the new year's eve options

I was alone for New Year's Eve. It wasn't my choice; my hosts had gone to bed exhausted, and I was left with a dark living room and a flashing Christmas tree. As the neighbours counted down excitedly outside, I was treated to the distant muffles of someone else's fun, as their gardens flashed with cheap fireworks. I prayed for a while, then went to bed.

I am no fan of the New Year's Eve thing. It seems to me that there are only three ways to celebrate it, namely the trio of options - going out, staying in, or sleeping through the whole thing.

Option 1, going out, is horrendous. I don't mean going to a house that isn't your own, that's staying in, in someone else's house. I mean going out to a pub or a club, a place packed from floor to ceiling with revellers in fancy-dress. This option is expensive and pointless. As midnight is cheered and snogged, and silly string and beer flies across the crowded room, you'll find yourself linking arms with strangers while you're being elbowed in the face, then singing about old time's sake for ... old time's sake... Which you'll realise, makes absolutely no sense. And if you're lucky you'll avoid getting thrown up on in a taxi, or being dragged into a drunken fight for ... Old time's sake, I suppose... It's not for me, going out on New Year's Eve.

Option 2 is the one I normally go for. It involves a simple assortment of people who've forgotten to plan anything big because it was all too close to Christmas, and board games. It involves board games because nothing else will fill the time between 8 and 12 quite so effectively, and also because board games generate that natural harmony you need with your friends when Big Ben strikes twelve and London explodes on the telly. I'll be honest, this option has been hit and miss for me in the past. It's quite easy to spend the entire evening looking forward to midnight and then being quite disappointed that it just sort of happens and you all go home. It is after all, just the click of 23:59 to 00:00. And that happens every night.

And that's why I'm starting to wonder whether Option 3, just going to bed, might be the best option of all. If you're not woken up by teenagers shouting at each other down the street, or fireworks popping and crackling like the neighbourhood blitzkrieg, then it's probably the least anticlimactic, least expensive, least vomit-involved option there is for a happy new year. Just crack open that tin of cocoa, fill up the hot water bottle and wait for the sleepy magic to take you somnolently into January like a snowflake on the night wind.

That's why I can't be too upset with my friends for leaving me to my own devices this year... I mean last year... And anyway, the staying in option was still wonderful compared to the thought of jostling with drunken students in the early hours of the freezing morning. Perhaps next year... I mean this year... I'll go the whole way and spend New Year's Eve in a warm bed with only my dreams and the good Lord to keep me company. Man, I'm old.