13:19:41
Emma included the following line in a recent post:
let me pour the redbull (one can between five people please) and double vodkas
This takes me back to my hometown, from the age of about 17 to 20. Back there, Thursdays and Saturdays were the big nights. Nobody from my generation went out on a Friday, and as a consequence the pubs and two late-night bars (it was a small town) were packed with 35 year-olds.
Just as I turned 18, the two bars started cracking down on IDs, which couldn’t have been better timing for me. We’d been drinking in the bars since we were 16, and when they finally started to ask for ID, we were actually of legal drinking age. Very convenient.
Thursdays were great, even though we had school in the morning. I had double physics first-thing on a Friday morning during my final year, and was hungover about 90% of the time. The rest of the class was pretty geeky, so I’d be the only one with a sore head, feeling truly sorry for myself.
Anyways, the reason that we went out on Thursdays is that one of the two bars had a ridiculous drinks promotion that night. Most bottled beers for a quid, and (more dangerously) both double vodkas and cans of red bull were a pound each too.
We used to do the £5 rounds. 4 double vodkas, and one can of red bull to split between them. Admittedly, you barely got a splash of the foul-tasting goop in your vodka, but it was enough to flavour it a little. And it was cheaper than getting coke or another mixer!
Even though it was such a cheap night, I’d somehow spend £20 each night. God knows how many vodkas, and then it was inevitably round to the shots bar for more weird and wonderfully coloured random chasers, also at £1 each.
Christ, those were the days. When you go to the same place week in, week out, especially when you’ve lived your whole life up to that point in that town, you know everyone. It used to take about 15 minutes to get to the bar from the door, purely because you were stopping to say hello to people.
In the last couple of years, the bar has stopped doing this promotion, and has also got a bit above itself. So everyone still there has moved to the other late-night bar, which is without exaggerating absolutely horrific. I’m not a fan, but it’s where everyone goes.
Just before Easter, someone started a Facebook group to get everyone to go back to the first bar that Thursday. They got in contact with the owner, and managed to get the classic drinks deals back. I was back at my parents with the girlfriend, so met all my mates and their girlfriends for a night of reliving our not-too-distant youth.
It was great, but just not the same. Maybe because we’re older and have drank in places all over the world now, or because the decor had changed. Things are never quite as good as you remember.
But every time I drink a vodka and red bull, I can’t help but get all misty-eyed and start to reminisce about those days.
Actually, the misty eyes are probably just a drunken haze, as nowadays I need to have had a good few drinks before I’ll get anywhere near a vodka red bull!