Why does New Year’s Eve make me cry?

So I’m sending a happy new year greetings from Scotland a country that can mo celebrates the event with a particular gusto.

Over the years I’ve seen Hogmanays in crowds in big cities, at parties, drunk, sober, at home, at work, alone, en famile and even a deux. Theres no doubt that scotland knows how to do it best. Traditions of first footing, kisses and Auld Lang syne, of course.

This year the Panther of News and I are planning a cosy evening by the hearth watching telly. I may be wearing pyjamas. With a bit of luck Boy Three will be sleeping (UPDATE: He managed a noisy and messy vomit the moment we started to dish up our dinner. You have to hand it to the boy for timing.)


But I have no sense of missing the party, this is exactly where I want to be.


And yet. Every year as the calendar reaches it’s final page my unease deepens.


I’ve read all the facebook messages. Some from people only too glad to leave behind a year of pain and disorder. Others getting set to party and celebrating a 2011 full of achievements. I’ve had both kinds and this year has been a good one with lots to be grateful for.


Driving back from a satisfying, if windy, hill walk with Fionaoutdoors and the G Force yesterday the radio broadcast the countdown to new year on the other side of the world. Five, four, three, two, one at the tragic lights in glasgow in my Skoda, tears in my eyes. Soppy cow.


What’s that all about? Is it the idea that everyone else is having the best time ever and, alone in my car, clearly I’m not. That might be part of it, but not a very serious bit. After all I’ve been there too – well not Australia sadly – but in a huge mush of people cheering and kissing. Perhaps it’s that I know that even when the sea of people looks like one organism, I know I’ll feel separate.


Maybe it’s three apparently unavoidable human urge to take stock: Where am I? What am I? Is it enough? What do I want to be, to do, to have? As life plods inexorably towards its end, this can depress even the jolliest. Why do you think we continually subscribe to the futile nonsense of resolutions?


Who knows? I just know that I can’t wait for 2012 to get going with its fresh possibilities and new chances. Meantime, however you do it, Happy New Year and I’ll see you on the other side.