A Little Rhyme My Daddy Taught Me

Christmas day in the workhouse, the snow was falling fast we took the christmas turkey and shoved it up the Vicar's...chimney.

(Sung to the well known wholesome family tune of 'For he/she's a jolly good fellow')

I spent New Year away from home and my friends once - in my third year of university I was working the Christmas season at the JD Wetherspoon's pub in Leamington Spa, and on the big night between 2001 and 2002 I was busy juggling bottles of J2O and attempting to weasel tips out of 300 people at once. I rang people after midnight, but missing out on the traditional gathering in St. James' Square in Newport on the Isle of Wight was a bit of a downer.

I missed out on all the traditional New Year's Eve pursuits: spotting people you know vaguely from school in ridiculous costumes and chatting to them over beer like you used to be best friends instead of the archrival teacher's pet and scapegoat you actually were (no clues given, sorry).

New Year on the Island is always...interesting. There's things like having to throw away a favourite shirt the next day because it smells irredeemably of raw onions after you pinched the unsavoury elements of a friend's Frenchman costume, there is the nearly annual tradition of me dropping Dave on his head whilst drunkenly trying to carry him on my shoulders. There is the big random hug-all at midnight in the Square, when the people you know are everywhere and everyone, seemingly.

There is the memory of being so goddamned determined to party on December 31st 1999 that I went out to Newport despite the fact that there were no buses and taxis couldn't be had for love nor money. We partied, we drank, we danced, we drank some more, and when it was time to go home because all of our energies and money had been exhausted, I started walking home. Luckily for me, ten minutes after I set out cross-country, it started to rain, so I doubled back to the road and was home thirty minutes later because...I mean, come on - how many drivers would let someone walk home in the rain on the first day of a new Millenium?

Christmas is for family, New Year is for friends. That's the way it breaks down, generally - am I correct?

This year I celebrated Christmas with new members of my family, the family I have joined through marrying Krissa. I missed my parents and my sister an awful lot, but I had a wonderful time. It began to snow, heavily, on Boxing Day, and we stayed a night more than we had planned with Krissa's parents, playing cards and drinking hot cocoa as the flakes slewed down outside. I received marvellous gifts for which I am hugely grateful, gave some which were recieved with tears of joy (always a boost, that) and had a great time.

This New Year...this New Year's Eve, I'm celebrating with...Krissa and the New York Krew, obviously, but also with two of the friends who have made years and years' worth of celebrations so much fun already - Dave and James, who should be touching down at JFK in about four hours.

This morning I've been doing odds and sods of DIY - drilling and hanging the guitars on the office wall, putting in extendable bathroom mirrors and hammering all sorts of random things for good measure.

I have a portait photograph of my family on the mantel of the window behind this computer, and no way to end this post properly.