Ha! - Everyone has gone back to London and I am alone on New Year's Eve. How very sad and lonely. But it is not. It is my own choice and I hope will bode well for the coming year. True, if we had been asked to anything down here I would have gone but there are no parties and I have seen most people over Christmas anyway. My husband offerred an enticing evening which involved driving up to London yesterday in a car packed with people and a thousand presents: then arriving at a flat so cold that my daughter's boyfriend had had to move out and with no food and shops closed and quickly washing lots of my son's clothes and packing for him to leave again this morning. Then, to night, going to a dinner party in Soho to which we have not actually been asked but he was going to 'see what he could do', consisting of people that I have either not seen for many years for various good reasons or I don't know. The combination of boredom, terrorist threat and mad impossibility of getting home from West End at 2.00 am on this night, made the choice a simple one. We would also have been driving straight back here the day after.

I did have a moment of guilt as I answered the phone for the tenth time this morning and talked my son through yet another domestic mystery as he got himself ready to leave for a New Year's Eve BALL in the country. (Another part, far from us). He has a rich friend who he has known for years but didn't realise was rich until a couple of years ago, sweetly. This is because the friend had a massive London house but his father is a property developer so we thought it was from clever deals. He was always asking M.., (my son), down to the country but as M.., said 'When I have any time I like to go to my own house'. He finally gave in and as the car rounded a bend in what had seemed a pretty long private drive he said he literally gasped. In front of him was the twin to Buckingham Palace. (I have seen photographs). The word 'vast' is an understatement. The lake in front is big enough for professional water skiing and they have their own quad bike and motor bike scrambling tracks.

Naturally there is a drawback. Charming and hospitable as they are; they have a passion for 'extreme sports' of the most ludicrously dangerous kind and a deep distrust of poncy interests in 'art' or 'literature'. The father has a slightly aggressive attitude towards M.., especially since he revealed that not only was he hoping to go to university but was studying History of Art. This time M.., appeared in my room a few days ago and said he wasn't sure he wanted to go as he had had a phone call from his friend describing excitedly how they were setting up the New Year's Eve midnight quadbike course. This year to be run over a BRIDGE OF FIRE. 'Just say 'No'', I said, obviously. 'You don't understand. His father gets this face and then they all do and everything is just shit'. To show further the nervous undercurrent of these visits, M.., is taking two evening shirts and two pairs of evening trousers, as last year's Ball was ruined for another friend when he was thrown into the indoor swimming pool in full evening dress while talking on his mobile. This was at the start of the party and he then had to sit down to a formal dinner in a dirty T-shirt. 'Why does F..'s mother let this kind of thing happen?', I said. 'She was the one who suggested pushing him. She thinks it's funny'. ... Anyway, I last heard from him as he left the house this morning on his way to, I assume, the right station.

My daughter is about to have a fairly crap evening as her half-Italian boyfriend of many years now has to spend to night with a mass of Italian relatives, many of whom are small, who have just arrived in London for a reunion. He was evasive about this and let her set up a fun dinner party in a restaurant for all their friends before revealing the truth to day. She rang me up tight-lipped to tell me this with him listening in the background sheepishly. I shouted 'What a cunt ' and 'How could he?' loud enough for him to hear and she was glad.

Her first choice of restaurant was another example of the circularity of Life. It is Austrian and I used to go there so many years ago that I had no idea it still existed. I had a musician friend who made money on the side by dressing up in leder hosen and playing the cow bells there. Once he left we obviously didn't bother to go any more but now it has apparently become the epitome of naff-chic for my daughter and her friends. Sadly fully booked to night but she soon bounced back and reappeared from the phone saying, 'Cool. We're going Turkish instead'.

Christmas without my older daughter who is in India was quite depressing but now over luckily. We haven't had New Year's Eve together for years as the children always do stuff with their own friends so this is just normal.

This night seems to be fun only about one year in five. Last year I was here alone with my husband because I had hurt my back and was lying flat in bed. So I did that all evening while he watched crap television, drinking, and then lurched up at about 11.30 saying 'Well, do you want champagne or not?'. 'Oh God, I don't know. Oh, all right'. He was gone for ages and then just as the midnight bells began to ring out on the TV he appeared in the doorway, holding out a foot. 'What f@cking cat has had diarrhoea all over the f@cking landing?' he shrieked, 'And here's your f@cking champagne'. And Auld Lang Syne to you too.

So, this is my perfect evening. And may it be the first of many. For all of us.


- posted by Iris @ 12/31/2003 06:36:00 PM comment