I like my sleep. I find it healthful, life-giving and full of interesting dreams about tiny rainbow-coloured Nazi ponies (don’t ask). Therefore, given that I am currently woken up between 6.30 and 7am every morning by the sound of a baby going ‘blah blah blah MILK NOW PLEASE blah blah gurgle’, I have started going to bed at about ten thirty.

Among other things, this means that my days of clubbing till 3am are over, not that they were ever very extensive. However, the idea of going out on a Saturday night still appeals, and I am on the mailing list for a number of events happening around London. Mostly I don’t get to go to them, but they serve to remind me that in London, if you want to do something, you probably can (if you have the money and the time).

One of the things I’d always wanted to do was go to a 1920s speakeasy and drink cocktails while surrounded by women in bobs and flapper dresses. And recently this opportunity came to me in the form of The Candlelight Club, a “clandestine pop-up cocktail bar in a secret London venue, a stunning, tucked-away den with a 1920s speakeasy flavour, completely lit by candles”. It all sounded very civilised, and handily, it ran from 7.30pm to midnight, perfect timing for booking babysitters.

So last night I went there, accompanied by my old friends Mr and Mrs Brown and Choler and Harpy, and my partner S (who has unaccountably failed to get himself a blog) and it was indeed very civilised. We were informed of the location a couple of days beforehand and duly presented ourselves at an anonymous street door at the time appointed. (The anonymous door in question was next to a notorious goth club, which brought back a couple of memories for a couple of us.) S wore a fedora and looked, I thought thuggish in a suave way, which he took as a compliment, more or less.

Just before the custard pie fight started

We proceeded down a corridor and into a large white room full of white-tableclothed tables. At first glance it didn’t quite resemble the dark undergound cellar I’d been picturing, but it was lit – as advertised – by candles, everyone was in (roughly) 1920s gear, and ragtime was playing, so I quickly decided I was happy. S started in on the free sandwiches (very nice, apparently, especially the crab ones) and I perused the menu of Victorian-inspired cocktails. The absinthe was tempting, but I ended up spending my night drinking a sour cherry and gin cocktail that I found surprisingly delicious given that I don’t like sourness, gin or cherries. I still don’t know how they did that.

The evening was spent ordering and swapping cocktails (everyone found something that suited them), listening to the live band (not bad, and I loved that people were dancing), admiring Choler and Harpy’s colourful retro cigarettes, and trying to decide if the man who looked like Johnny Depp was actually Johnny Depp (presumably not, but Mrs Brown and I decided to believe he was). After a couple of the gin cocktails I stood up and found I was pleasantly tipsy, a sensation I haven’t experienced for some time and had rather missed.

All in all then, a successful and satisfyingly themed night out. I would have liked a line of dancing girls, waitresses who asked if you wanted a glass of ‘milk’, and a comically bungled police raid towards the end of the evening, but for £15 a ticket I think that’s probably asking a bit too much. Three cheers for vintage evenings out. Next time I’m going to try the absinthe.