Gold Watch

I've been reminiscing recently on why I've been watching drunk people do naughty stuff for the last decade. I got into the game as a student money earner, it fitted round my studies, it was less work, more money and seemed like more fun than barwork. The money is good, enough to keep me from debt and I'm still at it despite a trip to the southern hemisphere, a graduation and the start of a professional career.
The night job has persisted through all these activities. Now the far side of 30 with a mrs, a car and a real job I'm still doing it in a long black coat on the weekends. The game has changed a massive amount with only one little thing in our favour. The seemingly unaccountable SIA have made their inconsistent civil, not customer, service approach to the licensing bureaucracy both frustrating and pointless. The no-win/no-fee activities of the ambulance chasers have turned the masses into responsibility free walking lawsuits and businesses have responded by just being massively cautious to the extent they stop jobs being done and fun being had. The responsibility free generation has spawned an underclass of drinking chav who fear no one, shout, argue and fight anyone with no sense of control, proportion or sense. The police to me have gradually shifted from practical folk to practical folk with boxes to tick and targets to hit and careers dependent upon these. The days of pills, acid and weed are gone in favour of coke, ket and drink spiking drugs. The students are still drinking though with fees ands loans now the ones with the money to party seem to have daddy's money and not a wide and diverse social mix.
A lot of the initial fun of folding people up and sending them on their way has dissipated. The thrills of confrontations needing skill, wit and teamwork are all still there and provide me with the reasons to keep coming back and getting better at the job, every night, every venue, every person poses a new challenge.

Snow Joke

Apparently the whole of the nation has ground to a halt with the recent stiff white precipitation. I've still been going to work, still been standing there in the cold and still seeing the horizontally striped and stupid stumble by. It seems most of the sensible folks have stayed away, we've had some very quiet nights inside and some very entertaining nights outside. Watching things in short shorts and shoes they can't walk in on the best of days going arse over tit time and again on the gentle slope covered in hard packed ice and slush. The tell tale marks of salted grit stains on jackets and knees have been all to present. All very entertaining and not one wanna be punter has yet thought it wise to throw snowballs at us. I mainly think this could be luck but a small bit may be the frozen faces of thunder we all seem to have adopted just at the thought of it. The promo staff still find it fun, when they've come back from another fruitless lap of the city centre, to pelt us but we do get our revenge. Like snowballs, it's always best served cold.

Happy new Year

The good folk at the venue last night were drinking, dancing and being merry. Other than a few dropped and broken glasses all was civilised. I has some concerns certain groups were going a bit to heavy and would be unlikely to make the midnight so a couple of harsh looks and some well timed words and they were back on form until auld lang syne. The drunken tomfoolery began after midnight but with most folks happy, well fed and watered it all began to thin out and we didn't have too many issues. A couple of hours after midnight it was time to send the nodding offs home and then we encountered the absence of taxis, the irritating 'waiting for ringback' and the cold snowfilled night which even I felt a bit harsh to send people out into after 5 to 6 hours of expensive merry making. The joys of a ticket only event with a well targeted marketing strategy and a huge barstaff to give speedy, well tipped service. All in all this left very few folks dissatisfied although I've not yet had to get energetic in 2010 so I'm a little disappointed.