I Worked as a Bouncer - part 1

Eighteen years ago (is it almost TWO decades already?) I worked at a nightclub.

‘Front of House Staff’ we were called by the management and owners. ‘Door Supervisors’ on the licence we had to have (paid out of our own pockets, I might add).
The clients, customers, punters, coke-heads, kids and scrotes called us the ‘Bouncers’.

It wasn’t the first time I’d worked at that building. The first time I worked there, it was called ‘Harveys’ upstairs, with the Horse and Jockey pub downstairs. That was a rough gig to work, but more of that at a different time, another post… maybe.

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The newest club and pub in town to open in August 1999 was ‘andwhynot’ downstairs and ‘The Late Lounge’ upstairs. As with the previous incarnation, pub downstairs, nightclub upstairs.

New owners, new management team and a fantastic make-over brought the venue right up to date, ready for the new millennia.

It’s a shame the town wasn’t quite ready for it. The opening went off well, a number of loyal customers braved the less-than-crowded bars and it was easy work for the Front of House Staff.

On one evening, nothing else to do but chat with the equally-not-busy receptionist, ‘Lolly’, I wandered out onto the pavement and watched the full moon cresting over the rooftops across the street.

“Lolly?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“See those rooftops?”

“Yeah,” she said… a little bored and probably wondering if it was a trick-question.

“Can you imagine someone leaping from rooftop to rooftop, silhouetted by that full moon?” I said, pointing up, moving my hand slowly from left to right to describe the arc of the moon.

Behind me, Lolly took a breath. “Vampires?” she whispered.

I looked at her for a long moment and considered my answer. “No, not vampires,” I said. “Werewolves!”

You may think I’m giving you some flannel here, leading you up the garden path, so to speak, but I swear to you, as I remember it, the next song the DJ played was ‘Female of the Species’ by Space.

Late that night / early the following morning, I went home and wrote down the idea.

It took two years to write the book and another five to get it published.

It wasn’t just the idea for the subject matter for my book that I got from working as a Bouncer, I also enjoyed ‘people watching’ – well, you had to… part and parcel of the job, I suppose.

I moved from ‘andwhynot’ and ‘The Late Lounge’ to ‘The Village’ and ‘The Cavern’. I stayed there a couple of years, made a number of friends and a few ‘otherwise’. I had a LOT of ‘adventures’, and then, when the venue changed hands, I took up an offer at another nightclub – ‘The Palais’ across the road from where I’d started.
I had the opportunity to work in different towns, such as Nottingham and Worksop and I have a few tales to tell. Something kicked off every week, at least. I’ll have to try and remember a few of the more entertaining stories – of course, all names will be altered to protect the innocent.

To Be Continued…