As lockdown eases, I’m planning the event of the year – a disco for boomers

There’d be a DJ with a mullet wearing a jacket with the sleeves rolled up, playing Soft Cell and Visage and Ultravox and lots and lots of ABC. Oh, Vienna!

Because it’d be a private, vaccine certificate-only event, you’d be allowed to smoke, just like in your near-forgotten youth, and there’d be Hofmeister on tap at 80p a pint (AFP via Getty Images)

For some months now I’ve been mentally planning an over-50s disco to celebrate the end of lockdown.

You see, my idea was/is that now that us lot (OK – boomers) have had our vaccinations, so it would be safe for us to get together in some dingy downstairs nightclub. There’d be a DJ with a mullet (aka, a lockdown haircut) wearing a jacket with the sleeves rolled up, playing Soft Cell and Visage and Ultravox and lots and lots of ABC. Oh, Vienna!

Because it’d be a private, vaccine certificate-only event, you’d be allowed to smoke, just like in your near-forgotten youth, and there’d be Hofmeister (“Follow the Bear”) on tap at 80 pence a pint. The only nutritious meals available would be those Planters dry roasted peanuts that have just arrived, seeing as it’ll be like 1981 all over again, and pickled eggs.

I’d try to locate some coffee-table sized Space Invaders machines – the ones where you’d sit opposite each other to play like it’s a high-tech game of chess, but with even less conversation. There’d be one fight on the dance floor, during which the handbags on the ground would all go flying, and another scrap in the bogs.

One of your mates would arrive, just as it was closing, because they’d have had to go home to swap their trainers for shoes. The girls would go to the loo with each other. You’d get accused of “looking at my bird”, but with all the added complications of modern woke attitudes to sexism and attitudes to heteronormative behaviour added in, just to make the traditionally socially awkward moment that much more hazardous.

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When the disco was over, and the bright lights came on, we’d all pile out to queue for a kebab and say yes to chilli sauce – and there’d be a lone white stiletto in the gutter, telling its own story. It’d be a funky night out, don’t you think? Make you feel mighty real, like Sylvester used to say.

It’s all still at the planning stage, though, because the modest relaxation on lockdown rules means that the great over-50s disco isn’t officially safe yet, and would have to take place in a gazebo in the garden, which isn’t really the same sort of thing at all.

Also, the sad truth is that even the vaccine isn’t that much of a defence against getting the disease – and even if you’ve been vaccinated you might still be infectious (the scientists don’t know yet). I understand that the vaccine will make death much less likely (cheery thought), and you’ll probably not be intubated like you would have been last year, but that’s not really good enough as far as I’m concerned. We all like a boogie – but not at any price.

I’d want to leave the over-50s disco until more of the under-50s have had their jabs. Obviously, the community as a whole is safer when the vast majority have had their jabs, so it only really works well as a protection if we’ve all had it – old and young.

Which makes me wonder for a moment whether the delay in vaccinations we’re about to experience should also, logically, mean a slowdown in the relaxation of the lockdown – but maybe I’m just being overly logical about things. As you get older, past the point where you’d qualify for entrance to the over-50s disco, say, you do tend to be more cautious, after all.

So, the over-50s disco may have to wait. I notice that the unlock is proceeding faster in Wales, and I think that, from first-hand experience some time ago, Swansea might make a suitable venue for a return to what you might call the old normal. Indeed, people tell me it feels like it’s still 1985 there.

Don’t forget: it’s smart-casual, no jeans – and you’ll need your vaccination card.