The party continued into the morning and the last guest did not leave until 5.45am. Thus the party didn't quite go on as long as the Chrissie Hynde party (and where was she this year? She's changed), but then I am a bit older, so that is to be expected. To be honest I have actually got a lot better at staying up the older I have got. When I was young I always preferred to go to bed than to stay up all night long with my crazy friends and thus missed many sun rises and no doubt even more fun activities due to being so sensible and square.
Of course, soon enough I will be 40 and that will be the end of such behaviour, but for seven more months I am 21 and acting like I should have done when I was 21, when I clearly acted as if I was 40.
It was, as far as I remember, a good party and I don't think I did anything to embarrass myself. I did get extremely drunk, especially when the numerous bottles of champagne began popping after midnight. I suppose I was drinking for a fairly solid ten hours.
Then, at the end and only my Cheddar friend Phil was left, I discovered that some twat had opened a magnum of vintage champagne that I had been given for Christmas. I hadn't really intended this to be drunk tonight, though hadn't thought to hide it, so maybe had myself to blame. I wasn't too bothered as I had considered drinking it tonight, but it was annoying for two reasons. Firstly if we were going to drink it then we should have done it first when everyone wasn't too pissed to appreciate it. Secondly and more annoyingly whoever had opened it hadn't even passed it around. So there was about half of the bottle left.
I was damned if I was going to let that go to waste, so I filled up two big tumblers and Phil and me finished it off. Fairly rapidly. This may have been a mistake as when I got to bed the room was spinning, which is something that I haven't experienced for quite some time.
Of course all this had repercussions when I woke up. In fact I felt so lousy that I stayed in bed until 6pm. It was already dark outside before I had properly stirred. It's a strange tradition to get blasted at New Year, so we spend the first day of the year feeling sick and unhappy. But it did at least stiffen my resolve to get back on to the healthy path that I had been following before December came along and ruined everything. And as usual I am going to try and give up booze for the whole of January at least. Which today felt like a very good idea.
