Formula for a good new year?
Don’t plan anything. Run away for a week out of the city to your parent’s beachside house, because 2010 was a really difficult year. Indulge in being looked after like you’re a teenager. Prentend that the 31st of December is any other night.
At 5pm on new years eve you discover that the local RSL is holding a carnival and fireworks display - which is rare in the over-regulated OH&S safety world we live in today. Usually fireworks are viewed from precarious positions around Sydney Harbour, always beautiful, but from miles away so that the picture and sound are out of sync. Then you go home because you can’t get in anywhere and cabs are non existent on the busiest night of the year.
This time however, you pack up and head out for some old school fun. It takes you back to being 8 in your back yard in summer, when your parents sneak home some crackers to let off in the garden, from the days before they were illegal because too many teenage boys blew off fingers doing stupid things.
There is no warning or countdown when the show starts, but for the few hundred people who rush suddenly to the boundary ring and look up.
They’re so close the ash falls on your face within seconds of the first few bangs. The smell is intoxicating the display is mesmorising.
It ends up being a fantastic new year, one of the best in a long time, because you didn’t plan anything. It sure beat the time you sprained your ankle in a field at a dance party or got stranded in New York without any luggage in the freezing cold.
Here’s hoping 2011 continues as it started.
