I remember there being more than usual fuss that year. We’d had the cousins round for Christmas Day (it was our turn, 2005 – they’d be on again next year, as is our family tradition), and we’d had, by all accounts, a brilliant day. I remember being especially happy as I’d been given the bike I’d desperately wanted, despite my mother’s solemn announcement on Christmas Eve that they’d spoken to all the bike shops in England (and some in Wales) and they’d totally run out, sadly. I fully believed this – being nine – along with my mother’s assertion that Father Christmas couldn’t make bikes as they were too big for his sleigh. (Bulletproof logic, mother – 10/10 for credibility.) (And yes, I did still believe in Santa when I was nine. I was late to that particular party – I felt a fool when I eventually did find out. Apparently the rest of Year 11 had known for years.)

Christmas came and went. However, rather than the usual post-Noël come-down, our house was abuzz with ever-encroaching plans for a New Year’s Eve party. I was familiar with the concept of the ‘New Year’ (having seen off a whole nine of them in my hitherto-short life) and knew that it was the Done Thing to throw a party to mark it. My parents had hosted them before, with me asleep upstairs, occasionally woken by some revelrous shouting, or laughter, or the chorus of Come on Eileen drifting into my room.

However, the party to summon in 2006 was shaping up to be, altogether, a bigger affair. This was predominantly marked by the fact that invitations were being sent by post. After all: it is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing says fancy like RSVPing to a number printed on 200gsm card.

I passed the time cycling around the house (my bike hadn’t made its first foray outdoors yet) and as I pedalled, I eavesdropped on the various dilemmas my parents were having. Occasionally I would chip in with some helpful advice: “Where are we going to put all the drinks? There won’t be enough room in the fridge.” “You could use the Fiat,” I proffered. “It’s colder than the fridge in the mornings.” (My father dropped me off at school in an ancient station-wagon he’d bought for about a fiver, the heating of which had given up the ghost to such an extent that we kept blankets in the boot to prevent frostbite.) “Don’t be silly William! And mind the cat!” I swerved and crashed into the radiator. 

In another frantic planning summit held in the kitchen-cum-boardroom, I overheard my father talking in an apparently-foreign language about whether or not we’d be doing “ordlangzine”. I inquired further, whereupon he explained to me that that it was traditional to link arms and sing an old Scottish folk song called Auld Lang Syne. “Depending on the mood,” he continued, “people may run into the middle at the chorus.” (I later realised that he had confused the word ‘mood’ with ‘how many glasses of wine they’ve had’.)

All this talk of choruses and choreography worried little me, and I decided I would need to do my research to avoid being made a fool of. (I had recently become Google-literate after my father had decided to let me use the family computer. The only rule was I wasn’t to sign up for anything using my dad’s work email address. Unfortunately, however, 2005 was the year of the mailing list, and my father was now spending most of his time in the office deleting correspondence from the Busted Official Fanpage.) Anyway, armed with my new digital literacy, I found out all I could about this strange and arcane song-and-dance ritual, and dutifully learnt all the lyrics.

“The crowd slurred their way blearily through Auld Lang Syne, and absolutely nobody joined me for the third verse”

Before I knew it, the night was upon us and we were gathered in the sitting room, the FMs (family members) and FFs (family friends) cooing at sister and self: “Oh haven’t they grown!” and “You look just like your father!”  Safe in the knowledge of my paternity, I mingled and passed food around and made sure I put a new CD in when the music stopped. I passed my mother who said, “William, could you fetch a beer from the Fiat?” (Not such a idea bad after all.)

Eventually, we were allowed to go and watch TV. It was almost 9pm and I was more tired than I’d ever been before. Plus I had lipstick all over me (the last time that ever happened at a New Year’s Eve party) and red wine in my hair (I was the perfect height to soak up spillages). My sister was older than me, and therefore (in that unspoken law of the sofa) got the remote. New Year’s Eve television is programmed fundamentally for the lonely, and apparently, they enjoy watching marathon compilation programmes called things like “Most Awkward Hilarious Celeb Moments We Love To Hate To Love Of [Insert-Year-Here]”. It turns out watching these televisual epics is one of two things I have in common with the lonely (along with loneliness).

At some point during the twelfth hour of the programme, just as I was finding out what Justin Timberlake had really done at that after-party, our mother burst in and told us to come quick: “it’s nearly 2006!” I appreciate now this doesn’t seem very exciting, given we’ve had 2006 and can’t remember most of it, but back then, in the dying minutes of 2005, this was maddeningly exciting.

Mistletoe and whine: festive tunes are nothing to complain about

My sister snapped shut her Motorola Razr with effortless cool, and we ran into the sitting room where the assembled crowd had formed what I can only describe as a shameful attempt at a circle. I was disappointed to find that, far from rehearsed, the crowd slurred their way blearily through Auld Lang Syne, and absolutely nobody joined me for the third verse, as I pluckily started to sing “We twa hae run about the braes” in Rabbie Burns’ original dialect.

At some point after that, I must have fallen asleep, because I remember my father carrying me upstairs, trying not to wake me up. “Happy New Year,” he whispered as he put me to bed. And looking back, you know, it was