And so it has come to pass. The annual change in date number has occurred, that ensures that for the next few weeks cheques will be returned undeposited as the year is wrong, and we collectively struggle to overcome the last 46 weeks of cerebral imprinting. 2012 has disappeared before it hardly started, and 2013 has begun. It will be 2014 next week. We are 12% through another century and the Mayans were wrong. Or rather, those that interpreted the failure of the Mayans to perform the next print run of their calendar as definitive proof of the demise of our planet were wrong. The Mayans never said the world was going to end... I suspect they just got a new hobby to indulge in that distracted them from drawing up the next calendar. Like macramé. John Cusack would have been gutted.
30 years ago New Year was the peak of my social year... it was a mandatory night out; an orgy of beer, kisses, hugs and laughter. And there's nothing wrong with that, though sociologists, the temperance brigade and wowsers would all be shaking their heads at such displays of binge drinking undoubtedly. From house parties as a child/young teenager at neighbours houses at "The Willows", to the gathering of the great and the good at the Dyson's ... to Sittingbourne's pubs ... to The Hole in the Wall for the unofficial Aber Uni annual regrouping, each New Year passed in time honoured fashion. Happy Days. Though we were unaware, we were practising for the big one, for 1999, when Tony Blair assured us that a year ending in a zero was not the last year in a decade/century/millennia but in fact the first, even though there wasn't a year zero to begin in way back when they nailed people to trees to punish them and to herald a new calendar system.
A few years passed... the options for Bacchanalian celebration dropped away as life became more rural and responsible with young children. This reached its zenith for 1999/2000 which has some irony possibly given the entire globe was parting like it WAS 1999. Post appendectomy and with the wifelet having given birth recently, 3 children below the age of 5, we watched Blair prove he doesn't understand number systems, raised a solitary glass and went to bed. I'm a mathematician, not a greasy politician. The real millennia a year later passed everyone by. Too boring I suspect. Though I'd like to think somewhere at CERN maybe Professor Brian Cox and his chums were having a huge time of it parting like it was 2000.
And what of now? Urges to party like its 1999 have generally passed by... I usually feel I should make some effort.. but... well, its all a bit of a flap really and the prospect of sharing my evening with a bunch of people hell bent on ensuring THEY have the greatest night EVER since 1999 has lost its appeal. We spent a few years with friends disposing of as much red wine as the euro wine lakes would permit, and most recently a couple of dinner parties - gosh how middle class am _I_ now? And one year a rite of passage with one son telling his mum how much he loved her whilst his brother lifted his dad out of a hedge into which he had stumbled. Twice. Names omitted to protect the over indulged.
And last night...? In the last year I have watched a young girl becoming a young woman. And two teenage boys become fine young men. Not to forget a wonderful woman become an outstanding Occupational Therapist. Right at the end of the year a very clever bloke swapped out a troublesome femur ball joint for a titanium spike and a ceramic ball joint for me. So 31/12/2012 was spent with three children elsewhere and Tracey and I watching drivel TV. One of my fine young men came home early, bored with his party. So as Big Ben struck midnight, Tracey, George and I were heading to Marlborough to collect Joby, as Charlotte was at my mum's. It was as the German's would have it "gemütlich". Sehr gemütlich. God you get sad when you reach 50.
Incidentally... someone needs to tell the DJ on Radio Somerset that it is not new year until Big Ben has completed the intro and sounded the first BONG. Not when it starts to whir into motion, accompanied by "That's it! It's 2013". Twit.
Good job it wasn't 1999. (c) Ian Diddams 2013
