Party fears too...

Now, you know me, I’m generally quite a happy soul with a habit of looking on the bright side, but I’ve realised that I don't actually like New Year’s Eve very much. 

Like most memorable anniversaries it seems to carry with it an underlying mood or association that, even when the events of that day are different every year, still automatically colours the way I view it in my mind, the way I feel it.   New Year’s Eve to me is:

Dark blue…  yawning…  shadows…  waiting…  the word ‘should’… bad parties…

Oh god, that party in December 1977.  I got stuck with a boy I didn’t fancy at all*.  I spent the entire evening trying to put him off, to no avail.  So I tried some kind of blank generation strategy. I told him that I had no name.  I told him I lived nowhere.  I thought you could get away with that sort of thing when you were fourteen and into Johnny Rotten (but it just seemed to add to my apparent allure).  When my dad came to pick me up in his car the illusion of my nameless non-existence may have been somewhat shattered, but it was worth a try.

And what about that party in 2004? The evening was dominated by the local self-styled ‘comic’, who seemed to have a talent for omnipresence - everywhere you turned he was there like a bad smell - but none for making people laugh, although this didn’t stop him from spewing out his ageing jokes and punning (badly) every five minutes.  There are a lot of five minutes in the lead up to midnight….We were ready to spew something ourselves, and not just because we’d eaten too many Pringles.

There have been one or two other uncomfortable New Year's Eve celebrations too, and if you have ever seen the film 'Don's Party', you may understand where I'm coming from.

So, no partying for us this year, but I probably will yawn and I probably will wait until midnight and I probably will think about all those ‘shoulds’ (and ‘should not’s).  It’s dark blue outside.  I'm staying in the shadows!

Happy New Year to all who kindly take the time to pop over here and have a look, listen or read!  Thank you.

(And I really do hope you have a good New Year's Eve, party or no party...)

"I have no name.  I live nowhere."

* In retrospect he looked a bit like Howard Devoto.  I met him again years later when he started on the Fine Art course at my college.  We went for lunch a few times and he was great to talk to - thankfully it seemed he'd forgotten all about the previous embarrassing encounter...