06 Jan 2003 | I love New Years Eve

I love how anything might happen on New years Eve. Ever since I was a kid I preferred it to Christmas Eve, probably because I was allowed to have a drink, even when I was ten or thereabouts. A glass of wine with Christmas dinner was good, but having full drinks cabinet privileges as soon as the grown-ups were pie-eyed on Hogmanay beat that hands down.

The fact that half of my family were substance abusers that really let rip on New Years meant that, as often as not, the police would be outside our door by 1AM. This is cool when you’re eleven and slightly tiddly. You’re drunk, your auntie just spewed up in the kitchen sink, your uncle and grandad are going toe-to-toe on the front lawn, and the cops just arrived. All bets are off! Normal rules don’t apply tonight!!

The message that New Years is not like other nights was further reinforced on my first Hogmany away from home. I must have been sixteen when I first spent New Years Eve in “The Castle”, a dodgy pub in Doncaster’s marketplace, and snogged seventeen girls in one night. I think a bet was made at some point, and being part of a large group group of pissed, happy, slightly suggestible women probably helped me to win it. That and the fact that anything can happen on New Years.

This year I slept hand-in-hand with the girl who has the prettiest eyes in the world, saw my intensely ugly and desperately odious colleague Mr. Sleath reject good-looking young women for having “no dignity” (make a sentence out of these words: pot, kettle, black, calling, the), was turned into a demon by the amazing Mr. Frank Mcnamee, viewed a copy of the exam paper they give you when you’re going to be a spy, stayed stone cold sober all night and slept hand-in-hand with a lady I’ve had a crush on for years (who has the most beautiful eyes in the world, by the way).

Christ knows what'll happen next year.