If you didn't already know, its all about intergenerational raving. You better 'arks' [sic] somebody! With this in mind Don't Panic recruited a couple of old dads (granddads in fact) codenamed 'Git and Grump' to find out what the kids are into these days. For their first assignment we hooked them up with some guest list at polysexual Shoreditch night Ghost School for a Halloween special with a live set from Ipso Facto.

Women’s brains are smaller than men’s; they work just as well – only a bit differently, which may be all stereotyping anyway. If that’s the best that science can offer for a Friday evening’s thought provokal, no wonder Baroness Susan Greenfield was twiddling her blond locks in the front row of her very own lecture theatre at Piccadilly’s Royal Institution (founded 1799).

Git and Grump thought they were hitting high society by putting on dinner jackets for the sake of science, only to be fed trite donnishness and obliged to watch a bored middle-aged super-scientist twitch in a spangly mini-dress.

So, if that’s it we’d better go to Shoreditch. That’s where gentlemen from Piccadilly in evening dress used to go for low entertainment. A century later and not much has changed.

Outside The Ghost School at The Macbeth a bouncer (who looked as if he would bounce) said: “You must be the people from Don’t Panic”. He must have been told that the granddads were coming. No chance of blending in. Do we really look as old as that?

Bad dads arrive at the venue

He was not managing a small queue that included a gorgeous New Greenfield in a Halloween gothic girdle. It was 1900 again as she grabbed the two passing gents in top hats and masks and embraced them for an incriminating photograph.

The RIP list included two ghosts long past school age. No smoke (brilliant) but in the haze lots of under-30 whitened Londoners who had put a lot of effort into looking unattractive.

Ipso Facto, the night’s band, played aluminium rock – heavy metal by Romanoff princesses who could have sounded like Jefferson Airplane if they were old enough.

Ipso Facto in action

They should add White Rabbit to their repertoire. They almost made it right through with deadly serious, pancake faces of innocence. But at the last minute, they cracked smiles at Git and Grump (or so it seemed) and that spoiled it all. All four had May Quant mop-tops (“who’s MQ?” said the punters). Is Hoxton really in a timewarp?

Rosalie Cunningham of Ipso Facto with bad dads

After the set, the music was Bill Hailey and Johnny Cash. We were welcomed by a man in bandages – Tutankhamen as discharged from A&E. We were jostled by 21st century Twiggies and introduced to several people all called Polly Sexual – not sure who or what, but obviously important.

Tutankhamen and friend (picture courtesy of www.weknowwhatyoudidlastnight.com)

Not as important as the keyboardist from Dead Kids, who said: “Granddads at gigs? That is soooo crazy.” Perhaps he imagines that granddads babysit dead kids?

But one granddad was much too busy being mauled by a lit-up Alice who through her looking glass had seen that he owns six houses and a helicopter. It’s hell out there in yoof-land. We just wish we lived closer.

Bad dads and friend (picture courtesy of www.weknowwhatyoudidlastnight.com)

Ghost School takes place on the last Friday of the month at The Macbeth in Shoreditch.