For safety’s sake I usually stay in on New Year’s Eve. It makes no difference. There was the year when a drunk phoned me up in my bedsit in Oxford to accuse me of being in bed with his wife; I was on the bed alone with my guitar. There was New Year’s Eve 1999 in Battersea when I fell asleep, sober as an actuary, at about ten in the evening and woke up at quarter past midnight to vomit everything I had eaten since lunchtime into the kitchen sink because it had been accompanied by some dodgy mayonnaise.

This year I was looking forward, for the first time in years, to attending a nice party with some nice people. Unfortunately I have had some kind of gastroenteritis/headcold combo for the past few days and am still not over it. Yesterday I pulled a muscle during a particularly violent sneeze so I am also finding it difficult to move. One day I’ll look back and laugh.

The microwave is bleeping. My easycook rice is ready. I am raising a glass of Lucozade™ to you all.

Happy new year!

[UPDATE: On the radio Steve Wright has just started playing Chris De Burgh’s Lady In Red]