REVELATIONS AND REVELRY

My New Year had a strange start. Well, no, the actual start was in a very cool club in the conventional manner of a twenty-something. We’ll ignore the fact that I’m almost 34. It was loud, there was drinking, hot tubs and in terms of enthusiasm I was utterly put to shame on the dance floor by a 56 year old American man who actually did dance like no-one was watching. It’s possible that he’d got muddled up because he had his eyes closed the entire time. However, we certainly could see him – and we could also actually feel him as well as he flung his not-inconsiderably sized self around.

So midnight came and we jumped up and down like loons because the clock had gone from 11:59 to 12:00. The metaphorical clock, I mean. There was no actual clock, just a rather frenetic countdown which I’m convinced started at 11:59:55. There was no Auld Lang Syne either, or dancing with our arms crossed over, which I’ve always rather enjoyed. It was straight back to Dizzee American or whatever the DJ was called.

Somewhere around 2am my friend and I made our way back home and finished off the champagne that we’d started earlier. Which was all very well at the time but when I woke up two hours later it seemed like the worst idea in the entire world. You know when people are near death or dying and they have those moments where they go into the light? Well I was neither of those things (I realised in retrospect) but I definitely had one of those moments. I knew I had ibuprofen somewhere so I blindly and faithfully stumbled forward following the tiny shard of light which would lead me somewhere near to the kitchen, where I found the tablets and my phone. This had a message on it from the same friend that was in the house. It read “I’m inside Buddha”, which I found particularly confusing. Then I went back to bed. It felt like I’d only just gone back to sleep when my friend burst through the bedroom door, switched the main light on and leapt onto the bed.

“What are you doing?!” he demanded. Seeing as it was the early hours of the morning and I was lying in a bed with my eyes shut, I thought that was perfectly self-explanatory, but I humoured him.

“I’m asleep,” I explained patiently with my arms over my face.

“I’m alone downstairs!” He said in genuinely injured tones. “Get up and have a drink with me!” Now I am all very keen on social glasses of wine and Bucks Fizz for breakfast, but not at 6:45am on New Year’s Day when the jigsaw of my head is only just piecing itself back together after champagne and aniseed-tasting shots and I’ve had about thirty seconds sleep.

“Do you know what time it is?!”

“No.”

“It’s 6:45am. Go to sleep.”

I tiptoed downstairs at some point later (pretty quietly, I thought) when there was a sudden thunder of footsteps above me and my friend shot down the stairs and collapsed over the table.

“I’m so drunk,” he complained.

“What, still?!”

“Yes……”

Because I’m naturally a sympathetic type, I decided this was the perfect moment to tease him about a lady with whom he’d had a fleeting relationship and who had arrived in the club in search of him. “I can’t believe that woman…..” And it was like I’d prodded him with an electrode.

“Woman? What woman?” He leapt up from the table and glanced around fearfully behind sofas and curtains, genuinely believing that she might be in the room. It was the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. How often does he find random women about the place?

“You know, the love of your life?”

“I don’t believe you. I’m going back to bed.” He stormed halfway up the stairs and then stopped. “I don’t want you to go because you think this is a really horrible house.”

“It’s my house.”

It was around seven hours later that I received a sober-sounding message from him saying how much he’d loved the night and how he didn’t remember much of what happened after we got back. I’m saving it all up for when I meet a new girlfriend of his or something.

And so, I am going forward into 2016 with a few resolutions and sadly the knowledge that I really am getting old. When I woke in dreadful pain early on 1^st January after my night of drinking and cavorting on the dancefloor, it was hard to work out what hurt more; my head – or my knees.

Happy New Year to old and young!

S x