Last Post of 2020
Dec. 31st, 2020 02:31 pmSo I didn't manage to post every day in December, but I did manage to post every day on the run up to Christmas, so we'll call this an Advent Posting Meme and declare it a success! I'm going to try to keep up posting here because this has been nice; not every day, obviously, but hopefully about once a week, about...whatever's on my mind, I guess.
Anyway![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lyr asked about my traditions for seeing in the New Year, and I don't especially have any. For instance this year I'm on the night shift so I'll be at work (the way my work does it is that one year you work Christmas and the next you work New Year) and given how night shifts usually go there's a 50/50 chance it'll be quiet at midnight and we'll be able to do something to see in the bells, and a 50/50 chance that I'll be trying to do nineteen things at once and by the time I get to look up it'll be half past two.
My favourite New Year was one I actually spent at work. It was, like, a decade ago when I worked in the big bookshop in Glasgow and we were open till 10pm on Hogmanay (Why???) and for the rest of the year we weren't allowed to ask the customers to leave at closing, and on New Year's Eve we still weren't. What we were allowed to do was play 80s hair rockers Europe's The Final Countdown on a loop from 9pm turning it up a little bit more every time until lingering customers would be bleeding from the ears. That memory is my happy place.
Speaking of Europe, I think if I wasn't working tonight I'd go to bed early. Like, really early. The brexit thing comes into effect at eleven, and while the worst people in the UK are free to be insufferable all over the telly I don't need to give them my attention.
When I was younger I used to go out for the bells. More, I guess, because I felt like I had to than because I actually wanted to. As I've gotten older I've come to realise that I enjoy enforced jollity even less than regular jollity. I remember one year standing in Edinburgh at half three in the morning in the lashing rain having been asked to leave a night bus that I'd had to book in October because my mate had thrown up and I couldn't leave him, just thinking: I hate this. The next year I was supposed to go to the big Glasgow Hogmanay thing which was cancelled fairly last minute because of foul weather. I remember being half dressed and watching a portaloo be blown across George Square on the telly as they announced the cancellation and thinking: thank goodness I don't have to go anymore.
The exception to my not going out rule is if I go to stay with my sister for New Year, because she's almost always living somewhere where we don't have to wrangle public transport or the weird pressure Scots put on ourselves to have a blowout at Hogmanay. New Year in Galway was grand, same for Greifswald.
The one thing I do try to do at New Year is something my mum drummed into me as a kid which is that you clean your house on New Year's Eve so that you don't start the new year with a mess. This year I have...not done that. Oh, well. This year doesn't count anyway.
Happy New Year everyone!
Anyway
lyr asked about my traditions for seeing in the New Year, and I don't especially have any. For instance this year I'm on the night shift so I'll be at work (the way my work does it is that one year you work Christmas and the next you work New Year) and given how night shifts usually go there's a 50/50 chance it'll be quiet at midnight and we'll be able to do something to see in the bells, and a 50/50 chance that I'll be trying to do nineteen things at once and by the time I get to look up it'll be half past two. My favourite New Year was one I actually spent at work. It was, like, a decade ago when I worked in the big bookshop in Glasgow and we were open till 10pm on Hogmanay (Why???) and for the rest of the year we weren't allowed to ask the customers to leave at closing, and on New Year's Eve we still weren't. What we were allowed to do was play 80s hair rockers Europe's The Final Countdown on a loop from 9pm turning it up a little bit more every time until lingering customers would be bleeding from the ears. That memory is my happy place.
Speaking of Europe, I think if I wasn't working tonight I'd go to bed early. Like, really early. The brexit thing comes into effect at eleven, and while the worst people in the UK are free to be insufferable all over the telly I don't need to give them my attention.
When I was younger I used to go out for the bells. More, I guess, because I felt like I had to than because I actually wanted to. As I've gotten older I've come to realise that I enjoy enforced jollity even less than regular jollity. I remember one year standing in Edinburgh at half three in the morning in the lashing rain having been asked to leave a night bus that I'd had to book in October because my mate had thrown up and I couldn't leave him, just thinking: I hate this. The next year I was supposed to go to the big Glasgow Hogmanay thing which was cancelled fairly last minute because of foul weather. I remember being half dressed and watching a portaloo be blown across George Square on the telly as they announced the cancellation and thinking: thank goodness I don't have to go anymore.
The exception to my not going out rule is if I go to stay with my sister for New Year, because she's almost always living somewhere where we don't have to wrangle public transport or the weird pressure Scots put on ourselves to have a blowout at Hogmanay. New Year in Galway was grand, same for Greifswald.
The one thing I do try to do at New Year is something my mum drummed into me as a kid which is that you clean your house on New Year's Eve so that you don't start the new year with a mess. This year I have...not done that. Oh, well. This year doesn't count anyway.
Happy New Year everyone!