“What do people do at raves these days?” I asked a young man of my acquaintance.
“Raves? Why do you want to know?”
“Just wondering,” I replied, pogoing around the kitchen in my Dayglo tights, trying to look cool and inconspicuous.
“They take a couple of yokes and dance,’ he said.
“Yokes? What kind of yokes?”
(My old friend, who is no longer with us, used to enjoy coming to visit us from London so she could use the word “yoke” without impediment. “Do you need this yoke?” she’d ask, brandishing the egg whisk while I was looking for a teaspoon. “Or this yoke?” she’d enthuse, slicing the air with a bread knife.)
The yokes this young man were referring to generally wouldn’t be found in the kitchen cupboard.
I don’t know, maybe it’s the weather. Or maybe it’s a political climate that threatens to sink the damn world before I’ve seen it. Or maybe I’ve stood in too many supermarket queues, browned too much mince, scoured too many pots. But I’m starting to panic about all the things I haven’t done in my life. Going to a rave is just one of them.
The Germans, of course, have a word for this state of mind: Torschlusspanik, which more or less translates as "panic of the closing gate". I reckon my gate is more than half shut by now in any language. If not, I'll still be kicking the can of chopped tomatoes down the road aged 110, and that ain't likely.
Invitation at dawn
Anyway, the other day, slap-bang in the middle of a debilitating attack of Torschlusspanik – which can manifest itself in an urge to lie around in front of Celebrity Masterchef reruns, quaking over the perils of the kitchen mandolin – I received an invitation to go to a "morning rave".
“An alternative to the gym and a brand-new way to burn calories!” read the press release, inveigling me to throw myself out of bed before dawn and struggle through the whiplash wind and incontinent rain to start the day at a 6.30am drug- and alcohol-free rave.
“Dawn [sic] your neon clothing, party hats, obnoxious sunglasses and frankly outrageous raving gear to get stuck into Ireland’s only immersive morning dance experience!” the invitation urged.
One handy thing about my current cocktail of Torschlusspanik, insomnia and menopausal anxiety is that, given that I’m wide awake anyway, getting out of bed in the dark is no great problem. Finding “frankly outrageous raving gear” without turning the light on was a bridge too far, however. I turned up at the venue in my supermarket leggings and my sensible puffer coat before most of you lot were eating your Weeties.
“Do you have a ticket?” a beautiful young woman with crimped hair and orange eye shadow asked gingerly. She was wearing tie-dyed Lycra; the whites of her eyes looked like they’d been steeped overnight in Domestos. She stamped the back of my veiny hand very hard with a big blob of ink. I tried not to wince.
The joint was rocking; sorry, I mean the dancefloor was banging. Young men and women were jumping around the club’s mephitic interior with elasticised unicorn horns sticking out of their foreheads, their floppy hair pinned up with glowing chopsticks. Balletic girls with long straight ponytails (the kind you used to unwind with the big plastic screw on the back of your Sindy doll) were hula-hooping with fluorescent rings.
A toddler in a net skirt, with glittering face paint and ear protectors, held her mother’s hands, looking on in amazement.
She wasn’t alone.
A downward dog
It wasn’t even 8am, and I felt like I’d staggered into an alternative universe, a pungent, beneficent nirvana where a man with a T-shirt that read “Your Ego Ain’t Your Amigo” was teaching a bunch of smiling people to do a downward dog, one where happy young men in rainbow T-shirts were employed to greet newcomers with hugs and compliments.
“Hey, cool shoes. Can I hug you?”
Too quickly, I began to feel exhausted by the enthusiasm. I did a few more downward dogs, then slunk up the stirs to the cloakroom to retrieve my sturdy coat.
“Did you get a hug and a compliment?” the smiling girls asked me as I was leaving. I hesitated too long before answering. A boy in golden tights wrapped his arms around me, searching my person for something to compliment.
“Have a nice day,” he said.
“And you,” I replied.
Leaving that strange, overwhelming Eden, I was grateful for a bit of rain to dilute my ongoing Torschlusspanik.