Due to my being in possession of a Unirider, some people with, GASP, jobs, believe I am an unworthy creature whose life consists of staying up all night partying, destroying my house and annoying my neighbours*. Unfortunately, I’ve never had the pleasure of being an undergraduate student in this country and therefore cannot live up to these expectations – being a student is a much less excessive affair in Germany than it seems to be here. I usually try to get past the smelly boozers and dirty takeaways of Fallowfield as quickly as possible, since even shopping at the Sainsbury’s on my way home can be painful at times (Now repeat after me: pyjamas were never meant to be worn anywhere outside my house. A supermarket is not my house.).
But hey, this wouldn’t be mightaswell if I was just accepting the facts and avoiding Fallowfield by all means. Why not just go and live the student lifestyle myself – with a particularly classy night out in Fallowfield. The task: drink only the most fluorescent or silliest sounding drinks, eat stuff that doesn’t usually classify as edible in your life, stumble around in heels, make use of cheap booze offers, and spend not more than £20.
Having invested a considerate amount of time on my make-up and hair (you gotta do what you gotta do) I even decided to wear heels, which happens about twice a year and makes me regret every time that I wasn’t wearing ‘shoes for people with flat feet’, as I was told to. The night started with a romantic three course meal at McDonalds, yet another place which, as a vegetarian / part time vegan, secret hippie and general chain-refusenik, I have probably visited as many times as I have been seen wearing heels in my life. After some difficulties identifying the one vegetarian option on the menu, I settled for a ‘spicy veggie deli sandwich’ with fries and a banana milkshake. That’s three courses, right? (To anticipate the result, my night ended with a cup of peppermint tea and a hot water bottle on my belly.)
Feeling a little dirty and very disappointed with the semi-cold fries, we made our way into Fallowfieldia, the first stop being the local Wetherspoons. The pub was fairly unspectacular even for Wetherspoons standards, and after a pitcher of Woo Woo (silly name: tick!) which is basically just cranberry juice++, we moved on to Baa Bar. Here’s a confession: I don’t actually mind Baa Bar when it’s not busy. The drinks prices are fair, they’ve got German beer in bottles (makes me feel like home…), the insane shooter menu is fun, and the music is generally very quiet. I even suggested they could advertise with something like “Baa Bar – not shit until 9pm!”, but I’m not sure that was convincing enough. In the style of Baa Bar, I went for a bright green apple flavoured fizzy alcopop (fluorescent drink: tick!) and a few shooters with names like ‘Sassy Bitch’, ‘Dave’ (eh?), ‘Twilight’ and ‘Pinky Winky’ (silly names: tick! tick! tick! tick!). Our visit to the rather quiet Baa Bar was followed by a quick stop at the Tesco’s next door to buy a box of Rennie. You gotta do etc.
Moving further up Wilmslow Road, we headed for a quick drink and a game of pool at the Cheshire Cat, where we encountered a person sleeping on the sofa, the bar staff playing ‘catch the peanut with your mouth’, drinks smashing on the floor, and someone being sick all over the sinks in the gents toilets. (I’ve got pictures of the toilet incident, but I think posting these would be one step too far, even for me.) It was also the first time I heard Bjork’s ‘I miss you’ in a bar. Lovely place.
A fairly recent but very clever addition to the watering holes in Fallowfield is the second branch of the beloved cheap as chips cocktail (””cocktail””) bar Font. Sticky tables and unnecessarily loud music are as much a part of Font, as are huge queues at the bar and toilets that were obviously bought from the hellhole store (ok, I stole that one from Das Racist). Nonetheless, we decided to savour some of their delicacies on the cocktail (””cocktail””) menu and ended up bumping into someone we least expected there: people my age. My mates were probably as surprised as I was to meet them there, but the instant ‘we’re in this together now’ feeling convinced us to stay, despite the painfully loud music that reduced my vocal chords to shrivelled up parcel twine.
After only two cocktails (””cocktails””) however, the accumulation of fluorescent drinks, greasy junk food and shooters with silly names cut a hole in my stomach and therefore the evening fairly short. All my plans to end the night with a little dance at Robinskis or the Revolution’s UV party of the year were annihilated. I admitted defeat and went home.
So, how was it? Well. Fallowfield was rather quiet due to it being the end of term time, and therefore rather uninteresting. I got away spending a minimum on drinks, I saw some appalling toilets and got stuck on dirty tables a few times. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected, but hey, I’ll be back in Fresher’s Week to get the full Fallowfield experience.
Did I just write a 900 word blog post about going out for drinks? Hell yes I did.
* Hint: Having a 9-5 job doesn’t make you a better person.
Sam Bail 
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