Hogmanay

The period of mist and mellow fruitfulness has passed, and we’re plunged headlong into that time of conspicuous consumption referred to as ‘The Festive Season’.

Now aside from the fact it starts about the middle of September, I’m okay with Christmas. It’s a happy time, to be savoured with family and friends, and of course it’s a magical event for the Grandkids. But no sooner is Christmas done than the dreaded New Year arrives. I’ve never really seen the point of this additional binge so hot on the heels of the previous one, but this year I’m dreading it, as the wife and I will be spending it with the outlaws in Edinburgh.

Based on previous experience, there appear to two ways of celebrating Hogmanay in that grand auld toon. You can join the crush in the centre, where about a hundred thousand punters pile into Princes Street and recreate the Black Hole of Calcutta on a vast scale. There you’ll stand for hours, crushed like a sardine behind crowd barriers in the freezing cold (and like as not, pissing rain), while complete strangers tell you how much they love you, and everyone tries to convince everyone else that they’re having. a. wonderful. time. At midnight the fireworks will briefly blossom over the castle, then with a sense of anti-climax, everyone will stagger off, leaving behind several tons of litter, and hundreds of gallons of piss swilling around in doorways.

Alternatively, you can congregate at the in-laws, where dozens of complete strangers will tell you how much they love you. Old gits will dampen the atmosphere by insisting that the telly is on. This is so they can watch her off BBC Scotland’s early evening news programme introduce a series of cunts in tartan, who will proceed to prance about like fannies whilst yelling ‘yeeee ha!’, accompanied by a couple of tools playing unrecognisable jigs on fiddle and accordion. Everyone will try to convince everyone else that they’re having. a. wonderful. time.

As midnight approaches, mein host will instruct everyone to ‘charge their glasses’, and the reverential countdown to ‘The Bells’ will commence. Three, two, one… ‘Happy New Year!’. Everyone will hug everyone, and my mad bitch of a sister-in-law, now well oiled, will grab hold of me, shove her tongue down my throat and attempt to play ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on my tonsils. Then everyone will attempt to neck more food and drink than seems humanly possible while some cunt insists on bawling ‘My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose’ at the top of his voice. Matters will proceed in this vein until around five am, when the wife and I will collapse into bed. The room will then proceed to revolve around us as we hover on the tortured fringes of sleep, feeling like death warmed up.

Around midday I’ll struggle out of bed in urgent need of a piss. Then shivering and with a mouth that tastes like a camel’s enclosure, I’ll lurch downstairs in search of coffee. The wife, normally the epitome of womanly loveliness and elegance, will resemble the Wreck of The Hesperus, and will plead pitifully to be left to die in peace. In the kitchen, I’ll be greeted with a boisterously cheerful ‘Happy New Year!’ from the in-laws, and an enthusiastic ‘let’s get the bacon rolls on!’. Jesus. A bacon roll’s just what I’ll need when my head feels like a cannonball that’s about to plummet due south and exit explosively from my arsehole. ‘Any Andrews’ Liver Salts?’ I’ll croak. ‘Ha ha’, they’ll crow, ‘th’ Anglish never cad hawld their drenk!’

And New Year’s Day will drag on, with me doing my utmost to avoid noise of any description and alcohol of any kind, and longing to get back to the comfort of my own bed. The awful horror of excess indulgence and enforced joviality is bad enough, but what I really can’t stand about Hogmanay is the self-congratulatory heartiness of it all; that ‘here’s tae us, wha’s like us? Gey few, an’ they’re a’ deid’ maudlin, mawkish sentimentality. Mercifully by the 3rd of January we’ll be back in the quiet of our own house, and it will be, as my dear old mom used to say, ‘as far away as it will ever be’. Roll on.

Nominated by Ron Knee

98 thoughts on “Hogmanay

  1. Anyone partaking of New Year celebrations must surely die from the embarrassment of it all, with all that false bonhomie it’s hard to find a more concocted sack of bollocks

  2. A well written cunting Mr Knee.
    New year falls under the category of what I refer to as “forced fun”.

    I haven’t been out on New Years since 2001. I remember taking a leak and some drunken cunt at the urinal next to me told me that I suck people off.

    In hindsight I should have kicked the fucker in the back of the knees and smashed his head into the urinal, but being a relatively non-violent sort, I told him to fuck off and walked away.

    Anyway – I wish all cunters and admin a Happy New Year.

  3. Happy new year to cunters near and far. Just wait until 2020 is confirmed by VAR before celebrating it properly.

  4. Nicola Sturgeon puts the ‘HOG’ in Hogmanay, that is for damned sure.

    I fuckin’ hate NYE and all the ‘New Year, New me”, resolutions bollocks.

    Same me next year. A miserable old cunt who resolves to remain a miserable old cunt, as that is the only resolution I will keep!

  5. Fucking fireworks. Round our way there’s a couple of retards who sell these fucking things the year round which means that anything from little Jimmy’s birthday to great cunt auntie’s wake gets kicked off with them.

    I’ve got dogs for pets and it scares the shit out of them. One of them trembles so much she can’t stand and there’s no comforting them. November 5th lasts about two weeks, one before and one after and as for tonight it’s like a replay of the Somme. Another of mine has squeezed herself into a narrow gap behind the settee which I’ll have to move later on to get her out. She went there after two explosions like fucking depth charges rattled the floor boards.

    A pox on the cunts who sell them and the cunts that buy them. Total cunts the lot of them.

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