I am a man who likes to get up early. In an ideal world I
would get up at 7am every day, and even in this less than ideal world I like to
be up and about by 10am.On Saturday, however, I woke late. I woke late and was
covered in that greasy, sweaty sheen that can only be caused by a night of
alcohol and kebabs or long distance rail travel. I hadn't been on any trains. I
had been to a party.

I don't go to many parties any more - I probably never did. I don't really like
sitting around in a dark room trying to talk nicely to people I have a shared
acquaintance with. I'd rather sit in a pub and drink my way to oblivion with
someone I've never seen before and, with any luck, never will see again. Of
course, sometimes courtesy demands attendance and sometimes attendance can even
be looked forward to.

Courtesy and friendship called on my conscience and I decided to go to this
event. An evening of canned beer was just what my soul needed after weeks of abstinence.
When I say abstinence, I certainly don't mean total monk-like behaviour - but
I'd been taking it pretty easy with my old friend the booze recently.

We planned to go to the party early, and despite forgetting the only thing I
had to remember (the present for the birthday girl), it promised to be a good
night. As usual, the flat was on the top floor. Eighteen flights of stairs were
scaled (and then descended and scaled again with a present) and breath was
lost. Once I had recovered I opened a beer and was introduced to the residents
and their pals. Two men called Jeremy and Claude were setting up DJ equipment
and disco lights. Scarves were draped hazardously over naked flames in an
attempt to soften the lights. Disco lights began to dance in front of my eyes
and soon lulled me into a hypnotic trance.

I'm told that during this trance the rest of the population of flat 18B played
an exceedingly complicated drinking game which had the effect of sobering
everyone up enough to carry on drinking through the night.

I jumped out of my stupor when I heard someone on the far side of another room
mention chocolate. By this time the party was beginning to get lively and I
thought I'd have a look around. Or maybe just go for a piss.

There was a queue for the bathroom (as always). When my time came I had to rush
in and out quickly to allow everyone else time to select their drinks from the
ice filled bath. I headed back into the front room where the music was.
Although when I say music I really mean noise created by a Native American Shaman
and an Egyptian High priestess merged to form a generic bounce (but that's just
my opinion - I might be right or I might be wrong but I won't be listening to
any of it in Heaven).

There was a peculiar woman with quite striking cheek-bones chewing on a radioactive
icicle. I tried to stop her - I told her of the dangers but she just got more
and more carried away. She was obviously whipped into some sort of delirium by
the repetitive beat and when she began fellating the radiation I thought it
best to move out of the range of imminent danger. On Saturday morning, I was
displaying many of the first signs of radiation poisoning, but they appear to
have come to nothing.

I looked around the rest of the party and suddenly realized
that nobody was doing anything bad. Nobody was smoking, there were no drugs,
nobody had broken a fish tank, and there was no fighting, arguing or other
disturbance. Nobody had unscrewed legs from a chair in the hope that it would
collapse only to sit on it themselves. Nobody had stolen the lampshade. Nobody
was dying of hypothermia on the stairs. Nobody had broken up with both their
girlfriends. Nobody was taking voyeuristic photographs of the flat opposite.
Nobody was climbing out the window to steal a flag and, later, a satellite dish
from a pub. There was no live rooftop sex-show. No expensive curtains or Levi
twisted jeans were sliced by a samurai sword. Terrorists were not apparent. Doors
were not locked. Noises were not heard. Nobody was desperately trying to hide
the fact that they had stolen a can of Guinness. Nobody was so drunk that all they
could do was vomit on the carpet after drinking all their lightweight friend’s
booze in an attempt to stop him making a fool of himself. Nobody looked green.
Nobody stalked round the party trying to find and kill whoever it was that
stole his can of Guinness. The police were not phoned. And nobody was in the
kitchen.

This was all a little shocking and disappointing for me. I
moved in dark circles in my youth and was surprised to find, on Friday night, a
roomful of nice young men and women chatting away over a little beverage and
dancing to a little light "music". It began to depress me. These girls and boys
will grow up to become our politicians, doctors, teachers and vets. They’re too
damn reasonable and well behaved. What hope does our society have if everyone
who will be in power in a generation or two’s time is so nice?

The most confrontational incident in the whole evening was
when a man called Jeremy, who apparently knew everyone through the wonders of
Bebo, wanted me to define myself by telling him my top three favourite bands
and top two favourite solo artists. I tried to explain to him that this was
impossible. I tried to tell him that if you can name musicians in an ordered
list then you probably aren’t really enjoying the music at all. He didn’t understand.
How could he? He comes from a bunch of people for whom everything is rated and
split into lists. He has to write on his Bebo page what his favourite bands
are, what his favourite films and books are, who his best friend is and so many
other things that he ahs lost the natural art of discussion and conversation
with real people. How could he
understand that in the mornings  want to
hear Art Garfunkel’s soothing tones when all he wants to do is project an image
of cool to (potentially) five billion viewer? How can he possibly understand
that my enjoyment of country music doesn’t make me a racist who wants to invade
Iraq, Iran, Syria,
China and Aberdeen in the name of Oil? How can he
realize that some of the greatest songs ever written weren’t written this
century? Some weren’t even written in the last century. How can he hope to
understand anybody if he wants to classify them by some index of shared likes
and dislikes?

I hope young Jeremy goes far in whatever field he chooses.
And he will. I hope he finds a use for his classifications and I hope his
boundless enthusiasm never wanes. I just hope he never teaches my child, or
cares for my mother, or represents me or my dog – because I don’t think he
knows much about people.

And that, friends, is my classification of him.