2 months ago
14
A few years ago, while battling another chaotic family meal prep, I dreamily reminisced about heady times of glitter hair gel, fluoro crop tops, flared jeans and chunky sneakers.
It was the late ’90s. Grunge was out. Techno was in.
Raves were held in the grimy depths of Melbourne’s underground car parks, train stations and industrial warehouses over the West Gate Bridge. No mobile phones, no parental surveillance, just unadulterated electronic dance music in a sea of grinning, sweating, glittering bodies.
The punters get live and sweaty at a Docklands rave in 2001.
We danced in synch. The infamous Melbourne shuffle, a unique marrying of the running man with arms thrusting, accompanied by intricate hops, jumps and 360-degree spins.
Then the unthinkable happened. Raves were banned. And we grew up.
We took out loans, and wore ill-fitting suit jackets. We opened and shut down businesses, got married, got divorced. We had children and researched the best grass seeds to cultivate a healthy lawn. We considered the innovation behind degustation menus and pondered deeply over bathroom tiles.
It’s difficult to know if we were legitimately adulting or collectively “playing grown-ups”.
Either way, on the eve of my 40th birthday, I frantically wrote a to-do list and launched head first into Operation Midlife.
Gastroscopy – tick. Skin cancer check – tick. Mammogram – tick. New grown-up career for the ageing me – tick.
I also decided to revive my life as a raver.
Perhaps it was this existential crossroad, or that for the first time in 14 years I could go a day without breast milk / baby spew / remnants of mushy food smeared into my “going out” clothes, or because I’d reached that wondrous nonchalant midlife point of unashamedly strolling into Aldi in trackies.
But I made a commitment to put on my shoes (equipped with insoles for maximum arch support), get in front on some bass-heavy music and dance like no one was watching.
To achieve this, it meant making my grand re-entrance into the land of (age-appropriate) clubs and festivals. So I searched and scrolled until my entire Instagram algorithm evolved into a grainy quilt of flashback reels and upcoming event fliers.
Fern Greig-Moore returned to raving in her 40s.
I picked gigs that promoted nostalgic music and DJs from my youth and made a pact with myself that every six months I’d be out dancing.
At one festival set amid a backdrop of rolling hills and vineyards, thousands of like-minded 40-to-50-somethings moved in unison. There were no inebriated belligerent idiots here, no slimy side-eyeing bloke counting the moments until he could “accidentally” grope your backside. Just politely intoxicated or sober grown-ups, prescription cannabis wafting.
Security, who hadn’t bothered to search our bags, let alone pat us down, looked on with obvious boredom. There’d be no fights to break up tonight, and we’d remember it in its entirety the next morning.
Then there was the street art exhibition in the CBD on an annual date night recently, when a friend and host of the show whispered in my ear, “There’s a room downstairs ...”
I leapt into action following him down a long sticky staircase to a room soaked in deep red lighting. The bass was deafening and I’d found heaven.
I clocked over 15,000 steps that night. The cardio alone was worth it.
Don’t get me wrong, as I precariously perch on the good side of 45 I know I’m no spring chicken. Going to bed is not dissimilar to heading into battle, armed with nasal strips for optimum airways, humidifier to combat chronic dry eye and beef tallow to annihilate crow’s feet.
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My partner quips that the next step for me in an adjustable electric bed with full frame lift. Jokes aside, he hasn’t seen my search history.
And I’m only at the halfway point. So while I have my one good knee and my plantar fasciitis is dormant, rest assured I’ll be celebrating the new year with kitchen floor dusted in (gluten-free) flour for smoother shuffling.
Big synths, massive drops shaking the neighbours silver beet crop, my children watch on horrified.
Fern Greig-Moore has a BA and Graduate Diploma in Psychology. She works in the after-death care sector and has four children.
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