New Year's Eve

You know that feeling when you’re juggling various social commitments and you realise you’ve screwed up and are about to drop a ball. Accordingly, I’d ideally be in three places this evening (a nice prospect for New Year’s Eve). P&S have decided to stay in Wolverhampton after all and so I make my excuses and head back to Manchester solo.

The only way I’m realistically going to make both remaining commitments tonight is if I drive. Accordingly I won’t be drinking, not a drop, – a fact I would like you all to remember as I relay the next element of the story, one that has shades of our Sally.

So ready for the evening, I head out the front door.

Well sort of, as I turn to exit my porch, which is maybe six inches higher than the loose gravelly-tarmac pavement outside, I realise my heel (oh why do I bother) is caught in the porch matting and gravity is taking its inevitable toll.

I’d like it recorded that I actually fell in a surprisingly graceful manner and amazingly escaped with no more than small grazes to left palm and knee.

A suitably stylish manner in which to end the year I think you’ll agree.

Having regained some semblance of composure, I head on to the Rabbit Corpse and Dog Collar household for New Year’s Eve part one.

My buddies and adopted nieces are as welcoming as ever – this is a household that knows how to do hospitality.

Shortly after eleven however, I tear myself away and head to T’s for the final part of my New Year’s Eve.

A more sedate affair is in full swing when I arrive and it’s good to catch up with people I know. I even manage reasonably easily to be unremittingly pleasant to non-reader.

However, over the next few hours my sobriety starts to takes its toll and I yearn to join in the imbibing of wine. Trouble is, I’ve done that 3 hour wait for a mini-cab on NYE before and know that unless I’ve been organised enough to pre-arrange, it’s not worth the grief.

Not something that seems to have troubled Non-Reader though, who flusteredly announces at gone three that maybe she ought to call a cab, because although her car is outside she’s drunk too much to drive (as she explains to me in a very patronising manner as if I was unaware of drink driving laws and dangers; well fuck you love, my small family is one smaller as a result of a drunken bastard behind a wheel – I really don’t need a lecture, especially when I’m stood here stone cold sober because I’ve the capacity you seem to lack of thinking things through in advance). It must be the season of good will however, because such uncharitable thoughts are momentary, passing quickly and I do the only decent thing and offer her a lift.

In fact weirdly such irritations don’t seem to be riling me overly tonight and I seem to be able to just resignedly shrug them off. Hopefully, this is the start of a turn around and I can find a way to be in her presence without turning into a complete bitch. Ok some distance still to travel on that one I acknowledge, but tiny steps eh?

And that my friends is this closest this here blogger will come to a New Year’s Resolution. Judge me kindly.