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| A memory of happier times |
In later, teenage years, thanks to the parents in two long suffering alternating households, New Years Eve seemed to mean parties and drinking too much too young. I would always head to these places full of hope that the Fionas, Julias, Patricias or Victorias (why did all the names of the girls I liked always seem to end in “a” back then?) would finally go against all their better instincts and see something admirable behind my potato-faced countenance. That they never did is what probably led to the excessive drinking in the first place, and I would stagger home with the future Insurance Broker who remains my best and only real friend (one of the two people I trust absolutely) and watch the future Airline Pilot dance with lamp-posts.
Later on as I grew slightly taller and took – principally due to the lack of interest from all those Fionas, Julias, Patricias or Victorias I imagine – to dressing in black, I became the person who was shoved out of the door just before midnight in order to “let in the new year”. Standing outside in the freezing cold listening to everyone else counting down to midnight and bellowing their various “Happy New Years” to each other, and getting their snogs in with the Fionas, Julias, Patricias or Victorias has, I think, shaped my cynicism towards the night dramatically.
My college years did little to improve things. Couple the insane notion that you “must find a party to go to” with the slight sense of detachment and awkwardness that comes from living most of your life with a different group of people in a different part of the world and you’re in for a horrific time. I well remember the year when I was only convinced anyone had bothered to include me in their plans because I had a car and was willing to drive it. I recall that evening being so ghastly that I went outside to sit in the car rather than put up with the wretched party any longer, and yet waited hours out there alone in the dark because I’d promised the rest of them a lift home. I think I spent much of the time reading the newspaper my fish and chips had been wrapped in as there was nothing else to read in the car. Loyalty, you see? Loyalty and stupidity, all in one pathetic package.
Another year, no-one was prepared to organise a party, and so the nuclear option was taken of booking an overpriced restaurant in the city, which meant an okay time all-in-all, but being kicked out just before midnight as they were closing rather took the sheen off it, and the food was so slight on their “special menu” that we had to track down a fish and chip shop during the long walk back out of the city and home.
After college I was “in a relationship” for a while, and New Year’s Eve actually was our “sort of” Anniversary for a few years. You might have thought company and the opportunity to celebrate might have made the night more bearable but it never did, not really. Sadly she was the kind of girl who was quite happy to find someone else to do on New Year’s Eve (which I imagine was what she was doing when we first got together) leading to the inevitable recriminations and apologies in the New Year itself which I (unbelievably) put up with for five bloomin’ years, such, I think, was the fear of being alone again. The decade of actual loneliness that followed the inevitable break-up did make me more self-sufficient, I suppose, but always managed to tinge that evening with an air of desperation and melancholy, so I was always likely to find it a tough night.
The last time I went to a New Year party was Millennium night. If I remember rightly, I actually attended two parties that year having been invited to both and feeling unable to let either group of them down. The first I arrived at way, way too early as they were still preparing for the festivities ahead – I watched some more worldwide fireworks on the telly - and then left about 10.30 before it got truly and properly started. The second I arrived at about half an hour later as it was in full swing and I was so intimidated by the whole house full of strangers that I hung on for about half an hour before scarpering back to my empty hovel with the excuse that I planned to climb the hill at the back of the house next morning and watch the dawn rise on the new Millennium, which I actually did do. The number of people also there was a surprise, but they all ignored me and I trudged back down the hill to bed, only to be woken by some neighbours still finding the energy to Conga the morning after.
Thankfully, shortly after that I met the beloved and I now spend New Year’s Eve in her company and without all the madness and the desperate need to be seen to have “fun” that the rest of the world seems to require. Nowadays the beloved and I, both being non-fans of this night where organised expectations – and it’s the expectation followed by the inevitable disappointments that did for me - of “fun” are so much on everyone else’s agenda, are more likely to toddle off to bed before ten and be woken by the sound of fireworks from the pub. We’ll mutter a sleepy “Happy New Year” to each other and doze off again, hopefully having remembered to pull the plug on the phone.
It’s the way we like it.
So, if you are heading out tonight, or hosting a party, it only remains for me to hope you have a lovely time, but we won’t be joining you. You might think this makes us a pair of grumpy old so-and-sos, but it really is what works best for us. At least we are not alone for long in our sense of despair as the rest of the nation seems to join in being full of general misery and angst (as well as being mightily hung-over) as the New Year itself actually dawns (or in many cases dusks…).
Happy New Year to one and all.
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