Richard Godwin: A baby rave is the best way to learn to live in the city

 
Big Fish Little Fish: the event promised to be 'anarchic fun for all ages'
Richard Godwin25 February 2015
WEST END FINAL

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The carnage was much the same as at any club when three o’clock comes around. Everyone was together, everyone was apart. The hardcore ravers ran around shirtless, covered in fluorescent paint. The cool girls shot intimidating glances across the room. The lost souls stumbled around, listlessly swigging from bottles.

It was one-in-one-out on the main dancefloor where DJ Food — who looked as if he’d left an important part of his brain in Gatecrasher c.1996 — prepared for another drop. We waited for the drums like children waiting for tickles… and when it came we danced on cue. Fists, clasps, grins. Then my one-year-old son began to cry and it was time to flee for the chill-out zone.

Such was the scene at the Big Fish Little Fish Family Rave at the Festival Hall on Sunday afternoon. The event promised to be “anarchic fun for all ages”. It was certainly anarchic. It was sort of fun, too, if your idea of fun is comforting a small child who doesn’t understand why he can’t just take another child’s balloon.

As for “all ages”, it seemed pitched less at the children and more at their Millennial parents, trying desperately to reconcile their memories of what they used to be with their new world of wet-wipes and Bugaboos.

I’ve always been prone to over-thinking things in acid-house situations and I’m afraid this was no exception. I mean, a family rave is not so different from family rituals of the past, is it? If this were a few centuries ago, we’d take our children out to public beheadings or maypole dances or (God forbid) church for a bit of Sunday fun. These occasions are how we pass our values on. We just happen to be a generation whose values include “Daft Punk” and “dancing like your life depends on it” — and we want to share them with our children too. We’re a generation that invests a lot of care into being carefree.

It’s not as if we have nothing real to care about either. London is going through a huge change. Families are finding they can’t afford to live in the sorts of houses that were designed for them — so they’re fleeing for places like Margate and Bristol.

Meanwhile, those of us who remain want to show why we put up with such a cramped and expensive city. London offers an infinite amount of entertainment — so we exhaust ourselves trying to make the most of it. You don’t get baby raves in Zone 9 after all.

What’s in it for the children? Any parent will wonder. As I watched my son experiment with his new-found powers of walking in the forest of ankles and knees, it brought back all the feelings I had when I first experienced such a seething mass (albeit at 14 years rather than months). Adults medicate themselves with drink and drugs to recapture that sort of intensity. With children, you see it all in its raw form.

It was scary. But it also felt an important lesson was being learned, something beyond mere hedonism. How not to get lost in the crowd. How to hang on to yourself. How to build moments of joy and community within it. The art of London, perhaps? It’s not an easy thing to learn — but learn it we must, at some stage or another.

Jamie's too nice to be a sadist

Apparently, Jamie Dornan’s wife isn’t keen on him appearing in any Fifty Shades of Grey sequels. I suspect the contract may prove a little more binding but still, having braved the multiplex on Monday night, I sympathise.

As the eponymous sadist, Dornan comes across as way too nice to whip Dakota Johnson. He reminded me of Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones, his bondage dungeon a guilty secret in the manner of a model train set, his plugs and paddles all suspiciously new too.

Perhaps worse than watching a loved one having raucous sex with a co-star is watching your loved one have half-hearted sex with a co-star? The cinema, for what it’s worth, was 98 per cent empty.

Tories bank on the old putting them in No 10

The Conservatives have made their priorities for the coming election clear. They want to protect the comfortable and the wealthy, aka the grey vote. Winter fuel allowance will still be paid to superannuated millionaires; Britain’s wealthiest generation will continue to receive free bus travel.

Not all pensioners are comfortable and wealthy of course, but an important report in the Financial Times shows how, as a generation, they’ve gained an ever-larger share of the nation’s wealth over the past 35 years.

Over the same period, twentysomethings have become equivalently poorer, with today’s young set to remain at a disadvantage throughout their adult lives. Important benefits for the young, such as the Educational Maintenance Allowance, have meanwhile died without a whisper.

The Tories’ cynical logic is that old people vote and young people don’t. An even more cynical logic says that old people will not be around forever — and neither will the Tories unless they offer some hope for the future.

Greens leader gets red-faced

For many years the Green Party chose not to have a leader. They reckoned it was more democratic that way. Less embarrassing too, to judge from Natalie Bennett’s tour of the radio studios yesterday.

She was hopeless on the Today programme and finally resorted to the dread “I’ve got a cold” excuse on LBC as Nick Ferrari enquired how she intended to build 500,000 homes. (“You don’t know? Oh.”)

In the end, he destroyed the poor woman not with outrage or incredulity but with concern — a classy move if you can pull it off. You can see why David Cameron was so keen to have her appear on the TV debates.

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