No One Ever Has Plans For NYE

Every year, my friends and I go through the same anguish. It starts in October, when the first festive rolls of wrapping paper arrive in Tesco, and oddly-flavoured lattes appear in all of the
coffee shops. 'What are you doing for New Year?' is whispered around flats, on campus, and whatsapp groups up and down the country.

Something needs to be done about this situation. No one ever knows what they are doing on New Year's Eve. Sometimes, even after it's over, no one knows what actually happened.

I've had new year's in a club, new year's at house parties, new year's in the village Scout Hut, new year's at home watching the London fireworks on television, and, for the past two years, new year's actually watching the fireworks amongst a shivering, and rather bolshy crowd. Each of these NYEs were great in their own little ways, but none of them validated my three months of questions.

That much-coveted view of Big Ben

Which brings me to this new year. After a dinner finishing at 11pm, we had 1 hour to navigate the crowds of the capital. And crowds there were. Trafalgar Square was already packed, but Sam decided that etiquette wasn't important in the last 60 minutes of 2014, propelling us through people who had been standing there for hours to get the view of Big Ben. We were verbally abused, and someone spilt a pungent alcoholic liquid over our bottles of Prosecco. Once through, Sam decided now was the time to attempt a crossing of the river. We got stuck on the mall. He admitted defeat. Some Germans began to talk about us, and I immediately jumped in to top up my oral skills for the end of the year. A common stereotype is that Germans are not polite. On the contrary, Germans have excellent social skills. I only had to murmur a handful of incorrectly-conjugated verbs before in came the compliments.

Fast forward to the early hours of 2015, and we had returned to Trafalgar Square and the excellent view of the  Big Ben. Sam was in deep discussion with a policeman who didn't really know how we would ever cross the river before January, 2. A Spanish man saw room for interruption, charging up to us and bringing the discussion to silence.
'Excuse me', his politeness was almost on a par to that of the Germans -  'Where is Big Ben?' - unfortunately his navigational skills were not.