'There's nothing more cringeworthy than seeing white girls try and dance to drum and bass'

Unfortunately, very, very true. And yet, something quite integral to my life.

Having spent the majority of last weekend 'trying' to dance to drum and bass (I thought I'd actually got it nailed until told by a much cooler black man that I was just another middle-class white girl trying to escape my rural, naive upbringing and only making it all the more evident)in a crowd of other trying middle class white kids I had an epiphany that no-one is ever very cool. Ever.

The student population of Newcastle believes it brings cool to the north through a love of unpronounceable DJ's and artists, toting around the latest day-glo headband and talking about drugs a lot. I'm not in denial of it, but merely a sad state of realisation that we're all just pretending.

Even as I gazed over at a public school alumnus, making gun shots in the air with her hands, saucer-pupils not really hidden by her wayfarers, and thought 'I bet her father would have a heart attack if he saw that', my own heart was palpitating at a similar rate out of fear that I probably looked the same.

Something happened last night which really put a level of perspective on the whole white-kid drum-and-bass thing. Sitting on an Ikea fold-down chair, brought out for visitors when the red chenille sofas were occupied, in an immaculately clean student living room, playing a drinking game with my g&t, and surrounded by people singing along to Pendulum, it became very apparent that the answer to the question, 'it's drum and bass! What you gunna do?' was very much enclosing me.

You can take the girl out of the 'Shire, but you can't take the 'Shire out of the girl.