5 New Year’s Eves You Will Experience in your Teens and Twenties.
There is a universal weirdness that comes with the days that fall in between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve. Now that the relatives have finally left, it seems time has no meaning. No one knows what day it is, or what time it is, or what they should be eating or even just doing. The Christmas tree stands obsolete in the corner, it’s wilting slightly now and everybody’s tired of eating cold turkey. Everybody apart from Dad. This post-Christmas hinterland is familiar, comfortable even, but it has the power to confuse and mystify. So, for most, the guiding light that comes to drag us out of our stupor arrives in the form of New Year’s Eve. Women begin to blearily scroll through the pages of Pretty Little Thing and Misguided as last-minute party plans are hastily thrown together. The promise of a new year, a new decade even, glitters just out of reach and there is hope for a potentially unforgettable night. Of course, as everybody knows, New Year’s Eve is one of the most anticlimactic nights in existence. There have been good ones, filled with dancing and laughing and just the right amount of drinking and there have been cold ones, blackout ones, I-am-in-the-wrong-building ones. As 2020 hovers on the horizon I thought it would be fun to imagine five New Year’s Eves you will have or have had, enjoyed or suffered.
The One when you were 15.
It’s a house party. A real-life New Year’s Eve house party! Everyone’s been talking about this since November the 15th and you are invited. How times have changed, just last year you were helping your 8-year-old cousin write New Year’s resolutions on a cut-out piece of cereal box. Now, you’re standing in a house in Chiswick with several people you have never met before. You talk to none of them. Someone’s mum is handing out plastic cups of prosecco which probably doesn’t happen at most house parties, but you’ll take what you can get. 10.45pm. You and your friends decide to venture into the garden, this was a mistake. Before you lies a scene taken from the seventh circle of hell: there’s no space at the garden table, somebody has passed out and lies rigid on the lawn, couples are falling into bushes, there’s vomit sprayed across the patio and an unidentified dog is yapping in the corner. You feel you’ve reached the pinnacle of your youth, in fact you feel just like Cassie from Skins. Realistically you’re not going to find your Sid here, but you’ve made good headway, and this is just the beginning.
The stranger’s house party.
This year you’ve taken a risk and followed your friends to another city to a stranger’s house party. Actually, it’s not a stranger. It is your best home friend’s uni friend’s younger brother’s mate who is a post-grad working in marketing and hosting a small party/large pres. Where are your friends? Where are you? The drunkenness and the crowded corridors and the strong smell of damp start to feel a bit overwhelming. You lock yourself in the bathroom and place your head on the cold, hard mirror. You pull back and notice there is a lump of dried toothpaste on your forehead. You have had too much to drink, you decide. Someone is banging on the door and shouting quite aggressively that they “need some loo roll now PLEASE”. Grow up. Your reflection is wavering back at you, perhaps you should try and make some toast. Where are your friends? You push past the queue of people waiting for the bathroom and stumble into a bedroom… or is it a laundry room? Or is it just a really small bedroom? It’s dark and filled with people singing along to The Man Who Can’t Be Moved by The Script. Maybe you’ve found your people here, maybe this is home.
The One where you miss midnight for the fourth year in a row because you’re breaking up with your boyfriend.
It’s a gathering, not a house party this time. Just a lovely New Year’s Gathering with 30-40 of your closest friends. Emma has hosted bless her, although you think she looks a little stressed as she’s just streaked past you clutching a spray bottle of Vanish. Suddenly it’s ten to midnight and you can’t find Jonny anywhere. You leave the group of girls rapping Super Bass to go and peer out of the French windows - a single figure sits hunched next to the barbeque at the end of the garden. You wobble down the lawn towards him and the inevitable conversation begins: “Hi Jonny, yeah I really would love to talk! It’s just I’ve missed midnight for the last three years in a row and I really want to make the countdown. What? Yes of course we can kiss! No, I won’t kiss Lizzie this year… actually wait I promised her I would she’s going through a really tough time at the moment. I promise I’ll kiss you right after! Let’s just go inside it’s freezing out here” You re-enter 40 minutes later faces tear-streaked but clutching each other. Everyone else has got into Emma’s parents’ bed and Emma is on her hands and knees picking up bits of glass. You go over to help.
The One in the queue.
So, the Uber cost £38 and two people couldn’t split because of Apple Pay but you’re here now! And this is going to be amazing. Everyone from school is going, so it’ll be just like a reunion with all those people you really, really like. Twenty-five minutes later and you’re still in the queue, which is snaking its way around the back of the building just like a… just like a long, long snake of betrayal. This was not how it was meant to be. You’re shivering, you’re sobering up and you’re not moving. You try to make little jokes with your friends but really you want to cry and its started raining. Your sparkly top seems stupid now. Twenty minutes later. You’re still in the queue. Midnight has been and gone. You look down at your phone, “Happy New Year Darling! Hope you’re having an amazing time! Xx” from your mum. Someone has just thrown up on your left shoe.
The One where you get lost.
Let us end with a true story. It was New Year’s Eve 2017 and a dear friend of mine spent it unintentionally alone. Two very similar venues, both very close together, each hosting very similar nights. We were a large group of old school friends, nothing beats it, and this was set to be the perfect night. Picture the scene: three girls trail behind the rest of the group and two suddenly decide to ditch the queue and get an uber to the house party in Clapham. One brave soul remains and decides that she’s paid for her ticket and she’s going in. And so she does, battered out of her mind, she strides confidently into the wrong building. The rest of her friends are celebrating ten metres down the road, but the poor lone ranger is none the wiser as she combs the four floors of the Bussey Building trying to find her friends who will never be found. She’s just too drunk to realise where she is or what to do. But she’s resilient, she adapts and yes, she fell down the stairs with no one to catch her, but she carried on. She made new friends, people she would never see again, and embraced the moment as the countdown came and she sung it out. Alone. Happy New Year, your legend will live on forever.
Whatever your New Year's Eve plans are I hope everyone has a wonderful time ushering in the new decade... And if all else fails, at least it'll make a good story.