Sorry Dad, wrong number. Mystery Jets.

Are the Mystery Jets really breaking barriers employing a Dad on guitar? Not really. They don’t take him out on tour. That would be more Victorian Freak Show than NME Shockwaves.

The band’s Will Rees tells it like it is: “He’s still a band member, but he stays at home. He just doesn’t play live with us any more ‘cause I think he’s like 56 or something.  Not  having him on tour has allowed us to do what young bands do – get on the razz. We always have fun on the road, but we’ve just been having a little bit more fun.”

Fair enough. And, let’s face it, he was also, like, almost as old as Tom Watson, that man who, against all the odds, made it to 59 and is still able to hit golf balls more or less in a straight line.

And that’s where old people should stay, isn’t it? At home, or on the golf course.

I was at the bar in Korova the other night and, through the mirror, I caught sight of a punter, who was at least 40, trapped in the ‘between applications’ stage of his Just For Men regime, mouthing the words to MGMT’s ‘Kids’, and bouncing self-consciously in time to the music, as if it was his song. Which, patently, it could never be. Every fibre of his Jack Jones-clad body was screaming ‘look at me, kids, I’m still a fucking hipster’. The tragedy, of course, is that he wasn’t. The bigger tragedy was that it was me.

Pour me a drink, and I'll tell you some lies.

It was one of those moments. I’d crossed the line. As I stared, the Age Police were wrapping ‘Crime Scene, Do Not Enter’ tape outside, lest anyone else over 35 made the fatal decision to follow my route to certain folly.

Yes, I know, it doesn’t matter. Age is just a number. But then, so is 0800 Samaritans. And 01 811 8055. That’s the number I used to call Noel every Saturday morning on Swap Shop. A combination, I’m sure, lost on every other person squeezed along the bar with me.

See, it’s not about age. It’s about cultural anchor points. The less you share, the more your social life is about compromise. Which is why, if I ever buy Heat mag, it’s more as ‘Revision Aid’ than ‘morally dubious trash mag’. I’ll scan it, write the names down, do a quick Google and, suddenly, I get why Mishca Barton’s been looking so peaky. And, for good measure, I learn who Mischa Barton actually is.

I don’t think I’m doing anything brave, incidentally. I’m just out, having a drink, with friends, on a Saturday night. But I’m getting more and more conscious that I could also look like someone’s dad, turned up early, to taxi his kids home in the Renault Megane. And no matter how you try to rationalise it, and comfort yourself that you really, really, do like Friendly Fires, it’s all a bit of a hollow victory when everyone else has moved on to The Wavves.

Outside of the open-air septic tank of Concert Square, Liverpool’s not a bad place for over-age drinkers. I’ve never been turned away, or asked to produce two forms of ID proving I’m under 25, but, increasingly, I’m starting to feel like I’m just abusing the hospitality of the licensees.

And then I think to myself, my God, how did I get here?

As I hurtled through my late 20s and 30s, I spent most weekends at Mello Mello, Modo, The Kiosk and Cream. Now I’ve woken up, ten years later, and most of my contemporaries have fallen away (I call them contemporaries to make them sound like some latter day Bloomsbury Set. In reality, they’re mostly drama teachers in Secondary Moderns scattered throughout Cheshire). So I’ve had to groom an increasingly mismatched succession of new ‘weekend mates’.

Best not parking on these double yellows.

The only people over 35 I spotted out this weekend were the awkward stragglers of Hen Parties, asphyxiating in lycra t-shirts emblazoned with ‘Lynda’s Luvin’ It Tour, 2009′ printed in Bury Market, clutching aqualungs of cider. For them, going out was a duty, it was an obligation. It was a nostalgia trip. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like fun.

For me, it’s still just about enjoyable – but the clock is ticking.

In other European countries, bar culture seems far more homogenized, more colourful, more fun. And I wish all those drop-outs from the class of ’84 would get up from their sofa and start reclaiming their place at the bar before we relinquish control of our nighttime city to the WKD-stained hands of the kids, the stags, the hens and the hormones.

…Control yourself. Take only what you need from it…