Places of Note From Ripon – Disco Fever

What did those Riponians under the age of 18 do to occupy the time on Friday and Saturday night?  We often went to “discos”.  Now these weren’t Studio 54, mirror ball, polyester suit discos.  Just a DJ and a hall playing British top 40, the good, the bad and the bloody ugly.

Now, I don’t recall all of the locations.  There was one in Kirby, I recall it being quite a ways out of Ripon, the Saint John’s Ambulance hall on North Street and the Methodist Church Youth Club below.

Now I remember a few common things about these discos:

• I don’t recall anyone ever being a member of the Methodist Church Youth Club
• Despite being for the under 16/18 crowd, and, except for St. John’s Ambulance, not having a bar, we always managed to get “pissed” (English for drunk, not angry, “legless” is drunk off your ass)
• You could barely see five feet in front of you for all the cigarette smoke.
• The first song to get everyone on the dance floor was often “Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.
• We usually ended up head banging to some Spinal Tapesqe heavy metal.

There’s one incident in particular I remember.  There were a few of us headed to the Methodist Church one night.  In preparation, I’d performed the age old trick of skimming a bit of liquor from each of the bottles in my parents liquor cabinet.

I think others must have done the same or somehow procured other forms of alcohol.  Anyway, we all end up getting a bit drunk.  Barno, however, get’s completely legless.  We all end up outside at some point and Barno’s sitting on the wall below where he proceeds to fall backwards off of it.

At some point Barno get’s completely sick as well.  Not sure if that’s why we were outside.  Anyway, one of the nice church ladies ends up calling someone’s parents to give everyone a ride home. 

And the funny thing is, is that I actually remember her being nice, not all pissy and scolding as I’d imagine it would be at some Methodist church over here.