New Year’s Eve is always a damp squib so when you wake up hungover & skint you’ll get no sympathy from me
“HAPPY New Year”, people. Or, the way I see it: just “New Year”.
Yes, I’m not only a New Year’s Eve bah humbug type, as I have been for the past 57 years.
It’s just that the prospect of a new year does nothing for me.
Not only are you supposed to have at least five New Year’s resolutions up your sleeve, but the very idea that at one minute past midnight your life is going to miraculously take a happier and more prosperous turn turns me right off.
I can’t recall the last time I stayed up until midnight on NYE, paid for a below-average but over-priced meal at a restaurant, or attended some kind of party that came with greater expectations than Charles Dickens could have dreamt of but — without fail — always ended as a damp squib.
So apologies if I have little empathy for your banging hangover and empty wallet this morning, while this smug, sober Swede went to bed before 9pm.
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So, here we are. A new year, a new you. Supposedly.
Except you are still the exact same person you were a few hours ago back in 2024.
Millions of you will resolve to make changes in your life — as if January 1 is the only chance you have to do it.
Others will join the band of smug, dreary Dry January fanatics and give up the booze for 31 days — not hard when the first day is likely to include one of the worst hangovers you’ll ever have.
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Many will give up smoking or take up some kind of random fitness routine which will be over by the time the cruel elbow of time nudges February.
It’s hard to feel hopeful when the very world itself is going to hell in a handcart with new and never-ending wars, an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and death and destruction all around.
For me, last year really was very challenging.
And for others, too, I’ve no doubt.
Not even the cheery news that a banana duct-taped to a wall sold for £4.9million could put a smile on my face, so it may be that I need to lower my already-sinking expectations for this coming 12 months.
Pope Francis has implored us not to look to the future with “hopelessness”.
Clearly, I need to up my positivity game.
In all fairness, I did manage to turn my life around six months into 2024 by deciding to embrace sobriety, and so far it’s been nothing short of life-changing.
‘Golden and glossy’
It doesn’t, however, mean that life has stopped throwing me curveballs.
Oh no, they just keep on coming — but I believe I’m better equipped to deal with them without the burden of rum running through my veins.
And I am learning to give positivity and gratitude a warm hug.
Instead of running the merciless hamster-wheel of negativity and self-pity, I’ve been trying as hard as I can to be grateful for the stuff in life that makes things a bit easier — whether that be finding a free parking space, remaining calm in the face of adversity, or discovering that my son has actually changed the toilet roll.
I really don’t ask for much.
I’m not after world domination.
What I really want is global peace.
While that looks more unlikely than ever in my lifetime, it’s this new- found inner peace I want to hang on to.
The fact that giving up alcohol could bring about such a different me is quite remarkable.
And it’s not about being a perfect person.
God help me if I see another infuriating, self-righteous ’sleb show off their perfect, shiny, happy, golden and glossy life on social media and implore me to manifest my life’s wishes, I might be driven to have an alcoholic mince pie.
I’m not after perfection in any way shape or form because even this blonde knows that’s an impossibility — but I am striving for progress.
That’s all I want and I’m prepared to work for it: Making life around me better.
Although winning the Lottery would also be nice . . .
We should face up to natural beauty like Pam
AS an ageing bird, yet another hope I have for 2025 is that we might see some ’slebs on the red carpet who actually look their age.
It’s enough to make you sick with envy because we’re constantly being fed images of what is rapidly becoming a trend across all walks and classes of life.
These ageless women do nothing for the self-esteem of regular women who are, in fact, actually ageing.
Which is perhaps why I need to reiterate my love, passion and marginally unhealthy obsession with the amazing Pamela Anderson, who has decided to go quietly into older age with NO make-up.
While I’m sure she might not be a complete stranger to the odd syringe of Botox, the fact that she is prepared to leave the house for a red carpet without any warpaint on is quite the revolution.
She’s exposing her natural beauty and it shows us that make-up and styling is just a mask, and away from that we all have our unique flaws to a greater or lesser extent.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but having the courage to tell the world to accept women’s faces for exactly what they are is fearless, gutsy and, dare I say it, heroic.
Would I have the courage to do the same?
Unlikely.
Seems I have to rizz my game
ONE of my biggest wishes for this New Year is to learn how to communicate with the youngest Ungrateful, my 16-year-old son.
Granted, he is bursting at the seams with hormones.
He is 6ft 1in of social expectation – a walking explosion of life’s pressures and friendships, not to mention being forced to pick his own clothes off the floor.
But to add to our sometimes fractured mother-son bond is the fact that we now no longer even speak the same language.
For I’m an old bird wot speaks normal.
Meanwhile, he is Gen Z and his way of communicating is giving sus vibes and leaving me feeling hella rejected at times.
It started last year with “sigma”.
He couldn’t look at me or pass me in the kitchen without muttering “sigma” at every turn.
Then came the arrival of skibidi rizz toilet. Honestly, no cap, bruh.
And the whole thing has left me straight up wrecked.
More often than not he is just plain salty, giving me main character energy.
At other times I get a hella side eye which just hits different.
He is so extra at times and it drives me nuts because he believes he’s GOAT.
It gives me major ick and leaves me shook.
Perhaps I should be grateful that he understood the assignment and at least his mates understand him but I would love him to be very mindful and very demure instead of constantly throwing shade and slaying me.
The compromise we’ve reached so far is that he forces me to say these weird things, which I don’t always understand, and then he sends them to his friends via Snapchat.
And they laugh.
For an old has-been, that’s not very demure
Single life's a winner
ANOTHER year and I’m still a Single Pringle becoming more reluctant to Mingle.
So it’s fitting then that we go into 2025 with yet another study of single life versus a coupled-up one.
Researchers claim there are three main personality traits possessed by those who are lifelong singletons.
They are supposedly less extroverted, less conscientious and less open to new experiences.
I’m not an eternal singleton on account of having been married too many times – but I am single now and would largely disagree with the outcome of this study.
And as if to back it up, I discovered last year that the happiest people in the world – according to another study – are single women and married men.
Think about it.
Single women are without the shackles of duty, expectation, domesticity, maternal or spousal responsibility, or a partner who snores.
And married men can come and go; have someone to pick up their stinky socks; takes the kids to the dentist and run their domestic life.
What’s not to love?
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The single life has definitely grown in appeal and I’m encountering a new generation of women around my age who are discovering that being “attached” no longer has the appeal it once had.
So I wish the world would stop judging single women as failures and instead applaud their independence, strength of character and grit.
Bully ban not the way
THIS year I hope with every cell in my dog-loving body that the Government reconsiders its nonsensical ban on XL bully breeds.
It was nothing but a knee-jerk reaction to a spate of horrific deaths caused by some XL bullies.
I signed the petition against the ban alongside 620k others, but instead of it being debated, MPs went straight for an outright law change.
I know plenty of gentle XL bullies who, in the hands of good owners, live happily alongside kittens and kids.
They are not devil dogs.
The reckless owners, on the other hand, who neglect, mistreat and do not train their pets, are the real devils.
A ban on them would be a start, but quite how we enforce that is another matter.