It is loud in here. It is dark in here. It is unbearable in here. But it is - and this is the most important fact about the place - open in here.
Thanks to Westminster Council licensing committee's implacable commitment to stopping visiting Londoners - or anyone else - having a drink in Soho after 11 o'clock in the evening without being obliged to go to a private members' club or nightclub, many find themselves in a concrete box being thumped in the face with techno. This has just happened to me.
There are some men at the bar. They are dressed in sweat-soaked T-shirts and trousers that finish hesitantly between knee and ankle. One of them is wearing a bandana and appears to be drinking orange juice. But the really intriguing thing about them is their age. It is, I'd say, the same as mine. This means the men are in their mid-forties and they are still into clubbing.
I am surprised and horrified, yet I suppose I have no right to be. This is, after all, a nightclub. And since 50,000 over-thirties claim to visit nightclubs regularly, it was only a matter of time before I met one of these people.
Nearly a quarter-century of making shapes has impaired their hearing, so they shout. I don't want to listen, but I have to. The men talk of vibes, of Grooverider and of Fabio, of Friday nights at Fabric. Of hip-hop bangers, of techno and acid. They talk of how the Balearics "are back" - from which map, I wonder, did those islands disappear? - and one of the men with the hesitant trousers shouts to his mate, "Yeah, it was Josh's first Ibiza this year."
Josh, I take it, is the preternaturally unhappy-looking teenager standing behind them, whom I had mistaken at first as the sexual partner of one of the two men. But Josh, it has been revealed, is in a much worse position. He is the son of one of the two men.
“Cool! Nice one, man!" shouts the man in the bandana. He adds a "Great!" just to be sure Josh gets the vibe.
But I sense the vibe wasn't nice or great at all for Josh. I sense the clubbing trip to Ibiza with Dad still troubles Josh deeply, and I sense that it
always will.
