So time came when my good friend matt and my then girlfriend Emma decided we'd head down there one Friday night.

For some odd reason we thought the venue was in Swindon so drove there from reading and asked some likely looking characters when we got there! a little surprised to find it was actually in Chippenham, but not put off we carried out the rest of the journey and parked in the car park round the corner from the venue.

first impressions were good. the venue looked like an old cinema/theatre from the outside and people were dancing about all over the car park and road outside. good good.

We got ourselves in in fairly short order and set out to explore a little.

The dancefloor was by no means huge, but it was heaving already. The djs were setup in front of the stage in a kind of orchestra pit. the crowd had full access to the stairs which was just awesome. add to the this the large balcony area that you walked under to get in, it was just amazing!

For some reason we'd not brought anything of a tablet nature along with us. I had, however, a sheet of Bart Simpson's concealed about my person for trade purposes. first job after exploring then was to find someone offering up.

Matt and I decided to head up to the balcony area and see if there were any likely lookers. matt strolls straight up to the first guy he sees and pops the question. adding we had acid to trade if interested. well, mistake, the guy turned out to be venue security and we were both bear hugged and hauled off to the main office.  Argh!

We were then split up and searched fairly vigorously. thankfully at a vital moment the guy searching matt found some king size rizla in his wallet and the fella searching me dropped his attention on me long enough for me to transfer my blotters from my pocket, which was next to be searched, to my, already searched, waistband! bargain. with nothing but the rizla they let us go thinking we were on the blag about the acid. He he

No sooner had we come back out to the main club than my girlfriend pops over to say she's found a fella selling some beans called sledgehammers. interesting. and he's willing to trade. ace!

My girlfriend didn't take pills, for a reason as then unspecified, but gladly took a blotter and the 3 of us got down to some getting settled before things started to get interesting.

The sound system at Goldiggers was classy. really loud and with loads of b-line. i have no recollection of who was playing that night. Goldiggers was one of those nights though, before the days of people going to see a specific dj.  All the djs played good music and that's all anyone cared about. simple.

Anyhoo, things started to hot up with the sledgehammers after about an hour and i think the best phrase to use would be "comin' on strong"! I was flying. proper off my face and loving it

I recall wandering around the venue with the biggest grin on my face going. proper shit eating grin as we say round my way. to add to the mix matt and I decided to add some of the acid too so in short order we were battered!

Sadly our enjoyment was interrupted after a couple of hours of blissful dancing on the dance platforms above the fire exits. again by venue security!

It seemed my girlfriend was in a bad way. Uh oh! trouble.

She was fading in and out of coherence and shaking like crazy. so for second time that night we went to the security office for a grilling. matt was lucky enough to escape this time...the git. they wanted to know everything : what had she taken? (nothing, honestly. we're straight!), where we were from? what our names were - see, everyone was having the same conversation in the early 90s, even security!

To stop myself flipping out and blowing the whole deal by being obviously fucked, I decided to get my juggling balls out to give me something to focus on whilst my girlfriend had a cup of sweet tea and calmed down a bit! as a bonus my juggling skills convinced the security team that i was in fact straight (!) and they decided not to phone the police and ambulance, but asked us to leave anyway just in case.

Well, I was still tripping and buzzing hard, so i managed to find matt on the dancefloor, which was a mare in itself trying not to dance to all the amazing sounds!

Eventually we met up with emma outside and went to chill out in the car before heading to Membury for the post party meetup. i have very vivid memories of the carpet in Membury service area. it was a horrid orange and brown affair and the pattern was doing some pretty mad things!!

After some probing into my girlfriend's health it turned out that the reason she didn't take pills was that she was epileptic! she hadn't wanted to tell me as she was embarrassed about it. !!! madness. dont want to take a pill but happy to take acid in a venue full of flashing lights and loud music!

It was an amazing night all round and I returned to Goldiggers on numerous occasions with mates after that.... I have at least one other 'diggers related story that I'll post when I get 10 mins to type it up.

One particular memory of 'diggers I have is of the wall at the back of the stage. how much did that wall sweat!!

Easy, Sy (for Fantazia)