‘We just wanna know where there’s anywhere fun...’

With the exception of the resourceful and connected, there is nowhere to head on a Friday night in London past eleven. The result of a painful combination of European laissez faire and British bureaucracy, a fresh faced girl dressed up for good times finds disappointment in the eye of the man she questions.

They sit al fresco in a square in one of the most pretentiously cool squares in London, but they have nowhere to go. The disappointment has nothing to do with the readiness to tear off each other’s clothes. They both have the hunger to get crazy, but nowhere offers respite. Nowhere will offer a place to hang out until dawn, where necessary.

No one wants to hang out till dawn, but they need that option to talk freely. We all need to relax and be comfortable to enjoy ourselves. But that liberty requires an entertainment license. It must be registered as having the intent to entertain. In city parlance this requires a dance floor, whether you feel like dancing or not. No matter what your intentions to entertain, if you plan on staying open you’d better be ready for substantial overheads.

Such is the evasion of London society. England’s miserable disposition. We will relax the 24 hour ‘drinking’ laws, but enforce an act which makes it prohibitively expensive to keep a place open past Gladstonian closing time. We do not demand drink to quench our lust. We are not Dickensian factory workers supping bitter, but we will be controlled as though we were. We’re bingers, whether you know it or not. If the law says you can drink 24 hours a day, then everyone will drink 24 hours a day. No one will turn up for work. Liberty surely invites disaster.

You cannot smoke indoors and council rules prohibiting noise prevent you from gathering outdoors with drinks. You can gather outdoors, but you can’t take your drinks with you. Property prices will be affected. Double glazing isn’t for everyone, the neighbours will complain. I want to live above the most bustling nightlife in London, but I’ll be damned if I have to hear it.

We tie ourselves up with these rules. Open air dance floors are difficult to achieve, even in summer. The Hukkah Lounge on Brick Lane has only one Hookah pipe, because despite the open fronted space it still constitutes smoking indoors. Never mind that anyone who complains of the air quality in a Hookah lounge is a moron, rules are rules. We have one street side table, so we have one pipe. Thanks to that one hubbly-bubbly investment, coupled with the unusual abundance of Peppermint tea, we call ourselves the Hookah Lounge.

A depression ensues. Not out of an absence of money, certainly not an absence of labour. But simply because we run our country like the Queen lives next door. When everyone with friends they haven’t seen for too long hit the streets, say at half ten, they find a sea of lost souls wandering and embarrassed. There is nowhere to go and it is far too early to suggest heading home.

'Sorry lovely. Nowhere opens later than eleven without a door charge and if they do it is too loud to hear each other talk. The bowling alleys are over booked, the seats in the clubs are filled. The bars are closing. Quite simply, you and I have nowhere to go but home. Do you want to come back to my place?’

'No.'