99% of you are morons

I really don't know why I do it anymore. Socialise, that is.

Last night, I went out for a friend's 25th birthday celebration. I say 'friend' - more really an acquaintance by way of her sleeping with one of my oldest mates, but a nice girl nonetheless. Her choice of venue was Reflex, the 80's bar - the best of a very bad bunch of clubs that make up Birmingham's Broad Street.

Or, as I now think of it, a place 99% of which is populated by morons.

You know the type. Loud, shaved headed numbskulls who go around in groups of males perving over every woman that passes before now and then breaking out, loudly, into a slurred football chant. Or ridiculously egotistical preening pricks who wear Lacoste cardigans, an ironic scarf and/or 'trendy' flat cap as well as a permanently smug expression considering himself to be the most attractive man IN THE WORLD. And don't even get me started on the 'I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world' vacuous, bitchy, pink-loving, thick-headed women who fill the area. Do I find them attractive? Yes. Do I hate everything they stand for? Yes again.

If it's not these tosspots, it's people who work in these establishments. Yes, I'm looking at you 'toilet attendant'.

Are you English? Do you ever go to a club? If you answered yes to both, then you've seen these toilet attendants. Men (and so I hear women) who's job is to hang around in the Thomas Crapper with a selection of crappy aftershaves on the sink, as well as giving you tissue to wipe your hands with (while strategically placing their mop/bucket right next to a hand dryer two inches away) all in the hope you'll tip them for the trouble. Is there a more degrading job in the world? I'll be impressed if you can find one. I'm also vaguely troubled by the fact EVERY one of these workers are black. That's a statement of fact - I've never seen a white person do this job. I'd like to - because there's a dodgy whiff of colonialism about the fact they only manage to get black people to do this shitty paid, shitty conditioned (literally) job. We might as well just plonk them in a field, tip them to pick cotton and have done with it.

I'm not going to stop going to these places, mind. Within 10 short years, I'll start edging toward the age when it looks wrong to do so. I don't want to end up one of those creepy fiftysomething men who dress half their age and slither round clubs like Dirty Den holding a pint and leering over young girls. I do that now but I'm at the age I can get away with it - so I need to make use of those years before they vanish.

The whole thing is just an ordeal now, though, more than a pleasure. A bit like listening to The Killers. Or watching EastEnders.