We are now treating Friday nights in Leicester as a ‘must-stay-home/close-all-windows/put-on-your-earplugs” a
must-do affair every Friday night! Well, to be fair with our adoptive city and which I must remind myself to be a bit kind to her as it is the one currently giving us the dough, this same warning also applies when your home/apartment is within the city center of any big towns or cities in the UK.
Now before you brand me as an exaggerating-fiction-weaving-totally-biased Pinay, I suggest that when you get the chance to come here, tick off a Friday night as part of your discovery trip. Take along some friends, your hostel mates would be ideal as they, too, would find the experience kind of adventurous. Never go on your own as this might invite trouble. Discretely loiter out and about a crowded area not later than 9pm (if much later you might find yourself getting stabbed and if you loiter in an isolated place, then the stabbing rate is even higher). and as soon as you get a taste of this mind-altering experience, run back to your hostel quick! This is not a place for tourists like yourself!
Every Friday, from 10pm onwards, the city centre where most of the nightclubs are found, is transformed into a black and neon lit-up universe playing rap music, drifting cigarette smoke in the air, burly bouncers in black suits standing at the entrance of every club, and the stars of the night, and from where the source of business comes from, are the punters (London slang for ‘customers’) roaming around before finally getting inside the club of their choice. They are all dressed up from the outrageous to the skimpiest to the gothic ..anything weirdo and out of this world!
Evidently, Friday nights in the UK is one occasion for these maturing youth aged 18 - 35 to dress up like tarts, if they are girls, and booze till they drop, if they are boys….
Well, this statement is not exclusive according to sex. they can be interchangeable!
Boys can also dress up as tarts and girls can also booze to their livers’ content… I swear, we’ve seen it in our very own eyes!
Tart-y boys
Driving on the motorway from our Scottish weekend trip few weeks ago, we stopped at a service station for a quick rest when, shockingly, we saw queueing up at a McDonalds counter a long line of thirtysomething mammals ( sorry, i refuse to call them “men” as it is outrightly insulting to the word itself! ) wearing nothing except what looked like towels twisted around to cover their private fronts and behinds, like babies wearing only diapers! they looked abominably gross that i could not even lay my eyes on them, (but later on found the courage as i needed to take a souvenir shot so i can show them to you. unfortunately, the resulting image was blurred because I intentionally did not use a flash and if i did, who knows what could have happened? i probably wouldn’t be here writing this story!)
I am telling you, the “stags” (male deers) we saw in the fields that morning in Scotland look a hundred times more honorable than these clowns.
we later saw them getting back to their bus, there must be twenty of them, their looks nearly causing me to vomit.
They obviously were on their way to a stag party.
Another sighting was on the ferry ship which took us to Corfu, Greece few months ago. that time, a big group of males (again, can’t use the word “men here) suddenly appeared walking out and about the deck, then went into the ferry’s boutique to shop, then went out again, really deliberately showing off their scandalous appearance… mimicking that of loose girls, flirting in their tiniest and skimpiest outfits which were way too ridiculous to their muscular build! they were obviously getting ready for a stag party which took place in the ferry that night.
Now why British men that age can actually shed off all of their self-respect and pride when it comes to stag parties. Well, i should not criticize as a friend’s nephew who was about to get married few days before that has also organised his own stag party in Amsterdam with several of his pals, showed up at the hotel in their colorful wigs and queer costumes and, despite having confirmed booking beforehand, the horrified hotel staff had to turn them away. luckily they found another hotel in the vicinity.
Boozy girls
Boozing among girls in the UK is also commonplace. They imbibe copious amounts of alcohol until they can no longer carry themselves and eventually become part of the carpetted floor where every wobbling john and harry trample on. i can only sympathize with them for not anticipating the harm they are creating for themselves. it could eventually boomerang later in life in the form of alcohol-related illnesses or their children getting born with deficiencies.
Our apartment, being IN the city centre, is adjacent to a number of clubs and one of them even sport the name, G-spot.
Walking past that club this morning, I noticed the sign “Halloween Party!”. now.. now.. what sort of halloween costumes might be aptly fashioned for a club named G-spot? And here’s the thing, does that mean anybody can put up a similar club under the name ‘A-s-s’, etc?
as after-dinner walks is a nightly routine, it is on Friday nights that we get a visual experience of the comical, the bizarre and the pathetic. the other day, we were sharing this experience to an Indian shopkeeper who, in the middle of bagging the sheets and blankets we just bought, was moaning and seething about what had become of the UK, his home for the past 30 years, and what he predicts it would become in another ten years - (i tell you it’s not a very pleasant prediction but he is probably right, but that’s another story). He outspokenly warned us to never ever walk around the area at night because it is dangerous and the streets reek of drugs and alcohol.
anyhow, we’ve never seen so much inappropriately-dressed girls as what we have been seeing in the UK (except for some parts of London). we see lasses in their bunny attires complete with pink bunny ears and furry tails, some in catholic-school-girls’ uniforms but with the checked skirts so skimpy exposing the edge of their bums at the flimsiest movement.. and down the road, a girl, about 300 lbs struggling to walk in her ‘just-bought-that-morning’ pair of stiletto shoes that look like stilts to her heavyweight body and wearing a top so tight and short it left her flabby midriff popping out all over the place…. and in a far corner, despite the freezing temperature, are girls wearing the tiniest tube or spaghetti-strapped tops so they walk on the street shivering to the bones!
Now, why do British girls just have no idea how to dress? Obviously they want to project a provocatively sexy image but what they dont realize is that: it is exactly creating the opposite effect! they should go to France and take lessons in fashion and seduction from their French sisters who don’t have to expose cleavages or bit of their bums just to get the boys’ attention.
Close your windows
even if you are at home, chances of getting nicked of your belongings because you left a window open still run high.
we were watching TV one night when the laptop sitting on the table next to the window suddenly jerked on its own! then we heard some girls giggling outside the window. i then realized someone tried to reach for and nick the wi-fi receiver (shaped like a mobile phone and flashing a tiny blue light which makes it very visible in the dark) which was then standing just outside our ajarred window but because it was wired up to the laptop, the little thief did not succeed in snapping it out! frightened but alert, i quickly pulled back the wire where the wi-fi receiver was still hanging! thank goodness for that! the culprits, no doubt were the same girls giggling earlier!
Wear earplugs
the level and type of Friday night noise vary depending on the nocturnal hour.
from around 10pm to 2am:
you hear the loud chattering and screaming from passing clubbers who obviously have not the slightest idea that the vast majority of the population at those late hours would either be fast asleep or merely enjoying a quiet evening in their homes.
from 2:00 am onwards:
the noise becomes more aggressive, mindless violence would ensue owing to the drunken state of the clubbers, then sounds of police car sirens will follow…
The purpose of No drinking zones is to prevent groups of drunks from abusing members of the public, urinating in doorways and vandalising thingsmy own statistics:
on one occasion…. looking outside our window, i’ve seen policemen accosting some passing drunks
on several occasions….cars from the underground carpark have been broken into (despite having a valet stationed 24-hours in the valet office)
on two occasions….i came across a policeman or two walking around the main corridor of our building. when i asked them if something is the matter, they said “None”, they are just patrolling the vicinity.
on one occasion…. (since we moved here), the mailboxes (except ours and few others) have been smashed open, scattering the mails on the floor
that same occasion….. someone urinated on the carpetted floor just outside our main door. after several weeks, the same spot was topped up with a second session of peeing. the resulting smell is so bad that to this day we would cover our noses while going in and out of the door.
the morning after..
oh no, you wouldn’t really want to go out on the streets that early, unless you can take in the debris and rubbish as a result of the previous night’s drinking. to cut a long story short, the words filth and squalor are very fitting description of Leicester, or any other big town or city in the UK, the morning after a Friday night, the most common sight being - scattered KFC bones and McDonalds styrofoams, broken bottles, beer bottles left standing on someone else’s door/window, the smell of urine in the air and maybe a clubber snoring waylaid in one corner still clasping an empty beer bottle or two…
