Ha! Fuck you, 2011!

Yeah. Not a fan of last year. Wasn’t a great one. Losing a parent and your mind, all at once? Not good – especially when played out against an angst-ridden, piratical soundtrack. Not good at all.

But but BUT – ding dong the witch is dead! 2011 has finally, at last, took-its-time-but-got-there-in-the-end, done the right thing and fucked right off.

You know what? I’m going to use an exclamation mark: ! In fact, have several: !!!!!!!!! No matter what else happens (and I expect it will, else has a habit of happening…), 2011 will never, ever be seen again!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!

!!! (OK. I’ll stop now. Devil’s punctuation…)

I went to my friend’s house last night, on New Year’s Eve. He’s had a pretty shitty, turbulent year too. We ate curry, drank cocktails and sat in front of the fire gossiping like old women. And then at midnight, we raised our glasses of champagne, did the kiss thing, then went outside and released a Chinese lantern. Not to welcome in the new, but to see out the old. The picture on the right shows what we wrote on it.

I’ve never launched a Chinese lantern before. I had read that they’re trying to ban them, and decided that ‘they’ were health & safety gone mad killjoys. And then I read the instructions last night – ‘do not release within 5 miles of an airport or military base’ and thought – seriously?!

And then my friend lit it, and whoosh! It caught like the Australian bush. Ooh. Very flamey, aren’t they? And then it got really windy while he was holding it, waiting for the trapped air to heat up, and it swept up and nearly set his beard on fire. And then he let go and it hurtled sideways into the hedge in his front garden, and he risked life, limb and posh winter coat to rescue it (I confess a little bit of wee came out here, I was laughing so hard). He let go of it again and it went up, had a (heartstopping) little rest on his neighbour’s TV aerial before finally, finally sailing off into the night.

Yeah. They should ban Chinese lanterns, they really should.

2011 didn’t want to go, the tenacious, vicious, weaselly little bastard. It hadn’t finished with us. But happily, we had finished with it, and we went back inside and carried on drinking and gossiping for another 3 hours.

Now. Can we not have a year like that again, please?