*Disclaimer – all the stories that follow are based on my
flawed and subjective memory. So please bear that in my mind if you were
present for any of those moments and they don’t ring 100% accurate to your
recollection. I can’t help that, none of us can.
** Another disclaimer – all of these stories, in some manner
or another, involve drinking. But given that the context of them is New Year’s,
this shouldn’t be a concern.
The Beginning
When it comes to New Year’s Eve, I just can’t be arsed. Not
this New Year’s specifically, I mean all of them. No matter where I am, what
I’m doing or who I’m with. I realise that this sounds rather bleak, but bear
with me. It’s the expectation that gets me down. There’s all this build up to…
nothing. I mean, nothing. Best case scenario is that you’ve had enough fun that
you’ve got messed up in some manner, and let’s face it, there are consequences
to doing that that nobody enjoys.
The
first time I really became aware of my hate-hate relationship with the last day
of the year and the first day of the next was the Millennium. I was 15 at the
turn of the century, and I remember being sat around the living room, all
dressed up with a white feather boa, waiting for midnight to hit, along with
the much-anticipated apocalypse. The Millennium Bug was all anyone could talk
about. Because when they were designing computers only a few decades before,
working out how they might calculate dates past the current century was deemed
to be ‘some future fucker’s problem’ and everyone panicked as the landmark date
approached. The threat seemed to be that all computers would believe it to be
1900 instead of 2000, and there would be dramatic consequences; planes could
fall from the sky, caught in a paradox because suddenly, according to their
on-board computers, it was 1900 and they technically hadn’t been invented yet.
Of course, the fear of this bug, and the threat of its consequences, meant that
everybody worked very hard to ensure that it was fixed. This didn’t stop Tomorrow’s World taking over the
television as they had Peter Snow stand in front of a lit up-map of the world,
ready to report the disasters as they occurred. Of course, nothing actually
happened, and he just stood in front of this map, occasionally gesturing when
somebody threw him the odd bone along the lines of ‘a toaster in Devon stopped
working, although this was later found to be a blown fuse.’ I think the worst
that happened was a shipment of corned beef was mis-labelled and they had to
dispose of it. I don’t even know whether that’s true.
I have
odds and ends of New Year’s memories before this, but this one was the first one
to really stand out, and with it the lingering sense of boredom at nothing
happening despite a hyperbolic build up. When thinking about my ambivalence
toward this ancient ritual, a few particular memories come to mind, that I will
share with you now to further contextualise my negative nelly outlook on the
topic.
The Surgery
When I was a kid growing up in the Shire (Staffordshire, I
mean. And yes, unless you’re from there, you’ve probably never heard of it) the
only pub/ club that fit the purposes of my odd yet hilarious (or so we reckoned)
little clique was a place called The Surgery. The Surgery got its name from its
association to the man known as Britain’s first serial killer – William Palmer,
The Rugeley Poisoner. He was a doctor back in mid-1800’s who got into money
trouble and proceeded to set about killing various friends and family members
in an attempt to claim their gambling wins and life insurance. He was thought
to have killed upwards of 13 people and was hanged at Stafford prison.
This
building was, allegedly, the location of his medical practice. It was an odd
place, with a twisty staircase, yellow walls, and a painting of Dr Palmer
himself on the walls of the first-floor hallway. It was purported to be quite
haunted, and there were rumoured to be hidden tunnels to Stafford Castle
beneath the building. Because, apparently, the legend of a serial killer was
not enough mystique in and of itself. We’d been going there for longer than
we’d been old enough to drink. But the whole idea of underage drinking and
prevention thereof was somewhat less enforced back in those days. The most
effective way I’d found to get past Bouncers during this period was to wrap
myself around a young man who was at least old enough to have an ID, fake or
otherwise, if not yet old enough to grow a beard.
The
place certainly felt haunted at points, but I was never sure whether this was
due to anything paranormal or the large amounts of absinthe we tended to
consume. I had many a good night in there, on one occasion leaving with my
corset on backward, which is usually an indication of a fun time, if not an altogether
a classy look.
The New
Year’s I remember spending in here was the end of 2003, nearly a full year on
from the devastating breakup from my first love (in retrospect, he was an
asshat, but 17 going on 18 year olds aren’t really renowned for their great
skills of perception or decision making). But he was at least interesting, and
we had some interesting times together. It was a chance for our gang to catch
up, being that we were home for the holidays from our respective Unis. Despite
many nights in The Surgery being awesome, this one was cursed by the inevitable
let down that is New Year’s.
We
danced the night away, to Green Day and Korn and whoever else they played in
that murky little home for alternative teens. Dancing always took place in the
smoky upstairs room. It was mostly impossible to see in there, but I always had
a feeling that this was for the best. As midnight crept up on us, we did the
countdown and celebrated accordingly, only to be told moments later that the
clock they were looking at was fast, and they we were pretty sure it was still only
ten to midnight. So we did the countdown again. This was in the days before
everyone was tied to their phones (although, yes, we did have them, but we had
to set the time by hand, rather than being able to rely on our Apple Overlords)
We celebrated New Years at least twice, possibly three times.
As the
night got later our feet started to ache under the strain of too-high heels, so
we kicked them off and continued to dance away… until my best friend’s dad
arrived to take us home (or me to their home, because they were based in town
rather than out in The Village like me) We then did that vague performance of
pretending that we weren’t at all drunk, which probably resulted in us seeming
more drunk than we actually were. Our smiles a bit too forced, our voices a bit
too loud, our breath stinking of aniseed.
When we
arrived, my bessie’s mum made foot baths for each of us, because our feet were
more than a bit ruined. I remember sitting there, soaking away, occasionally
pulling out a small sliver of broken glass from the soles of my feet, sipping
tea, thinking, yeah, this is New Year’s – everything just a little bit worse
somehow than a normal night out. Who celebrates New Year’s more than once in
the same half hour period?
Southern Lands
I once had a boyfriend from the South. I don’t mean the
Londoner, I mean before that, and I mean really
South; those distant fairy lands from which vowel sounds I cannot produce hail.
His family were quite wealthy (his father being a self-made businessman) and at
the end of our first year together, we decided that I would join them for New Year’s.
Their house was epic, unlike anything I’d really seen before, rooms for days,
even a bar, and everything just dripped of affluence, but in that casual,
unappreciated way. This was a stark departure from my experience of home and
family, and it all served to create for me an unsettling mixture of excitement,
intimidation, and a feeling of just not-quite-being good enough. Although, in
retrospect, it wasn’t the place or the money that made me feel less than, it
was the relationship and the way his family responded to me. His father was a
smart man but a bully, too. He bullied his son, mostly, but his two daughters
were the apple of his eye and could do no wrong, as a result, they, or the
eldest one, at least, followed suit in the family bullying tradition. His
mother, on the other hand, was an incredibly kind woman, and the sweetness I
saw in my boyfriend definitely came from her, but the power of his father’s
rebukes and opinions were always a sticking point.
His
father bullied me, with comments about my weight (I was going through a tubby
phase, my weight destined to swing up and down presumably for the rest of my
life depending on external factors, general consumption and age) and my
commonness, and these would rankle under his son’s skin and he’d lash out at me
with his own regurgitated comments and criticisms. This made me feel bad about
myself and was certainly responsible for a crack that would become one of the
reasons we fell apart. But his dad also triggered another response in me, a kind
of rebellious, ‘c’mon son, you think you’re better than me, then bring it’.
This came out in weird ways, like getting excessively competitive at chess, or,
on one occasion, when this man condescendingly insisted that my belief that I
could tell single malt whisky from blended was nonsense, I demanded to take a
blind taste test to prove otherwise (which I absolutely won every time. And had
the delightful side effect of allowing me to work my way through a number of
whiskies I certainly couldn’t afford to try otherwise). I have lots of stories
from the times I spent down Saarf with them, during the 18 or so months we were
together, but for the sake of not being too much of a dick talking about people
who are still, I’m sure, around, albeit anonymous in this retelling, I’ll
restrain myself from elaborating further.
Anyway,
the memory of that New Year’s epitomises everything that felt off about the
whole situation. I felt out of place. We sat in the giant living room, me and
him on one leather sofa, his parents somewhere off in the far distance on
another leather sofa, sipping fizzy wine (not actually champagne, if I recall
correctly. Maybe the alcohol served was calculated in line with the calibre of
guest, and I’m pretty sure that the sensitive middle child and his dumpy,
common girlfriend didn’t qualify as top fizz material) while watching Jools
Holland play in the New Year. His dad also periodically blasted out Tina Turner
on his new Bose speakers (‘do you hear the sound quality? Do you hear it?! Hang
on, I’ll play that bass-y intro to that one song again for the thirtieth time’…
okay, I may have paraphrased slightly). Even then, part of me knew this was all
terribly unsustainable, despite that relationship limping along for another eleven
months after that moment. I silently raised a glass to another awkward,
unfulfilling start to a new year.
Home sweet not so
much
Okay, so, the New Year’s after that separation was another
weird one. We’d remained living together but I’d finally made the call to move
out and back into student halls the following January. I should’ve made this
call a lot sooner, but I’d somehow convinced myself that still living in my
ex’s house was better than living with strangers. I think on some level I was
seeking to avoid what I felt was my failure, as opposed to the natural
consequence of a relationship between two people who just fundamentally
misunderstood each other on every level. I think the final straw was waking up
in the middle of the night to the fire alarm blaring and coming downstairs to
find my ex drunkenly cooking, sorry, burning bacon in chilli oil, which created
a caustic smoke, and the reveal that he’d consumed most of my bottle of
Glenmorangie Portwood finish during his bender. An inexcusable act that angers
me to this day, the dude was happy enough drinking VK Oranges so there was no
way that wasn’t an intentional act of spite.
I went
home for Christmas and tried to pretend that I wasn’t as utterly lost as I was.
We went to three New Year’s parties that year. The first one was hosted by my
dad’s cousins, which was nice but mildly awkward because we saw so little of
that side of the family that my second cousins appeared to me like strangers
despite the vague sense of familiarity. On the way to that first one, we called
in at our next-door neighbours, who were having their own party. They had a
karaoke machine which I steadfastly ignored at this stage, with a scoffing sigh
of ‘I don’t DO karaoke’ (read: I’m terrified of singing in public), but these
words would come back to haunt me soon enough.
We saw
in the actual New Year’s at one of childhood friend’s houses. Her parents were
separating at the time, in a very respectful and sensitive manner from what I
recall, and they decided to host one last hootenanny to say goodbye to the
gorgeous old farm house they had shared. I was in awe of that house, it was so
beautiful, and to this day part of me wants to end up in living in a home as
charming as that. My friend’s older brother and his band played in the New Year
with Fell in Love with a Girl by The
White Stripes, and I smiled awkwardly as my brain recalled that time when I was
11ish, maybe 12, when the poor lad had accidentally walked in on me changing
and I was mortified at the thought of flashing a boy at a point when I was
having all sorts of anxiety over my changing body. He laughed it off as though
it was the most innocent thing in the world. Which it absolutely was, the dude
was only treated to an eyeful of puppy-fat belly and most definitely nothing
that could be considered boobs. I was a kid to him, and standing there at that
party, at 20, I realised that on some level I was still that embarrassed 11 year
old, despite having boobs.
On our
way home from that party, we called back into the next-door neighbour’s
shindig, where many more hours of drinking and too many microphones had led to
that party becoming far more lit than when we’d left. My resounding memory of it was hanging out in the kitchen, singing The Police greatest hits
into the mic and slapping anyone who tried to take it away (‘woooo-oooo, I’m AN
alIEN, I’m a… FUCK off! I’m a Legal alIEN, I’m an Englishman in New YOOOORK…)
And then I came across a bottle with Greek letters and a picture of the
Mediterranean Sea on it.
Needless
to say, my dad had to carry me home. At least it was only the distance of a
grassy bank and the top of the drive. I remember waking my sister up by holding
the side of her bunkbed (we didn’t share a room, she had one of those
bunk-beds-but-not with a space underneath for ‘activities’) and swinging back
and forth off it, declaring that I had important secrets to tell her. Again,
I’ll just point out here that I was 20. Inevitably, at some point I
raised both my arms in the air at the same time but neglected to stop swinging
back and forth and smashed into the far wall before I could reveal my, no doubt,
world-changing secrets.
The
following day was a mirage of pain. I didn’t get out of bed for the entire
time, except to pee or throw up. My mum later told me she found a trail of Quality
Streets that led from the front door, up the stairs, and stopped abruptly at my
bedroom door. All orangey ones, which assured me that I have a keen sense of
awareness even when blackout drunk. Ouzo is a hell of a drink. I later learned
that, because of the high alcohol content, it lines your stomach walls and
takes time to leave your system. Which explained why even drinking water that
day occasionally gave me the whirling pits (as my mother called them) all over again.
That
night, I ate mum’s special New Year’s roast dinner in bed, propped up, watching
Rolf Harris paint an awkward grinning picture of the Queen. Rolf would enjoy a
few years of continued status as a beloved TV veteran until he fell from grace
when it was revealed that he was a prolific paedophile, along with a large proportion
of BCC light entertainers from our childhood. This isn’t relevant to that day,
just a bizarre addendum that only serves to enhance the gloom and absurdness of
that particular memory in retrospect.
The many, many good
ones in spite of
There were many years during my 20’s where I experienced
what I suspect may turn out to be the closest I’ll ever have to a fun New Year’s.
These were the ones spent with my friends and then-partner in Huddersfield. But
even though these gatherings would follow the same format of our usual ones:
chaotic, drunkardly and noisy, they were always somehow slightly less fun than
all the other birthdays, Halloweens, BBQs and just generally ‘let’s get messy
cos we can’ parties. Parties that were given excuses to exist from the
flimsiest of observations ‘it’s a hat wearing party! Because, y’know, about two
thirds of us… are wearing hats?’ I don’t know why this was, all of the right
elements were there, but again, I think it always boils down to expectation and
adrenaline. We set ourselves up for a climax that never manages to pay off,
because everything is the same as it always was, even if the same is pretty darn
nice.
Maybe
it’s because my recollection is that if there were any minor conflicts or
dramas to play out, they would somehow always erupt on this special date.
Potentially it’s the proximity of this day to Christmas that drives part of the
fall out; days spent on the up-down of family interaction can take its toll on
even the most stoic of us. Or maybe it’s because it goes on for ages, you’re
too excited not to start drinking way too early, but you need to keep your
enthusiasm up until the magic moment of midnight – at which point you
inevitably double-down on the excess. Then you belt out the only two lines of Auld
Lang Syne anyone knows, and you ask your host if you could maybe put on Jools
Holland because you grew up watching it and you secretly love it, but they
point out that it’s a party and that’s an insanely bad thing to do - to drop
the energy in the room like that, and you reluctantly agree and pretend you weren’t even
that bothered in the first place. Or maybe that’s just me.
There
were also years when my gorgeous Polish friend had some of her family and
friends present, and they would shout at us to drink more and more and more
shots (I asked my friend what they were saying in Polish once and she said it
was basically ‘you drink with us, or fuck you!’ Whether or not this was
true, I didn’t dare argue) until I’d find myself mumbling quietly to a potted
plant that I believed to be my sister that not being brought up in a post-Soviet
allied country means I haven’t developed a constitutional tolerance to vodka. Or
words to that effect.
My
mate, S, and I play this game where you have to be the first one to say: ‘pinch
punch first of the month’. I’ll explain the rules, okay, the first one to say
it - wins. Did you follow that? We didn’t always do this, S used to do this
with our other good friend, also an S, who died from cancer in 2008. She was
only 32. The remaining S and I kept doing this because it was a way to stay
connected to her and to each other. We do it to this day, although new rules
have been added to compensate for the fact that I currently live anywhere
between 11 to 13 hours in the future, depending on the time of year. At New Year’s,
I would pretty much always forget. Despite it being the biggest first days of
any month. S remembered, usually, just at the moment when everyone was hugging
and kissing each other, I’d give him a massive hug and he’d whisper: ‘Pinch
punch first of the month – you Bitch!’ and I’d push him away with ‘oh, you
fucking arsehole…!’ But sometimes it would be well into the following day,
longer than 12 hours later, if we were still at the after party or a re-gathering
to watch films and eat KFC, before he’d jab me in the arm and mutter ‘oh, shit,
yeah, pinch punch… you Bitch.’
These New
Years were the best so far, but no matter what, they were always tainted by my
ongoing general dissatisfaction with the whole experience.
The Dry Party
When my ex and I landed in New Zealand after nine crazy
months of living and working in Vietnam, it was like hitting the floor after a free
fall parachute dive. I’ve never done this, but it felt like how I would imagine
that to feel, metaphorically speaking. We’d been moving at such a pace, to
suddenly enter a land where there was no haste at all, for anything, was joyful
yet disorienting and jarring. I remember the first night, lying there in my
partner’s arms, wide awake, staring at the blinds and marvelling at the silence
ringing in my ears. How was it possible for any place to be so silent?
We arrived
in Christchurch where we had rented a villa, and stayed there for a full month
over Christmas and New Year. And that New Year’s was another one for the
abstract books. Knowing nobody, we figured we’d check out whatever local
activities were going on, and so, after a trip to one of the only two real pubs
in the area, we went to the party in the park. But this was... a dry party. No
alcohol allowed. Obviously, both being habitual risk takers in our own ways, we
immediately took the precaution of secreting a small bottle of whisky about my
person.
We got
lost on the way to the park, and it turned out we went in the back way and had
to trawl through a large wooded area in total darkness to find our way to the
event. Even though it was pitch black, neither of us were remotely concerned. A
fortnight into living here and we could already tell that it was not only safer
than where we’d just been, it was safer than anywhere either of us had ever
lived. Torches in hand, we were completely unperturbed by our visionless amble.
We’d
left it as late as possible to arrive, knowing that we would be away from booze
for an as-yet undetermined period, which neither of us was looking forward to –
who wants to be surrounded by strangers without a drink in hand to abate your
social anxiety? We’d eaten a massive curry (which for me included a chocolate
naan) barely an hour and half before, and yet, this waiting with nothing to
drink quickly led to us looking for something to spend money on and distract
ourselves with. The coffee stalls, all three of them, were sold out. Without
the presence of a bar, people were resorting to smashing any chemical that
could alter their states in any small way. I bought a massive crepe covered
with Nutella, and my ex forced down a footlong bratwurst. The after effects of
these misguided actions were unpleasant, but we just needed to feel some rush
of something, even if that rush was our insulin levels being fucked with and
some intestinal rumblings.
The New
Year was hailed by a speech from the local wizard (yes, they have a wizard, for
reals, Google it) and a nice firework display. I swigged obviously from my tiny
whisky bottle and even my partner joined in, despite hating whisky. The band
started up playing a selection of the worst songs from the last 40 Years, so
awful it almost felt like a conscious act of passive aggression. We decided to
retire homeward, or at least to what was acting as home for us at that time,
because there we could listen to good music and drink to boot. As we left the
park, we passed the security dudes who’d been searching bags on the way in
(they searched mine, and me, but found nowt, because that wasn’t my first
rodeo) but they’d apparently done as poor a job across the board, as one dude,
holding up his wildly staggering lady-friend, shouted ‘so much for a dry party
guys, she’s smashed!’ to which she blew them a kiss and nearly went headfirst
into a hedge.
On the
walk home, we witnessed one of the most amazingly pointless yet dramatic things
I’ve ever witnessed. A man ran across two roads, keeping low to the floor, only
to then drop and roll on a grass verge and reach underneath a sign that was
advertising something or other, probably the park party, and he proceeded to
pull away handfuls of gaffer-tape as he lay on the ground. He pulled out a six
pack of beer, rose to his feet, and casually walked away in the opposite
direction.
Now… I
get that, with it being a dry party, people may want to hide beers in a safe
location nearby. But why he sprinted in that manner, behaving like he was in an
SAS training programme, I’m really not sure. I suppose it may have been fear
that someone else would find it, but that doesn’t explain the furtiveness, only
the speed. Was he being chased by some off-screen villain? Personally, I like
to believe that it was fear that some authority would tell him off for trying
to cheat the system, which, given that Kiwis are generally the most law-fearing
society I’ve encountered, despite the police here also been the most easy-going
I’ve ever dealt with, seems to fit. There is something wholly endearing about
this interpretation, because it means the anxiety over being caught doing
something that is, at worst, mildly frowned upon, overruled any common sense.
It was beer he owned, left at his own risk, that he returned to
collect. None of which, as far as I can work out, breaks any laws of any kind.
The End
What am
I trying to say with this dart about memory lane? I guess this is me exorcising
the ghost of expectation and crying out once and for all - I really don’t dig New
Years. Of course, I have many other stories to tell, but maybe it’s always the
most stark memories that build your picture; your feelings about an occasion.
And the times that tend to stand out, for me, always seem to be the transient
places, the in-between spaces, when things are less settled and you’re in some
kind of flux. Or maybe the trick is realising that we are always, in some
manner or another, in a flux or transient space, because our lives are
constantly evolving, changing, and growing. Letting go of old things, and
embracing new; slowly, painfully, quickly, joyfully, in any and all ways and
speeds that are possible.
Maybe
the point of New Year’s is to take a snapshot of now, the good, the bad, and the
overall let down, and to accept everything for what it is at that exact moment
in time. No more, and no less. And it’s okay to feel tired, and it’s okay to
feel fed up, and it’s okay to feel whatever you want to because this is just
another moment that will some day become a story. Sometimes the story is happy
and sometimes it’s sad, and it’s usually invariably funny throughout. Because
all of this means that you’re still here, and you’re still moving forward, and
in another year you’ll be someone else all over again, while still being
exactly the same person you always were.
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