The Day After Boxing Day

Wednesday, 27 December 2006
THE DAY AFTER BOXING DAYMood: loudNow Playing: more sedately...Topic: Daily Doings
THE DAY AFTER BOXING DAY and life returns.
The High Street heaving, seething with all those people who wisely put off spending until what used to be called the “January Sales”. Even I, feeling generous with myself, splashed out £5 on a mobile phone battery I’ve needed for weeks but never got round to sorting out… (The old battery was so knackered you got three minutes talk time before you had to rush and plug the handset into the wall.) So typical of me to live with something like that. Most people would get driven up the wall and replace it on day one. Most people!! That’s not me… If I were “most people”, imagine the pickle our world would be in! Office hours would be midday to eight pm for starters. Have a good lie in when you can, I say. Street lights would be Vegas-style multicolours so the metropolis looked amazing from descending aeroplanes. Trafalgar Square would be the scene of a humungous rave each weekend. Everyone would come to London, New Official Centre of the Universe!!! I could go on but the world’s a crazy enough place already…
So we’re at a lull in the mass celebrations. People are composing themselves ready for New Year’s Eve. Now I did used to do New Year’s with some gusto, but two years in particular, 2000 and 2001 I think I overdid it. You shouldn’t have to recover from a night (+most of next day) partying as if you're convalescing from tuberculosis or cholera. That’s when “fun” is starting to go to unfunny extremes.
No, I just have a few drinks and let the evening pass by now. To be honest, I remember New Year's Eve as pressurized fun. Everything you do on a night out you have to do three or four hours earlier, e.g. getting into club at nine rather than one. Arranging cabs hours in advance. Lots of stress and organized chaos. No, I did have some fun in years gone by but I’m happy for a younger generation to have taken up the baton (or light-stick)…
Sometimes I muse about the 19-20somethings and wonder, is life as amazing for them as it seemed for us at that age? Everyone buries that amazing feeling of self-discovery in a rosy daze of nostalgia special only to them. People of my parents’ generation tended to rhapsodize over the 1960s. They’ve forgotten all the times they couldn’t have a drink because it was Sunday and the shops were shut, etc, etc. Our memories become canonized. We all do it.
There’s an old raver’s joke: How many clubbers does it take to change a lightbulb? Fifty. One to change the lightbulb and forty-nine to say lightbulbs ain't what they used to be...

Posted by gledwood at 11:57 PM GMT
Updated: Thursday, 28 December 2006 5:01 PM GMT
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Comments Page 1 of 1
Thursday, 28 December 2006 - 12:45 PM GMT
Name: "Old Head"
Great blog mate! You are an excellent writer.....Stay safe and look forward to better times in 2007. You should write for Black Poppy....(google it...)
Best,
An Old Head