Good Lord. Whitstable really is a chav-infested hellhole. I always thought it was all right, on account of the fact that if it has chavs, they only ever seem to come out when I'm safely indoors or elsewhere. But today, I noticed for the first time (because I'm extremely unobservant) that my nearest shop is called "the Wot-Eva! boutique". Very upmarket, I'm sure you'll agree.

I spent much of Saturday writing at home and on campus, until campus security caught me. "I always thought graffiti was the product of people somewhat younger than you," the guard said, mournfully, "but obviously not."

(Sorry, I'm in the mood for terrible puns.)

In the evening, there was supposed to be a viking theme night at Christchurch University, featuring a black metal band and a DJ playing POWER METAAAL!!! I couldn't, however, find any evidence as to whether it was actually happening, so I commenced the forty-minute walk from campus to Christchurch with a degree of trepidation in my step.

During it, I found myself privately bemoaning my current lack of Gang.

By gang, I don't mean "a group of united criminals" or "a group of friends I can turn to in times of difficulty". I've always thought such things were overrated, although they've undoubtedly come in useful at times. (Well, the latter have, anyway.) No, I mean something in between the two: a group of people united primarily for the purpose of having fun, a set of partners in crime if you will.

Now, I'm not very good at being in a gang. I'm prone to both being too sociable with outsiders and too reclusive to participate fully. Nonetheless, I've been in at least one at most stages of my life . . .

When I was about six, my parents moved their business to my town's industrial estate. Quickly realising that we were condemned to spend all our afternoons, Saturdays and school holidays there, my brother and I quickly collected up all the nearby kids stuck in similar predicaments. We rode our bikes, played computer games, made a film, frequently broke into warring factions, attempted weird and pointless things like playing three-way tennis while on rollerskates, spent one afternoon climbing a mountain of Rockwool which was about to be used to soundproof my half brother's recording studio, and solved mysteries.

(Albeit not very interesting ones:

Annie: Your mission is to find a weird object.
Kate (ten minutes later): Found one!
Annie: Do you know what it is?
Kate: Yes, it's a piece of slate from the trophy makers' next door.
Annie: Correct. Well done. Mystery solved.)

Simultaneously, at school, I hung around with some girls two or three years younger than me. The main thing I can remember us doing is playing clapping games. Though, for no obvious reason other than that they were kind of annoying, I never let them come to my birthday parties, inviting only girls my own age and slightly older.

I was gangless between the ages eleven and fourteen, but survived due to having two friends who, between them, possessed every quality a prepubescent could desire in a companion. Marion and I found endless entertainment in the deeds of our parents, classmates and each other, while with Katrina, I read magazines, made tapes to send to our mutual penfriends, and attempted to console her over her multiple unrequited loves (while being too ashamed to admit my own). Any variety that this set-up might have lacked was provided by my scores of penfriends and the fictional characters that constantly played in my head.

Nonetheless, once my family left our castle, I went to desperate lengths to win the affection of the kids on my housing estate, firstly by rollerskating around my house for hours until someone passed and issued a greeting, and later by leaving messages in silly putty on my parents' bedroom window. I won it, but soon lost it again due to my overwhelming shyness and the other kids' overwhelming evil. I never did get my Ace Of Bass CD back.

In my last years of school, I hung out with Smill, Will, Roe, Chris and Paul. We never all did anything together, but every day, some combination of us would play pool, table football, darts, consequences or multi-player Tetris, and on special occasions we went out in the evenings. And on the Internet, I had the Swans: Twi, Flink and the people we invited to put their websites on our domain, swansongs.net. We co-wrote bad goth poetry and smut about the members of The Cure, and fretted over Twi's ex AevilSteve's worrying attempts to become involved with all of us simultaneously.

For my first two years of university, I had Bryn, Soppygit and Ibid. Ok, technically, I only "had" Bryn, much as he hoped otherwise, but you know what I mean. In my first year, we spent every evening in my room, exiting primarily to scare the DJ at 80s night by turning up the moment the campus nightclub opened and doing the actions to the songs (especially worrying during "I Touch Myself"), howl at Canterbury cathedral which is illuminated at night, laugh at "men's health" magazines in the campus shop, and attempt to sight "Walter Winterbottom", the guy Soppygit fancied.

In the first half of my third year, I mostly hung out with the amorphous Canterbury goth contingent, though its core members remained constant. In the manner of all good goths, some of our most memorable bonding experiences took place in graveyards. In the second half, I was an honorary member of "The Fellowship", which mostly consisted of first year rock soc members. Much of our time was spent lying on the grass outside Rutherford College, pondering on the possible motivation behind the recent arrival on campus of a sculpture we referred to, for obvious reasons, as "The Penii".

At York, many of my days were spent with my six classmates, moaning about work and playing pool. Once, we barricaded a lecturer out of his office, until he agreed to concessions over a particularly impossible piece of work. I didn't really have time to find a niche in Melbourne, but I formed an allegiance of sorts with two women who attended the metal night and felt at ease in the small crowd centred around the band Dark Earth.

Now, my closest approximation to a gang is Sleeve and Emma. We watch TV and discuss Emma's Sociology essays, but we rarely actively go anywhere as a three; we just happen to turn up in the same places now and again. This is fair enough, as they're involved and much as they claim to like having me around, not all the time, I'm sure. But without a gang, I feel somewhat lost, and I can but hope a new one emerges soon.

Needless to say, I was feeling a bit downhearted by the time I got to Christchurch, where I found no raping and pillaging, only a poster declaring it was in fact "Fame theme night". Um, no ta Kenneth. My options were then:

a) Go home and feel depressed, as I always do on Saturday nights in.
b) Go on an impromptu trip to Slimelight.

Now going to Slimelight is a risky business. Without suitable mental and physical preparation for such a mission, it seemed entirely possible I would spend £25 on it, fall asleep an hour after arriving, and not talk to anyone or want to dance to anything all night. Nonetheless, I felt up for an adventure (cue Zed's puerile side: You felt someone up to have an adventure? Oo-er!), so to Limeslight I went.

And happily, while it wasn't the most mind-blowingly genius Slimelight ever (18th December holding that title), I didn't feel in any danger of falling asleep all night and had pleasing conversations with many people for a greater portion of the night than ever before.

The next day, I was tempted to stay in London for a Terrorizer-endorsed battle of the bands, but decided I could probably do with going home to sleep instead. And good thing I did, as the trains were utterly useless: normally, I can get home via a single one, but this journey commenced at a different station and took FIVE vehicles, so I would not have liked to have attempted it last thing at night, while incredibly sleep-deprived. And a pleasant day, spent sleeping, writing and conversing with Sleeve and Emma, followed.