 Yes, I suppose I have reached the age when we deserve to congratulate myself for surviving another year. I always wondered why older people went over the top a bit on a New Year's Eve.
In my minds eye I can still see that swirl of bleary eyed, half laughing, half crying working-class faces, just before midnight, on New Years Eve many years ago in the drunken melee that used to happen in the middle of the road, at the junction of Spellow Lane and Walton Road in the district of Liverpool where I spent my childhood. It was somewhat touching that the crowd congregated over the spot that was once the site of an underground Ladies and Gents Public Toilet, where, during the notorious May Blitz of 1941, hundreds of people were killed by a German bomb which dropped straight down the entrance steps to the toilets and killed them all. A few minutes before the catastrophe they had made their run for shelter, they were drinking and singing in the bright Saloon Bar of THE ROYAL OAK pub.
And now, after more than fifty years, the celebrants are there before me again. Once again I can see the brutalised expressions, the slobbery kisses, the exhibitionist cavortings, the maudlin sentimentality. In spite of the war. Irrespective of the bombing. They had escaped the virulent diseases that remained unconquered at that time - they had survived to live another year - another year in their drab, hopeless lives.
When I look back now it brings a lump to my throat, for most of them were decent hardworking people - people whom fate had dealt a raw deal. They deserved better. Things have changed a lot since then. That sweaty communal togetherness has disappeared. People 'see the New Year in' at home alone, or with their family and a few friends, watching other people celebrate on the Television. Even the people on the TV seem awkward, stilted, false. They appear to be vaguely ill at ease in the brightly lit studio. You cringe in your armchair as you witness the phony bon-homme. The false good-will grates on your nerves and engenders a feeling of 'embarrassment by proxy' that is thankfully blotted out by another slug of scotch!
For me New Year still brings memories of Liverpool Church bells ringing out and the moan of ships sirens wafting up from the River Mersey at the midnight hour - the sound of raucous singing in mean streets - the tinkle of breaking glass - the taste of salty tears. Memories of half remembered friends and half forgotten foes!
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