We all love to complain about it, but the nightlife in Durham is arguably great in its own way, right?. It’s cheap, casual, and you know a lot of people. It’s also great how early it ends and how short the walk home is. Here are some reasons why:

1. It’s monotonous

My personal thoughts on clubbing can be encapsulated in one quote from a university friend of a friend: “You know clubbing? You just…dance…for five hours…”. From the moment you walk in you know you there’s just one activity until you leave, and all you can do to add any variety to your night is to make a visit to either to smoking area (cold), get with someone (often grim) or go to the toilets (horrendous, see point below).

2. Your shoes get ruined.

No one’s quite sure what’s on the floors of wherever you end up going, but you can guarantee that if you wear those clean pair of pumps out, they WILL come back covered in white dust and/or mud. If you’re buying shoes of the New Look or Primark variety, be prepared for some of the material to actually come off too. Indeed, as the picture below shows, clubs are not a safe place for shoes.

Oh dear

3. Awkward dancing

A lot of people are amazing dancers and look incredible doing it. However, for the physically vocal proportion of us who have a lower propensity to move in such a pleasing manner, it can be a bit of a struggle and sometimes extremely painful to actually do, let alone watch. The guns, the awkward foot shuffle, the odd girl twerking, it’s all just a bit embarrassing.

Guaranteed winner

4. It’s noisy

At the risk of sounding like a pensioner, these places are incredibly loud. Whilst that’s quite good for dancing, it does make it fairly hard to actually communicate with other people. Consequently, unless you’re a master of interpretive dance, it makes actual socialising extremely difficult and soon you’ll wish you’d stayed at pre-drinks where you could have actually had proper conversations.

TOO MUCH LOUDNESS

5. Jacket dilemma

Those of us of a more fragile disposition will know the crushing decision you have to face when you go out: Take a coat and brave the stampede and cloakroom fee, or face the perilously chilly walk back without one (and potentially hope some guy with a jacket will lend you his)? An age-old and as-of-yet unsolved problem.

6. To bag or not to bag?

Similarly, do you take a bag and have it bother you all night whilst you’re trying to get your groove on, or try and wedge your money and ID in your bra/shoe/[insert orifice here]. It’s a tricky one. Failing this, you can always try and get a friend to hold on to it for you, but bear in mind that if you lose them halfway through the night then you may find yourself homeless and skint.

WHERE DO THESE GO?!

7. Predicatable playlisting

Week after week, you know that when in Klute you are guaranteed to hear Mr Brightside or Reach at some point. Or, if you try Loveshack instead, you’ll hear the same combination of UK Top 40 hit, including a definite One Direction monstrosity at midnight.  Where do they get these DJs from, and what exactly are they paying them for?

8. Knowing how drunk to get

The pain of finding that happy medium between drunk enough to not feel self-conscious when you dance but not drunk enough to get a hangover is just unnecessary hassle. Whilst some smug people seem to be able to find this easily, for most it’s tricky exercise which unfortunately mostly relies on trail and error (and a sore head).

Too drunk

9. The toilets

Don’t get me started. If it’s not the queue, it’s the sick in the cubicles or the lack of toilet paper or the having to stretch your fingers to hold the door closed while you pee because there’s no lock. Loveshack, apparently for ‘health and safety reasons’, don’t even provide soap in the girls bathrooms (it’s true, I actually had an in-depth chat with the manager about this once!).

10. And after all this, your bed would just be so cosy

You could go out and face every single one of the aforementioned issues and dilemmas, yes.  However, you could also literally save yourself all the hassle of all these, as well as that inevitable sore head and crushing tiredness the next morning, by just staying where it’s warm, comfy, potentially has Netflix, and sleep. At the end of the day, it’s that or paying £4 to stand in a loud room for 3 hours and jump up and down and get trampled on.

Is the choice really that hard?!

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