Happy New Year's? [Nostalgia/ growing up/ imagery]
New year's eve. Smells of black-tie, ball-gowns and success. If it was a movie it'd star DiCaprio and be directed by Baz Lurman. Hi-jinks, Mumm's champagne, manners and smiles, with fireworks in the background.
Alas...only the richest really get that tapestry...; educated in a Swiss private school, Daddy's money, spot-free and shining with future. Us Euro-poor; social welfare funded and schooled by weapon-wielding religious must learn by mistakes what the aristocracy just has in it's DNA.
New Year's Eves to remember are a jewel sought after but seldom possessed by us mere mortals. We drink to get a feeling of godliness. And become anaesthesised in the process. New year's day becomes a jigsaw to be pieced together in pursuit of what we hoped happened rather than what actually did.
Here's some random memories of my New Year's past that tell the truth.
NEW ROSS; Colosseum night club. Thirty years ago. I've broken up with her. The one. I circle the dance floor trying to pretend I'm cool. That it's for the best. I'm 21. I'm deaf from the pop tunes and power ballads. Bass actually jellies my kidneys. I spend the slow set pretending to wee in the toilets. I am surrounded by a group of idiots that are nomads too, destined to circle without a woman for the night. Of all nights! As if singing for me personally, out on the dance floor Lionel Richie and Bryan Adams take a long time to get over themselves. 'The one' has a coterie of friends that are both support and defence. I can't look her way without five women looking back. I walk out of the club about a minute after the countdown. I am the only person on the streets of my hometown. I walk two blocks over to the pub my parents are in and pretend it is all good. My mind is numb. My heart is in a nightclub. I hug my parents.
BURGOS; Miranda de Ebro is a quiet town in Northern Spain. It's the millennium. The big one. I expect to wake tomorrow to find the millennium bug has disabled everything electronic. Ha Ha. Indeed. One of the men at this large family gathering has a secret. In his Madrid kitchen he measures and weighs gunpowder and explosive materials. His neighbours are blissfully unaware. Hours before midnight he disappears into the garden and only I seem to notice. At the appointed time all of us down a grape at each strike of the clock. Twelve grapes to ensure luck for the year ahead. Then we file into the garden to watch the town's fireworks display. Coloured and noisy and sweet. But that is nothing. In the garden,the uncle, that disappearing man of hours previous, hits the primers and timers and treats all of us present to a Disneyworld symposium of firework decadence. All hand-made in his Madrid kitchen. I kiss my future wife, shake hands with my future in-laws and gape at the sky.
DUBLIN; The quays in Dublin are never-ending. Normally I'd have loved the walk through dear auld dirty Dublin. River shimmering. Frost rime. Conversations. Not tonight. She didn't kiss me. A grand gig at The Point arena with ten thousand other revellers singing N17 along with the Sawdoctors. Going out with the girl for a couple of months and we don't kiss on New year's???? Now a long, long walk all the way from the East-link bridge to Ranelagh? Talking pleasantries while holding the lead of the elephant in the room? AWK WARD. The only levity was after the bus ride home the next day. She seemed so intent on finishing it all she walked into a signpost. I was too cut up to laugh at the time. But I've laughed since.
MADRID; The worst woolly jumper in Christendom. We loved each other dearly. Here I was mixing it with all her sisters (they were named religiously; roughly translated as Mary/Conception/Immaculate and Pity) as I tried to explain 800 years of Irish history using only the present tense in Spanish.
Then this red and cream, thick-knit leviathan gets pulled out of somewhere as a gift. It was New year's in the suburb of Delicias and I remember thinking there was damn all that was delicious about this sweater that must have required the death of many sheep. An Aran island fisherman would have said no to it. But I swallowed my pride, my manhood and my instinct to run for it. Why? Five women staring at me in expectation of joy. That's Why! And besides I'd neglected to memorise the exits on the way in. So I smiled and put it on. And it was itchy and fleecy and weighed more than my heavy heart.
GALWAY; Spiddal, Galway. I'd never had an anxiety attack before. I'd stepped outside of the turf-fire-quaint pub for a Benson and Hedges and a walk down the lane to the deserted quayside. The wind was getting up and I could hear, but not see, Atlantic breakers out beyond the concrete pier. I didn't want to go back to the pub. Some of my best friends were in there but inside, me something had snapped. I knew I'd been looking in at my life for a while at that stage. Not being there really. And I had of course to be all melodramatic and haul myself all the way to Galway to realise I couldn't do it anymore. I rang in the New Year and ran away home the next day.
NEW ROSS; On the sofa. My mother sleeps soundly in the railed off bed beside me. At eleven o'clock I'd fallen into a deep sleep. As midnight struck, a cacophony of fireworks lit off from the streets and greens in the town. Half past midnight a fight broke out six doors up. I can hear it all echoing through the air vent. Cursing and threats. Mostly women. Twenty minutes later, laughter. One man amongst them. Soon the fire brigade go out. At one, two and four bells, happy groups of hammered locals wend up past the house, heading to the arms of morpheus while keeping me awake. My mother sleeps through it all.
Alas...only the richest really get that tapestry...; educated in a Swiss private school, Daddy's money, spot-free and shining with future. Us Euro-poor; social welfare funded and schooled by weapon-wielding religious must learn by mistakes what the aristocracy just has in it's DNA.
New Year's Eves to remember are a jewel sought after but seldom possessed by us mere mortals. We drink to get a feeling of godliness. And become anaesthesised in the process. New year's day becomes a jigsaw to be pieced together in pursuit of what we hoped happened rather than what actually did.
Here's some random memories of my New Year's past that tell the truth.
NEW ROSS; Colosseum night club. Thirty years ago. I've broken up with her. The one. I circle the dance floor trying to pretend I'm cool. That it's for the best. I'm 21. I'm deaf from the pop tunes and power ballads. Bass actually jellies my kidneys. I spend the slow set pretending to wee in the toilets. I am surrounded by a group of idiots that are nomads too, destined to circle without a woman for the night. Of all nights! As if singing for me personally, out on the dance floor Lionel Richie and Bryan Adams take a long time to get over themselves. 'The one' has a coterie of friends that are both support and defence. I can't look her way without five women looking back. I walk out of the club about a minute after the countdown. I am the only person on the streets of my hometown. I walk two blocks over to the pub my parents are in and pretend it is all good. My mind is numb. My heart is in a nightclub. I hug my parents.
BURGOS; Miranda de Ebro is a quiet town in Northern Spain. It's the millennium. The big one. I expect to wake tomorrow to find the millennium bug has disabled everything electronic. Ha Ha. Indeed. One of the men at this large family gathering has a secret. In his Madrid kitchen he measures and weighs gunpowder and explosive materials. His neighbours are blissfully unaware. Hours before midnight he disappears into the garden and only I seem to notice. At the appointed time all of us down a grape at each strike of the clock. Twelve grapes to ensure luck for the year ahead. Then we file into the garden to watch the town's fireworks display. Coloured and noisy and sweet. But that is nothing. In the garden,the uncle, that disappearing man of hours previous, hits the primers and timers and treats all of us present to a Disneyworld symposium of firework decadence. All hand-made in his Madrid kitchen. I kiss my future wife, shake hands with my future in-laws and gape at the sky.
DUBLIN; The quays in Dublin are never-ending. Normally I'd have loved the walk through dear auld dirty Dublin. River shimmering. Frost rime. Conversations. Not tonight. She didn't kiss me. A grand gig at The Point arena with ten thousand other revellers singing N17 along with the Sawdoctors. Going out with the girl for a couple of months and we don't kiss on New year's???? Now a long, long walk all the way from the East-link bridge to Ranelagh? Talking pleasantries while holding the lead of the elephant in the room? AWK WARD. The only levity was after the bus ride home the next day. She seemed so intent on finishing it all she walked into a signpost. I was too cut up to laugh at the time. But I've laughed since.
MADRID; The worst woolly jumper in Christendom. We loved each other dearly. Here I was mixing it with all her sisters (they were named religiously; roughly translated as Mary/Conception/Immaculate and Pity) as I tried to explain 800 years of Irish history using only the present tense in Spanish.
Then this red and cream, thick-knit leviathan gets pulled out of somewhere as a gift. It was New year's in the suburb of Delicias and I remember thinking there was damn all that was delicious about this sweater that must have required the death of many sheep. An Aran island fisherman would have said no to it. But I swallowed my pride, my manhood and my instinct to run for it. Why? Five women staring at me in expectation of joy. That's Why! And besides I'd neglected to memorise the exits on the way in. So I smiled and put it on. And it was itchy and fleecy and weighed more than my heavy heart.
GALWAY; Spiddal, Galway. I'd never had an anxiety attack before. I'd stepped outside of the turf-fire-quaint pub for a Benson and Hedges and a walk down the lane to the deserted quayside. The wind was getting up and I could hear, but not see, Atlantic breakers out beyond the concrete pier. I didn't want to go back to the pub. Some of my best friends were in there but inside, me something had snapped. I knew I'd been looking in at my life for a while at that stage. Not being there really. And I had of course to be all melodramatic and haul myself all the way to Galway to realise I couldn't do it anymore. I rang in the New Year and ran away home the next day.
NEW ROSS; On the sofa. My mother sleeps soundly in the railed off bed beside me. At eleven o'clock I'd fallen into a deep sleep. As midnight struck, a cacophony of fireworks lit off from the streets and greens in the town. Half past midnight a fight broke out six doors up. I can hear it all echoing through the air vent. Cursing and threats. Mostly women. Twenty minutes later, laughter. One man amongst them. Soon the fire brigade go out. At one, two and four bells, happy groups of hammered locals wend up past the house, heading to the arms of morpheus while keeping me awake. My mother sleeps through it all.
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