Lucy has celebrated the advent of 2018 with her very first hangover.
She explained regretfully that it was due to several glasses of champagne, followed by a small violent drink that she thought might have been bleach, but which we concluded had probably been vodka.
Oliver did not have a hangover. Harry’s father had held a party in which he and Harry had been encouraged to participate. Their enthusiasm for this had ceased once they had eaten everything appealing to small boys, and decided that grown-ups dancing was possibly the most tooth-clenching, humiliating spectacle in the entire world. After that they fled back to Harry’s room, where they spent the rest of the evening peacefully shooting at zombies until very late indeed. I rang Harry’s father at half past one in the afternoon today, but he explained that they were still in bed.
Lucy has spent two days soaking away her fighting injuries in her friend’s hot tub. She had managed the train journey without incident, except for having inadvertently booked herself in to Standard Class, and discovered that people sat next to her, and nobody brought her anything to drink.
Her friend’s parents had a television, and during Lucy’s visit a football match was watched. Lucy has never seen a football match, and was astonished by the whole thing, being unable to understand why somebody insisted on telling you excitedly that the ball had been kicked, when you could see that perfectly well for yourself. She also observed that footballers seemed to be the most awful weeds, falling over and crying at the smallest little bump, they would never cope with lacrosse in a girls’ school.
We collected them together, picking Lucy up from the station and Oliver from Harry’s, stopping on the way to make threats at a house where a customer had disappeared without paying on the preceding evening. Eventually this resulted in a call to the police when the young man who answered the door denied any knowledge of his girlfriend’s name or address. The police promised to pop round and apply some pressure, they are good at that.
It was lovely to be together again. We discussed our ambitions for the new year. Lucy said that she felt no need to make any resolutions, since she considered herself perfectly perfect already, and the whole family made a resolution on Oliver’s behalf that he would shower more often.
He went upstairs as soon as we got home, saying glumly that he supposed he had better get it over with, leaving us feeling mildly concerned that the concept of regular and frequent ablutions had not really sunk in.
We went back to bed.
We had been contemplating this all day.
Obviously we were late getting up, because of working last night. When we did get up we emptied the dogs and washed the pots, and then ate the most enormous New Year’s Day late breakfast of eggs and smoked mackerel cooked in butter and piled on to toasted almond bread.
This was hugely satisfying.
Had it not been for having to retrieve the children we would have included a glass of wine and then gone back to bed, but obviously this was not going to be possible. In any case, New Year’s Day is double time in taxis and so becoming intoxicated was obviously not good financial planning.
Instead we collected the children and then sloped off for a short snooze before work. It was difficult to prevent this from turning into a long snooze, and indeed, when the alarm went off even the double time incentive was almost not enough.
Of course we did get up in the end, and made it to the taxi rank in reasonable time, and here I sit now, writing this in intervals between exorbitant rate customers.
We did have a romantic night at the fireworks in the end, actually. For all of my taxi driving career midnight on New Year’s Eve has always been a taxi-driver moment, and we have always gathered all together on the pier to watch the fireworks, secure in the knowledge that nobody ever wants a taxi in the five minutes before and after midnight, and can jolly well buzz off if they do. Then we wish one another a guarded happy new year, shake hands cordially, count our fingers surreptitiously, and watch the fireworks.
There was a time once, long ago, we used to race around the Glebe at the very end of the night, when we were pleased with ourselves after a long year of not going bankrupt. We stopped doing that when Health and Safety was invented.
It was cold. I burrowed underneath Mark’s jacket to watch the fireworks. We brought the new year in like that, surrounded by friends, and happy with our world.
It is going to be another adventure.
