In February, Rubber Cult returned to Shillibeers, its original north London home, after a bout of venue-hopping caused by Shillibeers’ temporary closure last spring.

While on the move, the strict dresscode club put down temporary roots at various City of London hostelries, such establishments being easier to book on Saturday nights because the financial district is much quieter than other parts of the capital at weekends.

The first of two RC nights I attended during its itinerant phase was also the first the rubber club had to organise after the shock news that Shillibeers had gone into receivership. It had to be put together at short notice under stressful conditions.

The new venue, not far from Tower Gate DLR station, looked great on its website, with its multi-level bars and numerous connecting staircases.

But once inside, one realised that it consisted almost entirely of narrow passageways and stairs, with not a decent open space anywhere for people to congregate en masse, and certainly nowhere obvious for performances.

I must therefore doff my metaphorical cap to those charged with providing the evening’s various distractions.

For example, Brighton-based artist Michelle Mildenhall (see Fetishistas Talent article, August 2012) had mounted an exhibition of her striking latex portraits above one of the staircases.

Below, in the small, starkly lit corner space designated as the night’s ‘stage’, Am Statik’s Amy Day appeared in her Luna Eve performer guise to deliver one of her now well-known syringe shows, pumping coloured fluid between transparent layers of her latex outfit.

Ectomorph designer Krystina Kitsis also somehow managed to put on a fashion show in what I would consider almost impossible conditions for such a venture.

She achieved this by having her models walk up and down the stairs, and to and fro along the passageways that intersected at the performance corner.

As someone trying to photograph this activity, I found it rather challenging that models sometimes seemed to be coming at me from three different directions at once.

Several times I snapped someone who turned out not to be in the show, but just a random person walking through the same space. Since everyone was wearing latex (and many were hooded), it was quite difficult to determine where the models finished and the punters began.

To add insult to injury, my camera and flash combo seemed intent on behaving badly, so I didn’t get that many usable shots for my trouble. All in all, despite everyone’s best efforts, it felt like it just wasn’t my night.

Clearly it had provided, for the regular rubberist types in the crowd, one very important facility: the continuity of a social meeting place

But it must have been evident to many of these folk that this place was no match for Shillibeers, and had not attracted the fetish celebs and mover’n’shaker types in the quantities that had turned out for the previous event (causing me to deliver an enthusiastic Fetishistas report).

It seemed obvious to me that to continue building its initial momentum, RC needed to get back to a setting that would attract both types — high profile latex fashionistas and more traditional rubberists.

I left rather early, hoping that circumstances would not force Rubber Cult to continue beyond its one night at this charmless place.

By the time I made it to another Rubber Cult, it was December 2013 and the club had re-appeared at City of London hostelry The Slug and Lettuce in St Mary Axe.

In many ways a far more suitable venue for an RC gathering than the last one I’d attended, it still turned out to have no proper performance space.

There was just a cleared area of floor with a background sheet suspended between two poles, illuminated by the same single video light that had constituted the event’s sole ‘stage lighting’ since first booting up at Shillibeers.

Any thoughts of mine that the evening would see a big turnout of fetish celebs had already been banished by the discovery that it was on the same date as Torture Garden’s Christmas party. Not the smartest piece of scheduling the world has ever known, you might think.

My main reason for leaving home on this chilly December evening was not wanting to miss the London debut of Amarantha LaBlanche

Nevertheless, there were a few well-known faces and a respectable (if that’s the right term) turnout of more anonymous rubberist types, many of whom would probably rather eat their own kidneys than go to a TG night anyway.

I confess that my main reason for leaving the warmth of my home on this chilly December evening was not wanting to miss the London debut (postponed from the last event) of Amarantha LaBlanche, who had endured a long coach journey from Amsterdam to make this appearance.