Tonight we're going to party like it's 1995

or "a story about an Indie Boot Camp outing".

Last Friday lunchtime I get the most exciting email I've had in a very long time. It says "Oh My God this looks amazing!", and it's all about this. How cool? Really. How exciting? Really, really. So a plan of attack forms, and despite going out on the Friday night to this, we decide to take the whole 1995 thing very seriously, and pretend that we are all still under 25 and can still do going out two nights in a row. We spend all Friday evening deciding what to wear, what we still have in our wardrobes and more importantly, what the hell will still fit or will last one final spin in the washing machine.

Saturday sees many text messages conveying minor panic attacks along the lines of "I have no shoes!", and results in Clare being ready at 4pm with the message "I'm ready now? Can we go?" to which I had to reply "No, I have three more episodes of SATC to watch and a bath to have". I do these things in order of importance (SATC first, of course) and by 6.30pm I am in my bedroom looking at my wardrobe, and having this realisation: I am not retro and cool, I am just cheap - half my wardrobe is clothes I had in 1995! I decide on a compromise - Pulp yellow "I'm common" t-shirt, with my jeans. Now in 1995 I didn't even own jeans, they were too 'mainstream' for me, but back to 2005 and the fact that I had spent all day trying to dry my jeans, and it seemed such a shame not to wear them. And it would've meant that my battle scar/burn from touching the zip after they had been baking on the front of the oven was for no reason. (However, between you and me, the main reason that I decided to wear the jeans? I tried on my orange skirt - £5 Topshop, Meadowhall, summer '95 - and do you know what?Apparentlyy I was a slut in '95, 'cus the skirt? Turns out to be teeny tiny. Oh my god! I was the Christina Aguillera of my day. Oh, the shame. )

My hair, to be truthful was more circa '98, but then in '95 I had shorter hair than I do now. And there's no way I was cracking open the bleach and pink hair dye for one night only.

Anyway, we all manage to meet in the pub, where we are all at varying levels of excitement. Okay, me and Clare are so excited we could puke, the boys are probably more bewildered than excited. We decide to get to the club nice and early so's we can get seats/get in cheaper (hey, we're only pretending we're under 25). And what an amazing night! Well, amazing apart from the bit where there was a poster of Liam Gallagher on the back of the door in the ladies loo, and I was too scared to go in. Luckily someone ripped it down, and we could all answer the call of nature in peace again. I danced so much, in such a small space! I was escorted off the dancefloor when Oasis came on by a lovely young man shouting "Indie snobs coming through" which did indeed clear a path back to our seats! I met some lovely new people and had random conversations about taking my mum to see the Manics, how everyone wore CKOne in '95, songs that make you cry and the first time you ever heard Mansun on the radio.

What a night. And do you know what, two days later I'm very nearly almost recovered!