OK, so even though it's a new year, it's still easy to get a few days behind on website posts.
Quick report on New Year's Eve – had a pretty quiet one, which suited me fine after the fairly hectic… oh, I don't know, *3 MONTHS PREVIOUS* !
Craig and Kate and I headed out for a really yummy Vietnamese meal (complete with roast duck & rolly pancake things – awesome !), and then we worked off the meal by walking into Trafalgar Square to do the countdowny thing.
It was a pretty eerie evening really – with the way people were walking the streets (blocked off to cars, so for once you could walk down the MIDDLE of Tottenham Court Road without getting killed !), it sort of felt a bit like a moment out of Shaun Of The Dead: moreso when we'd occasionally encounter large groups of prematurely pissed English people who had clearly peaked too early. Oh what I wouldn't have given for a cricket bat to despatch some of THEM with.
Anyway, we wandered in, past the fairly obvious and visual show of presence by The Met, and converged on Trafalgar Square.
Interesting choice of venue, given that we already knew that there was nothing actually happening there – but still, to a bunch of tourists, it's pretty cool to be able to look back and say you spent *a* New Year's Eve in Trafalgar Square.
Evidently one or 2 other punters had the same idea, cos the place was heaving. By 11:30 the police must've closed ranks, because announcements were going out over the PA that people weren't being let into the square any more.
Probably what I found most interesting about the night was how many French people seemed to be in the square with us. I'm not kidding, about 25% of the voices I heard were speaking French to each other. I realise that the weather in Paris sucked last week, but still… What was strangest to me though was that all these French people would choose to ring 2006 in at a location commemorating one of the greatest French naval defeats of all time. That's right, smile, sing, and wave at the little bloke on top of the column.
In typical British fashion, it started to persistently drizzle at midnight, so we dawdled back home again, and then polished off a bottle of 2002 Baby Grange.
So anyway, Happy New Year all!