Robson McCallister and his friends went for a night out at Tree in Old Town as nightclubs welcome back revellers for the first time since March 2020...

WALKING into a nightclub for the first time since the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, there seemed to be a sense of normality at Tree.

It was my first time at the nightspot and seeing pictures on social media of the queue to get in the week before, I was determined to make sure I nagged my friends relentlessly until we were in the line.

Luckily they were slightly tipsy so it worked.

We got there at around 9.45pm and didn’t have to wait long before we were on our way to the haven of loud music, strobe lights and what in my view were questionably priced drinks. 

Tree is made up of three different music rooms from what I can remember.

The first thing that I noticed was that the dress code allowed trainers in. This was fine for me, but given that I forced a friend into wearing uncomfortable brogues to guarantee our entry, it was my turn to be nagged. 

The two most popular rooms were the pop room and the upstairs RnB room and it was interesting to hear the song selection choice. Most were pre-pandemic hits with Walk The Moon’s Shut Up and Dance and AJ Tracey’s Butterflies memorable crowd-pleasers in the respective rooms, at least they were memorable to this fan. 

I was surprised not to hear much of the music that was released during the pandemic, but given a lot of people were experiencing nightclubs for the first time in a while, maybe it was a wise move to play songs that people would remember.

The main room was a mixture of electronic dance music and it was undeniably a mixed bag, not helped by soundcloud mashups of popular songs. Moving forward, the mashups will hopefully remain in the pre-pandemic era of society.

As the only non-smoker in the group, the smoking area serves a purpose as more of a place to chat. It was nice to see people enjoying themselves in this type of intimate setting and there seemed to be no nerves from people about returning to nightclubs.

It was a moment where you could see signs we are returning to normality as a society. 

And if we’re going to return to normality in a nightclub setting, perhaps it’s best fitting that my friend’s first time back in one led to him over-indulging and getting chucked out at 1.30am. It’s probably worth mentioning that this is a rough estimate because I was in there having a great time.

I asked him the following day on his thoughts of what he went through and he summarised it quite succinctly with: “I didn’t experience Tree, but Tree experienced me.”

The true words of someone with a hangover.