First the stag do, and then last Saturday was the hen night back at home in St. Helens. Yes, I said hen night. It was pretty damn good, thank-you. When I've figured out the best way to publish them, the pictures will appear here on the website in all their drunken-haze glory. In a slightly disturbing but very pleasant coincidence/surprise, in the bar next to where we were all meeting up was another group of hens - for another of my school friends. It was just a bit of a shame that I couldn't go to both, although the others seemed to be sticking to the whole women-only thing. Besides, they were going to Manchester (note to self - need a night out in Manchester).

Rather unhelpfully, the "just the one" I was intending to have on the previous night turned into rather more than one. I ended up going downstairs in The Wardrobe and dancing to Kava Kava who were, quite literally, funky. However, pretty much all I can remember was that the lead dude had lots of black hair, and had a black Motorhead shirt on.

I don't particularly remember getting home afterwards either, but I do remember waking up at around eleven on Saturday morning and wondering how I was going to make it home. I only had to be in St. Helens for eight in the evening, but even then it seemed like a nightmare.

Somehow I made the sixty mile journey across the M62 from Leeds to St. Helens. What annoyed me was that I really should have learned from my experience the fortnight before, when I got in at three in the morning before having to get to Haydock for the stag do at one in the afternoon. I spent most of the afternoon at the racecourse drinking overpriced cans and bottles of cola, in between the kamikaze betting.

I've done quite a few nights out back in my home town of St. Helens recently. Usually I don't get back home too often (not often enough, for sure). Having lived in Leeds for almost three years now, as a town St. Helens is a bit of a different proposition to the normal city offering once it gets dark. It did take me a little time to understand exactly why, but it's not exactly a difficult theory.

I do enjoy going out in St. Helens, so don't think I'm about to say it's shit. However, all the bars and the one big club are all the same. You'd be hard pushed to tell them apart. They all look pretty similar, and they all play the same music. There's nowhere that plays anything outside the mainstream - it's like listening to Radio Aire or Radio City everywhere you go. As they all play the same music, you see the same people in all the same places.

If you like the sort of music that Radio Aire plays then that's great. And it's fine in Leeds as well - there's no shortage of places to go if you want to hear that sort of music. But in Leeds, you don't see all the same people in all the same places. You can go and enjoy what you want. Pop, dance, metal, electronica, jazz, hip hop and other stuff. It's all there, and you don't have to look particularly hard to find it. Culture feeds on diversity in so many ways, so it's a healthy thing to have.

It would be nice to think that the economies of scale might change one day, and maybe then St. Helens might become much less of a novelty to a city bod and much more of a town doing it's own thing and having it's own culture. At the moment, bless it, it's nightlife by numbers.

I'll still be going back to St. Helens for nights out for a long time to come, because the people I grew up during the first eighteen years of my life with will still be there. Despite everything I've said about diversity, the company that you keep certainly much more important. Doesn't matter where you go, really - just who you go with. Which is why I'll never have a crap night out in St. Helens.