A different kind of social

When people hear the word ‘socials’ – when a society gets together - they tend to think of nightclubs and bars. However, there are a whole array of different, ‘non-alcoholic’ socials that you can do instead. Even when I think back to my Fresher’s fortnight there were plenty of events that didn’t involve heading down to the nearest club and that still remains true today. In fact, a few weeks ago I went on two alcohol-free socials in the space of three days!

My first was a trip into Portsmouth organised by the Physics society (Physoc). Perhaps you might be thinking that we visited a famous landmark, a science museum or a Physics-based company to further our education. However, the truth is that we actually went to large indoor play area called 'Playzone' to run around for ninety minutes!

Playzone is a favourite and staple social for many societies across campus. Although by day it’s a play area for children, in the evenings they open it up for adults to enjoy (despite our hyperactivity, students do actually qualify as adults!). The indoor play area features four different slides, including a giant vertical drop slide and a four lane racing slide, which are surrounded by a maze of climbing obstacles, rope swings and rotating pads that serve only to make you extremely dizzy.

The vertical slide is genuinely scary! 

As soon as our minibuses arrived, we dropped our conservations about University work and regressed by at least ten years. After diving straight into the obstacles and slides, we soon set about creating a thirty person game of ‘it’ and a competition to see who could climb up the slide firsts – you never quite learn that slides are very slippery, even as Physicists!

Needless to say we were all exhausted after an hour and a half of climbing, running, sliding and jumping. The next morning I woke with every muscle hurting, including those I didn’t even know existed, but despite this it was one of the best socials I’ve ever been on and would do it again in a heartbeat. It was a great way to let off some steam!

The second of the two socials was with the University’s Art Society (Artsoc). After a session in which we practised our portrait drawing skills, we headed to a committee member’s house to begin a ‘pudding social’. The idea was for everyone who was attending to bake or buy a dessert and bring it along for everyone to enjoy. Being a keen cook I decided to bake a lemon drizzle cake and I was very happy with the end result, despite a small accident occurring when I tried to remove the cake from its tin!

The lemon drizzle cake before its little accident

In the end we had twelve cakes between eleven of us and despite our best efforts (and one cake being dropped on the floor) we could not finish it all in one sitting. That’s not really surprising though, is it?!

We may have underestimated how many cakes we'd have! 

I would say that the fact I now prefer these kinds of activities over going clubbing must be a sign of me growing older, but considering they consisted of going down sides and stuffing myself with cake, I think a claim of maturity might have to wait a while…

James