I watched these four adults dance, furniture pushed to the sides of the living room

Laura Jane Williams finds magic, love and extraordinary memories on an ordinary New Year’s Eve

Last new year my intention was to stay in, candles lit, with a book, bath and bed at 10pm. I’ve never had a good New Year’s Eve at a party – the hype never lives up to the execution. A hot water bottle and an annual re-read of On Beauty, though? I’ve never been let down by that. I had my bath oils at the ready when my father texted to say he was making lobster mac ’n’ cheese. Did I want an early tea? By 6pm, I was in their bungalow, an emergency bottle of Bollinger in hand. By half past, my aunt and uncle had stopped by and, also unable to resist the lure of the lobster either, we all gathered around the dinner table.

We ate, we drank and, before we knew it, somebody had whacked on some old Northern Soul records at a volume improper for teatime and yet perfect for getting everybody on their feet. I watched these four adults dance, furniture pushed to the sides of the living room, each song tumbling from the speaker and crashing into a memory.

‘I remember this!’ my aunt cried, screaming in unison with my mother: ‘The Tomangoes!’ Turns out mum’s first boyfriend had dumped her after she’d scratched his record of the track, ruining a prized possession and their relationship. I’d never really thought about any boyfriend she might have had before my dad. I’d never really thought about her life before me, period; self-obsessed daughters that we can all be.

‘This takes me back,’ said Dad, spinning on his heel. ‘Tobi Legend!’ My mother flopped on the sofa beside me, and we watched him dance, his energy outshining us all. ‘One of the “three before eight”,’ he said. ‘At Wigan casino all-nighters, they’d always play the same three

‘I’VE NEVER BEEN SO ROOTED IN A MOMENT’

records at 8am. I’ve seen grown men cry to this!’ He sang, ‘Life is just a precious minute baby.’

I heard stories about how my mum and her sister would pay a local man 50p to drive them to discos, and they tried to show me how to do the Northern Soul dancing, too. There’s a knack, a rhythm outside of what you can hear. It’s actually very hard to keep spinning so much. You need to almost exist outside of yourself, or so within yourself that nothing else matters.

‘Open up your eyes and see it baby…’

‘Northern Soul was an escape,’ Dad said, between touching the floor behind him and twirling yet again. ‘Working-class escapism. You’d spend all weekend in compete denial of your existence with people from all over the country doing exactly the same.’ I watched him close his eyes and get transported back there.

‘Give yourself a better chance…’

There’s a motto for the Northern Soul era: ‘It’ll never be over for me.’ I understand why. I imprinted that night on my brain, the hours between 5pm and 10pm, New Year’s Eve 2018. What a beautiful, unexpected gift it was, getting to see, I think, for the first time, my family – not as Mum, Dad, Auntie and Uncle, but people. People with complex, gorgeous histories, who had been young and stupid and so very much in love with great music and good times.

‘…Because time will pass you, right on by…’

I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world, not even in the bath. I’ve never been so rooted in a moment. Grateful. Aware of the gift of being me, born to who I have been. The great fortune of it all. The magic. The love.

The song is right: life is a precious minute and time really will pass us by. But, that night, I learned that, when you least expect it, time will also sometimes stand still. If you’re lucky, it happens with the people you love on a night you didn’t plan for. And when it does, oh baby: those are the most life-affirming nights of all.