Sound Off

New Year's Eve: from rip-off taxis to munching caramels at home

by The Guardian (RSS feed) - 2 years ago

New Year's Eve makes me anxious. There are lots of reasons for this, but to be all Dr Freud about it, the most obvious one has to do with my parents' divorce. We spent Christmas with Mum, and New Year with Dad, and the result was that I came to feel ambivalent about both. My trouble was that I could never be with all the people I wanted to at any one time; someone was always missing. Later, when I was a teenager, it was just plain gruesome. There would be a nightclub – Cairo Jax, Josephine's, or (the cooler option) the Leadmill – where I never got off with anyone, and where I never had enough money for drinks (the cash I did have, I unaccountably spent on repulsive concoctions such as snakebite and black, or Cinzano and lemonade). Afterwards, tipped out into the cold, dank streets at 2am, there would be the long search for a bus or taxi (funds allowing) home. Waiting for a ride was horrible. I would be in a coat, which marked me out as – whisper it – possibly middle-class (most revellers in Sheffield wear T-shirts, mini-skirts and not a lot else). A lot of jeering would go on, the scantily clad merrily yelling at the all wrapped up. So humiliating.