Just another day

Now, right from the outset I have to admit to being the Scrooge of New Year. I’m the fellow whose frown deepens and hackles rise at the excitement and sense of anticipation that tends to afflict folks in the run up to the Eve celebrations. It’s not that I don’t like a good party; more the fact that folks get so so overly excited about a night that all too often fails to deliver the drama expected.

Bah Humbug.

However, just like Scrooge I have been forced to reassess my views on the aforementioned festivities: not by ghosts of New Years, thankfully, but by writing this column and so let us start with New Years Past.

Copious amounts of alcohol inevitably contributed to my New Year’s Eve frivolity in years gone by. Tony, you’ll always be remembered for the flaming absinth incident and Liz, I still feel I need to apologise for the hours you spent in ER following our drink fuelled tom-foolery. And, then there was Tim.

At one memorable bash Tim was bet he couldn’t drink a pint of lager from a glass without using his hands. The first sips, easy. As the level dropped, he slurped with the tilted glass propped against his chin. But how to finish the last half pint without spilling it? The answer: press face against glass, take a couple of good inhalations and cause a vacuum. Now, with the glass stuck to face proceed to empty it, head thrown back glugging beer down merrily.

Oh how we laughed on seeing that the vacuum glass trick had pulled Tim’s lips deep into the glass. On prising it off his face Tim found that his lips were as if distended to perhaps ten times their normal size. Speech was nigh on impossible unless you count the rubbery-lipped mumblings from Tim and squeaked expletives between rowdy guffawing from us his so called friends. We hardly stopped laughing long enough to chink glasses at midnight, while a wobbly mouthed Tim blubbed (that’s all he could do) about explanations and an impending visit from his grandma.

Now to New Years Present. While my little son can be quite silly at times he is as yet a tad young for the type of antics mentioned above. And, in moving an ocean away from long-time friends just a few short months ago, I imagined New Year’s Eve 2010 to be a quiet affair with my lovely wife and a bottle of fine French wine for company. And I was looking forward to it, too! The trouble is you Canadians are far too friendly and so this Scrooge was bundled off to a party, grumbling about not sharing his wine.

At said party, we ate and drank with a gay abandon that only parents of small children who’ll be up at six the next morning no matter how bad your hangover know how to do! We performed ancient family rituals (if I told you I’d have to kill you), periodically persuaded the kids to stop chasing the cat and wished for luck and long life over the year to come. The upshot: the Scrooge in me was banished and we had a great time with new Canadian friends.

And that brings me to New Years Future. Perhaps this lovely relaxed evening in Minden did it, may be it is the fine new land that I find myself in at the start of 2011, but what I have come to realise is that my grouchiness about New Year’s Eve is an anxiety born of how successful, how raucous, how legendary this most celebrated night of nights should be. And you know what, I now see that New Years Future need not be the annoying must-go ‘celebrations’ that always end with heart ache, hangovers and fat lips (sorry Tim).

Instead, I’m looking forward to relaxing into each New Year that my middle age brings; getting firmly acquainted with my new Canadian friends; learning their New Year’s traditions; and, hopefully laughing loud and long at the occasional geriatric drinking game gone wrong in years to come.