With ‘nu-rave’ and ‘electro’ having firmly claimed the country’s club scene, raving attire and accessories have had to adapt and now Friday and Saturday nights in Bristol are permanently awash with luminous colours, garish glitter, gleaming glowsticks, metallic leggings and ridiculous sunglasses! But surely such manufactured attire, with all their plastics and synthetic materials, cannot be good for the planet! Have these ravesters forgotten all about their environmental responsibility?

It was only the other day that I discovered an answer to this drastic problem: Whilst out ‘Saving The Rave’, I was doing my best to give these nu-ravers a run for their money but after an overeager application of eyelid glitter, I had to rush to the toilet to wash it off and stop myself going blind. Exhausted, I was on the verge of calling a taxi. I rummaged around in my bag but pulled out not my mobile phone, but a rather large, aggressive looking carrot! I had put this in my bag as some sort of healthy, mid-day snack and as I looked at my sorry reflection in the mirror, with sunglasses resembling Harry Potter, glitter grubbily dribbling down my forehead, metallic long johns sagging treacherously around my bottom and a large, orange carrot clenched in my fist, ideas started rolling!

Revered for their eyesight improving and glow in the dark properties, what better use of this roastable wonder than an all natural glowstick? In a state of victory, I triumphantly held this trophy high and bellowed through the girl’s toilet; “Check the size of my carrot!” I transferred myself and my new glowstick onto the dancefloor and after some initial discerning looks, the nu-ravers couldn’t take their inquisitive little eyes off the thing!

However ridiculous it may or may not have looked, that carrot raved the night away until the early hours harder than any luminous bit of polyester or plastic; it exchanged many hands, prodded many behinds and resisted several hungry ravers until it finally returned to me black, dishevelled and decapitated.

We all knew it wouldn’t last forever, every glowstick’s life comes to an end but here lies the differing objective: Your average-joe glowstick will continue to exist forever while the discarding of a mere carrot results in decomposition and the recycling of the Earth’s minerals. Organic glowsticks are the way to win the hearts of vegetarians and ravers alike, united in revolutionising the UK club scene…maybe not, but at least on the walk home you can save yourself the cost of a kebab and take a mighty bite.

Kitty Moorsom
Illustrations: Hazel McCoubrey