapskates who wanted to get the full value out of the £5 entry fee (AKA us).
I find the last few minutes of nightclubs fascinating, you always see the odd characters. Such as the 40ish year old man sitting on one of the sofas (the one with all the mushrooms, actually), staring blankly into space, his sunken eyes displaying a labyrinthine tale of pain and emotional torture that belied the seemingly waxen placidity of his face. Or the couple – both dressed in formal clothes – who were doing a slow waltz to Bloodsugar by Pendulum (including a little sojourn into doing the Charlestown and that weird ‘climbing a ladder together’ move). It was pretty much The Whitest thing that I’d ever seen, and it made me a bit glad that I wasn’t that particular man. If so, I think I probably would have killed myself. True fact.
I was watching them, but then I got distracted by this other guy who made my blood boil. For absolutely no reason, it wasn’t like he did anything to annoy me, anything at all. But just looking at him made me so annoyed. Perhaps it was the way he looked; he had a fucking stupid blonde bob thing; kind of like King Henry V of England, but of course wussier and more female; and the way that he wore it I knew he was well proud of it; like his mother had said “Come on, James” (or whatever his name was, he looked a bit like a James or a Richard or some cunt name) “Why don’t you get it cut?” and he was like “NOOO MUM I LIKE IT LIKE THIS” and then she relented and he was like “I’m well cool”, really pleased with his one little rebellious win, and he thought that he was well cool and he couldn’t fail to pretty much get off with all of Oxford now, which would be a wicked way to make up for the fact that he’d gone 18 years without kissing a Single Girl. And that was definitely because of his haircut, not the fact that he was an ugly roundfaced shit with a stupid roly-poly doughy body; he was shaped like he used to be a proper tubby kid but then the puppy fat melted a bit and now he’s just DOUGHY; like he had mantits but they aren’t so much tits as shallow cones and he reckons that if he wears them well enough in the cool SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME tshirt his aunt bought him from Quicksilver or Vans or wherever, they almost look like pecs. Except they don’t, he just looked like a guy who wasn’t quite fat any more but was still a good step and half off being ok. And anyway, James was dancing with this ugly girl (she had bad teeth and looked a bit moley; kind of like a mole, I guess) and like, every time she tried to say something to him he would entirely embrace her in his slightly flabby arms and like, gently caress up and down her back and I just wanted to grab him and yell, SHE ISN’T GOING TO SLEEP WITH YOU, LOOK AT HER, SHE LOOKS LIKE A FUCKING RODENT, I KNOW THAT BEGGARS CAN’T BE CHOOSERS BUT DO I HAVE TO WATCH TWO BEGGARS ON A DANCEFLOOR WITH ONE OF THEM CONTINUALLY ATTEMPTING TO MOLEST THE OTHER AND PROBABLY EJACULATING A BIT INTO HIS TIGHT FIT BOXERS THAT HIS GRANDMA GOT FROM NEXT, JUST FUCK OFF AND DIE IN A FIRE.
I didn’t say that though, because I’m not a judgemental person. I love all of God’s creatures, fat and thin and handsome and ugly and Christian and Buddhist and Muslim and all of those other religions too, and, y’know, ugly doughfaced wannabe mummy’s boy rentboys.
Pfft.
I was going to look at more people and think of mean descriptions of them, but suddenly the DJ started playing “Man in the Mirror” and the words ABORT ABORT ABORT started flashing in big red letters across my vision, and I was like “Aww, hell no”, Will Smith stylee, so I turned around and left.
All in all, not a good night. Fuck Filth.
WHO’S UP FOR GOING PARK END ON WEDNESDAY?
His expression reminds me of this lolcat.
Even from all the way across the pond (not that pond), I could see their huge bills—like Daffy Duck’s bill.
As I said in my previous post, I didn’t get many pictures on Sunday because I was having battery trouble the whole time, despite having bought new rechargeable batteries on my way to the Cape. I hope they just need a little seasoning and will soon hold a charge longer than ten minutes.
Sanderlings on the beach:
S
Here we all are, the birding bloggers: (back row from left) Laura from NJ, (that's Harry Potter and Ron Weasley on the TV), Beth from Easy Ecoliving and Patrick from the Hawk Owl’s Nest, Jeff Gyr and Elizabird, Birdchick and martini, Sheri the hummingbird specialist and author; (front row from left) John the BornAgainBirdwatcher, me looking like some sort of thuglet doing a very scary gangsta pose, Susan Gets Native, Susan at Lake Life, Amy Wildbird on the Fly, and Mike from 10,000 Birds. 
My first lifer of the trip was a Savannah sparrow, seen on a field trip to the Beanery:
Not a great photo, but note how dark it was with the rain coming down; it was wet and miserable, and 
There I am!
