New Year's Eve

R and I went to Stratford for lunch today, as we like to do on New Year's Eve. At the third time of trying we finally managed a meal at the Turquoise Kitchen (the previous two bookings having had to be cancelled due to someone in the party being ill), and enjoyed it very much. So much, in fact, that by the time we left we were so full we could barely totter back through town to the car.

We don't generally stay up for midnight these days, the demise of yet another year feeling like something best ignored at our age, so we didn't bother with whatever the TV channels were offering by way of festivity, and instead watched another couple of episodes of the fourth series of Slow Horses. By the time we'd done that, it hardly seemed worth leaving the final two episodes until 2025, so we watched those as well - and by the time we'd done that it was as near midnight as made almost no odds. When twelve o'clock arrived, all hell broke loose outside: if not exactly a war, it sounded as though there was at least a military skirmish going on, which was astonishing given that we live pretty much in the back end of nowhere. Don't get me wrong - I love a firework - but I firmly believe that they belong in organised displays, and that unlicensed civilians shouldn't be able to get hold of them and set them off whenever and wherever they please. It's not just domestic pets, farm animals, and me that hate New Year's Eve pyrotechnics: birds are distressed by them as well.

Enough, guys, OK? Enough.