NYE

It’s New Year’s Eve.  A time for quiet reflection; for anticipation of change and growth; for getting utterly totalled and starting the year in a pool of quiet, hungover regret. The latter two are yet to come, it still being the morning.  Long gone are the days are when I could start celebrations before midday and remain standing beyond the Six O’Clock News.  Now, I have to postpone the first drink until well into the evening if I am to avoid being the King of Early Doors.

 Many years of Bacchic indulgence have taught me that nothing really interesting happens before midnight, when Cinderella and all the other debutantes have scuttled off back to their cold kitchens to sit amongst mice, or in front of their aga, drinking Mint Options and listening to back end of Radio 4 before bed. During my youth, I lived by this maxim: the later the night, the fuller the life.  I didn’t achieve a great deal during this period of my life, coincidentally. Apart from becoming a skilled martini mixer. And a champion smoker of fags.

The importance of New Year’s Eve has rollercoastered over the years.  That is, there have been slow ones, fast ones, headlong plunges into murky abysses, loud screaming ones, quiet anticipatory ones which never quite live up to expectations, and horribly expensive ones which are over before you really know what’s going on, and which leave you with a blur of colours for memories, and little else. I think they were the best. But I’m not quite sure.

 I remember once leaving a pub at a quarter to midnight, spending midnight itself on the tube with a squadron of party comrades, and drinking and smoking on same tube.  What strikes me most is that no-one was bothered we were smoking on the tube.  There was a general air of insouciance – it’s New Year’s Eve, let shit happen.  I suspect if I were to light up on the tube now, I’d be locked up, and I wouldn’t even deign to complain. Those were more innocent times, the likes of which we shall never see again.  

I suspect my celebrations will involve a few home tipples, a trip to a late night pub, and a moment when I decide shots will be a great idea, followed closely by a cab home. Fairly tame, but very age-appropriate.

Whatever it is you plan to do –whether you’re already on the Jaegerbombs and chemical bumps, or you plan a nice evening in with a bottle of port, the remnants of a Christmas cheeseboard and Classic FM, or something between the spectrum of nihilistic hedonism and cosy tweeness, enjoy.  But remember, the numbers don’t matter.  Two Thousand and Twelve and Two Eleven are artificial constructs. Tomorrow will be a variant on today, there will be no magical transformation at midnight as the stars realign and a new era crashes in.  We mark time for many reasons, reflection, anticipation, so we know when to turn on the TV to watch whatever shite is going to kill a bit more time. But that's all they are. An imposition on the chaos of  existence so we can down the days between weekends.

For what is life, other than killing time between birth and death? The dates remind us – we’re not here forever, but we are here now. This is your life. Get out there and live it.  Even if tomorrow you regret it. It’s better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t.