Why do these people all look so young?

I will not disclose the occasion or the company, because if I imbibed excessively, it was entirely my own doing.

My real mistake Friday night was mixing drinks. I do not mean that I artfully constructed cocktails with an elegant backhand flip of the shaker - I mean that I mistakenly thought the following sequence of beverages appropriate: beer, beer, beer, lemon squash, white wine, red wine, toblerone cocktail, tequila shot with beer chaser, beer, beer and very possibly more beer. (My memory gets hazy towards the end.)

It was a bad, bad combo.

I should have been more responsible.

I really shouldn’t have had the lemon squash.

Anyway, the accompanying sequence of venues went something like: the Mint beer garden, the obscure (but fantastic!) Café Baloo on Russel Street for curry, catching up other friends at the Supper Inn in Chinatown, going to the Gin Palace for the first time (!) and then ending up at Charlton’s in a search for free karaoke.

What is beginning to weird me out about a night on the town is my perception of the age groups around me. For instance, Thursday, when I was walking back to my car in Richmond after going out for jazz with my landlord we noticed that the crowd queuing to get into bars and clubs along Swan Street all looked to us as though they’d need fake ID.

At 27 I’ve reached an age were anyone younger than 22 looks about 12.

The crowd at the Gin Palace Friday was very, very late twenties/early thirties and lookin’ to hook-up. Desperately amusing, particularly in such a wonderful venue. (The place has the plush vibe of a 70s Bond villain lair.) There was a couple performing what I dubbed “the business wear karma sutra” in one corner: fully clad but snogging in a series of weirdly contorted poses. I had thought most people got over that type of fierce, drunken public groping by the end of first-year uni.

To each their own.

After the Gin Palace, Charlton’s felt like the year 10 party of urban legend you never got invited to: I’m sure everyone in the room was of drinking age in this country, but to me they looked about 14 - if only because we were so obviously so much older than they. I certainly felt the most confident I’ve ever done going out and dancing badly with mates: we simply had no peer group in the room who could judge us, we were self evidently the oldest people there and we ruled the joint.

Though that’s probably the tequila shot and beer chaser talking.

I never go out dancing. Well, maybe three times a year. The last time was New Year’s Eve, and like NYE I was still home by 2 am.

Unlike New Year’s Eve, I did not manage to lose any expensive personal items.

I did lose my security pass at the Mint though. We all remember the havoc that causes me. Fortunately, the gods were smiling and it turned up again in a friend’s hand at the Supper Inn.

I also have a feeling I sent text messages last night I may live to regret. I think the last, unpunctuated SMS was “i am going out now i may be some time do not expect further missives”. Yeah, me, Captain Oates, wandering out into the Antarctic wilderness of teeny-bopper karaoke.

At time of writing, Saturday morning, I am meant to be going to the Dali exhibition with friends. I am too hung over to confront burning giraffes, melting clock-faces and lobsters, lobsters, lobsters. I will read about Dali’s tennis performance in my new copy of “The Tournament” instead.


And in other news: League of Extreme Dating Sports, DOA

Despite the chronicles of the cocktail hour of madness, and the idea of the kris kringle dinner party – the Book Club of Intestinal Fortitude appears now to have resolved unanimously not to have anything to do with the dating lives of its members and we are collectively piking on all our ultimately light-hearted dares, ideas and deadlines.

I think this comes as something of a relief to all of us. Amusing as it was to hatch schemes best confined to the realms of musical comedy over drinks, none of us had the appetite for humiliation the process would have entailed.

Also, this is not the kind of blog that is ever going to be so confessional as to comment on such events. Failure and mad schemes make for far more amusing reading than success ever would, anyway …