How to Look After Your Mates on a Big Day Out

Three things, agreed before you go in: where you meet if you get split up, roughly when everybody is leaving, and how each person is getting home. Do that on the way into town and the rest is easy, because looking after your mates is a planning job rather than a rescue job. The groups that have a bad end to a good day are the ones with no plan to fall back on.

None of this needs to be heavy. Two minutes on the Metro in, one pinned message in the chat, and the rest of the day at Dreamworx is yours to enjoy.

Sort the Basics on the Way In

Pin these four things in the group chat before anybody has a drink.

• The meeting point outside, somewhere obvious and slightly away from the main door.
• Roughly what time everyone is leaving.
• Who is going home with whom, and how.
• One person's number that everybody has saved.

The last one matters more than it sounds. In a group of eight there is usually somebody who does not have two of the others in their phone.

What It Costs

Looking after each other costs almost nothing, but the bits that make it work are worth putting money aside for.

• A shared kitty. Everybody in the same at the start. It stops one person being short and quietly not drinking.
• A taxi fund. Twenty pounds each, set aside and not touched, so getting somebody home is never a discussion about money.
• Cash in your pocket. Phones die. A card is not a plan on its own.
• Food on the way home. Cheap, and it does more for the end of a day than another round would have.

Sort the money at the start, while everyone is thinking clearly, and it never becomes a conversation later.

Keep a Loose Headcount

You are not a chaperone. You are just counting occasionally. Every so often, look round and see that everybody is accounted for, especially after a bar run or a trip outside.

Pair people up rather than trying to hold eight in your head. Everybody has one person they arrived with and will leave with, and you only ever have to check four things instead of eight.

If someone drops off the radar, check the obvious places first: outside, the toilets, the smoking area, the front of the floor. Nine times out of ten it is the front of the floor.

Keep an eye on the quiet one as well. Every group has somebody who is happy enough but not really in it, and ten minutes of your attention at the right moment usually turns their whole afternoon round. Go and get them a drink and take them onto the floor.

When Someone Has Had Enough

It is usually obvious a while before it is a problem, and the earlier you act the easier it is. Somebody who has gone quiet, or gone very loud, or is sitting down on their own, is telling you something.

Take them somewhere cooler and quieter. Outside for five minutes, or a seat away from the speakers. Get some water and some food into them if they will have it. Sit with them rather than checking in and going back to the floor.

Then be straightforward about it. "Right, we're getting you home" is a kindness and everybody in the group knows it. Go with them. Nobody puts a mate in a taxi on their own and hopes.

Phones and Batteries

Six hours in a warm room with a phone hunting for signal will flatten a battery that started at eighty per cent. Charge to full before you leave and carry a small power bank between you.

Turn location sharing on with two or three people for the day. It solves the "where are you" problem entirely and you can switch it off tomorrow.

And keep the volume up. A phone on silent in a coat pocket in the cloakroom is the same as not having one.

Getting Everybody Home

The rule is simple and it is the only one worth being firm about: nobody leaves on their own without telling somebody.

Do a headcount when the music stops. Watch people into cars. Text the group when you get in, even if it is one word, because it means everybody else can stop wondering and go to sleep.

Do that and you get the version of the day everybody remembers properly. The floor, the last flashback, which is what we call a proper oldskool tune, and eight people who all got home fine and are already talking about the next one.