I believe that nothing good happens after midnight, even at Hogmanay 2024

Don’t wait up for the witching hour

Take your cue from the 1984 film, Gremlins, this Hogmanay.

Those Mogwai were sent to teach us that nothing good happens after midnight. That’s when, after ill-advised munchies, they turned from kawaii fuzzies to pesky monsters, via a strange and sticky cocoon stage.

Indeed, I am totally of the school that it’s best to quit while you’re ahead.

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Also see Cinderella, if you don’t want your silver stilettos to change into Skechers and your Uber turning into a neep.

For this reason, I give you permission to NOT go out late this New Year. Or ever. Most people who work in accident and emergency, fire prevention or for the police, would probably offer the same advice.

I can’t remember the last time that I stayed up past, say, 11pm. I never miss that last bus home. It is my red and white carriage. Thank you for your service LRT, in ferrying all us premature party-poopers home.

Whenever there’s a shindig, I’m always the first to arrive and the first to leave. It’s not fashionable, but I’m a style outlier, like an Aldi version of Vivienne Westwood.

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I’ll glide off, just as they’re ordering another round. You leave them wanting more, rather than sickening them with your increasingly slurred chat.

My bed starts calling me at approx 9pm, with its siren song.

The electric blanket plays some come-hither synth pop to woo me. The feather down pillow does The Birdie Song. I obey.

Even this New Year, I’ll probably turn in before the fireworks start popping off.

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They’ll be onto the ‘should auld acquaintance be forgot’, and I’ll already be nothing but a distant memory.

If I do make it to 12am, I’m certainly not going to be tempted out of the house under any circumstance, even if the soul singer Wilson Pickett did once sing that the midnight hour was when his ‘love came tumbling down’.

Nah. I stopped searching for tumbling love some years ago.

At Hogmanay, we’ll be doing our usual - staying in a wee self-catering cottage in the East Neuk, eating cheese, drinking perry from Anstruther cider shop, Aeble, and ignoring the pressure to be out on the street.

Perhaps we’ll have a stroll down to the harbour, to listen to the chink of fishing boats nudging each other in the wind, but that’ll do, and that’ll definitely occur way before midnight.

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We have to be up early, as the East Neuk Smokehouse does a fantastic New Year’s Day pizza and we’ll need a brisk 2025 walk before that, to build up an appetite.

I feel that only disappointment lies at that morning’s witching hour.

There’s always a sense of anticipation for this magical moment, as if we’re all waiting for the ball to drop at Times Square, but the event just fizzles out, and now it’s late.

It turns out your best moment was somewhere at the start of the celebrations, not at the end.

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I wasn’t always like this. I remember the New Year of the millennium. I went to a party at Edinburgh School of Art, and the whole room was dressed in silver. We ended up on Lady Lawson Street, so we could see the fireworks and count down the seconds of 1999.

There were many other late nights.

Going to gigs or clubbing, to Edinburgh’s Calton Studios or the Venue, and emerging, like a stunned mole, at 4am-ish, with sticky soles and hair smelling like cigarettes.

The sun rising while I sat chatting with a friend on (someone else’s) New Town step.

Victoria Street at HogmanayVictoria Street at Hogmanay
Victoria Street at Hogmanay | AFP via Getty Images

Despite those good times, I can now see that I almost always reached my peak at, say 11-ish. After two drinks, I’m jolly. After more than four, I turn maudlin.

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My best friend, back in my early twenties, was an unstoppable late night force. She’d rail against the end of the party and always stick to the bitter end, then it was back to hers.

The poor neighbours.

I’d get dragged along by her enthusiasm, and the night/morning would usually end with her still drunk at dawn doing a comedy routine on her exercise bike, with a Lambert & Butler menthol cigarette in one hand and mascara smudged under her eyes. Don’t ask. It was a thing. There is photo evidence somewhere.

I did eventually learn to head home, way before we hit that stage.

I’m pretty sure it was also her who karate kicked a postbox and broke her foot, but it’s all a blur.

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She was also a late night kebab fan. I only joined her once and had to concede that, though it was probably the ugliest thing I’ve ever eaten and there was too much raw onion, it was pretty tasty. In fact, the only thing that is good post midnight is food. Chips with salt and sauce, toast or bacon sannies, especially. I can see how Mogwai were tempted.

Anyway, we all know how that ended, and despite all the excellent post-midnight fun times, my overarching memory of staying out late is of trying to get home.

There were so many long and scary walks, negotiating burgeoning blisters, and trying to avoid dodgy blokes.

I’d walk, head down, never sure if I was safer on the brighter or darker side of the street.

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You wouldn’t see a black cab for miles, then three would appear near your house, when it was too late to hail them.

I feel those tired marathons cancelled out the joy of late night shenanigans.

Anyway, nights out are definitely over-rated.

And, if your electric blanket is calling, even at Hogmanay, who are you to resist?

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