Seeing in the New Year: the times they are a’changing for old fogeys

FOR young children, being able to stay up late was a rare privilege.

It was like being told you can eat as many sweets as you like.

Of course, you inevitably fell asleep anyway while waiting for Christmas or your birthday to arrive – just as you threw up long before the sweet packet was empty.

But in your late teens and early twenties, jolling through the night was a piece of old takkie.

Whether it be an all-night fishing jaunt or playing darts into the early hours, staying awake was easy.

Those of my (steadily dwindling) age group might remember staying up late to see a midnight show at the movies.

It had a magical appeal, maybe because one was defying the sleep gods. We did, however, turn night into day, often waking up at the crack of noon the following day.

Seeing in the New Year was the pinnacle of the late night celebrations: the thrill of the countdown to the next year.

Or new millennium, for that matter, as we fearfully anticipated aircraft falling from the sky, lifts not working and our computers giving up the ghost or exploding when we hit the Enter key.

Time changes everything, and since I am now at the age where I burn the midnight oil at 10pm, I can think of nothing worse or more anticlimactic than waiting for the midnight hour to chime, surrounded by drunken revellers while dodging firecracker bombs and watching out for flaming flares to fall from the sky.

Not to mention having to listen to the ‘dronkverdriet’ stories of lost loves, regrets over distant family and friends, and how if it wasn’t for other people they would have been rich and/or famous today.

And those slobbering kisses or back-breaking hugs from strangers you don’t know from Adam; or the inevitable fights that break out when the booze kicks in.

Not to mention sharing the roads with inebriated, hooter-pounding drivers and the poor animals that are petrified from the noise.

It’s not the greatest way to see in what we all hope will be a better, more peaceful and prosperous year.

No, thank you. I will rather stay at home, get an early night and rise at dawn to check out the dolphins at Alkantstrand.

While I do that, I will wish those wending their weary way homeward a ‘Happy New Year’.

Who would want to give up a warm bed and home comforts in exchange for the noisy anti-climax of seeing in the New Year? Not this old fogey, writes DAVE SAVIDES