Old Acquaintance
Posted on | December 31, 2009 | 5 Comments
Out with the old, in with the new. It’s New Year. A time for parties and resolutions and bloody Jools Holland. A time for review-of-the-year shows and for drunks telling you that next year will be better for them. A time for bells ringing and people singing. A time of fireworks and pipers and a billion text messages from people you only hear from twice a year.
And, at the risk of sounding like one of those arses from Grumpy Old Men, I don’t really see the point.
I used to think New Year was more of a big thing. In my youth, as the old year drew to a close, I used to get either very happy or very sad – generally depending on the proximity of someone willing and kissable. I used to brave the bars and the nightclubs and the parties, squeezed together with the drunk and the really drunk and those ones that just dribbled. I used to do all of this and more.
Then I realised two things:
- New Year is really just an arbitrary date that has gained some sort of significance in the popular psyche due, possibly, to our innate desire to mark the close of things that we don’t care for and to fool ourselves that the simple transition from one day to the next means all our woes will be magically transformed into good luck and solid gold puppies.
- I was a twat.
Armed with this knowledge (and the knowledge I’d always had about fireworks – they’re just coloured sparks in the sky, people), I put aside new-year’s things and simply got on with stuff.
Having said that, although I won’t be venturing out to pipe-in Hogmanay, I am celebrating the new year in my own manner by forcing my wife to make me a bread and butter pudding.
Remember – as that leering, stinking inebriate tries to tongue you on the stroke of midnight – that I’ll be having bread and butter pudding.
And custard.
I do sound like one of those Grumpy Old Men people, don’t I? At least tell me it’s not Rory McGrath.
Comments
Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and deride my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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Next year I’m coming round yours for bread and butter pudding. Currently I’m eating moist Christmas cake and supping some red wine at home whilst the nephew watches Pirates of The Caribbean. Well, I can’t have everything to perfection otherwise I can’t improve.
Judging by the rectangular black and white photograph of your mouth you do not look like Rory McGrath. But your eyes may say something different.
Happy New Year Gerry, nice to have *met* you this year.
I’m confident I don’t look like McGrath, I just need (and I do mean ‘need’) to know that I’m not like him in any other way. Nobody wants that.
You’re welcome to share my bread and butter pud any time, KatieMc. I’ll get the missus to put extra on so there’s no fighting.
Sorry about Pirates.
Ha ha, we had leftover fish pie but I would have much preferred bread and butter pudding. If only I had a wife to make me some!
Happy New Day to you, Gerry! (I don’t give a toss anymore about New Year’s either. But a new day? Sure, why not.)
Nothing wrong with fish pie.
Happy new, er, day. And a nice, crisp, snowy day it is. Very pleasant.
Well he’s quite… rotund isn’t he? And I will presume that you are not. I would even go as far to say that he’s not even funny.
Y’know what I tried up in Shropshire? Marmalade bread and butter pudding and by the Love of All Things Holy (including Father Christ-mas) it was good. So extremely good. Not that I’m putting in requests to your wife.
Pirates kept not only my nephew quiet but my dad which was a bonus. Once the tele’s on there’s no getting through to him. As a child this was perfect for getting what I wanted. Now it’s hard to get through to him his dinner’s on the table. I’ve started watching Neverwhere now and I’m not overly impressed… but it does have Peter Capaldi in who is fast increasing to be my new want.