Beginning

As arbitrary chronological markers go, I'm quite keen on New Year's Day, especially when it was bright and fresh like today. I almost felt like things really were starting afresh. Of course, I'm not daft enough to make any new year's resolutions and certainly not daft enough to make them public even if I had. But I might try to do things better this year.

Something it seems impossible to do well, however, is New Year's Eve. If you're over twenty and not stoned out of your tiny mind in a club somewhere it can only be a damp squib. We both dozed off in front of the telly and just struggled through to midnight before giving in completely. And why is it necessary now to have fireworks every year? I blame the Millennium for the expectation that we want to send colourful explosives into the air at midnight -- something surely antisocial enough to warrant a corporate ASBO -- and the subsequent annoyance of various small bouts of fireworks round the city from about 11.45 pm onwards. Stop it, please. The bagpipes are bad enough but having to withstand the bloody London Eye and Natasha Kaplinsky every year is just too much.

One definite plus, however, is that I now have a better camera phone, so I should be able to illustrate this nonsense with front-line reportage photos like this one from RJR. Not quite as touching, perhaps, but better than the library footage I've had to use so far...