All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Wonderful strange stories from around the world

New Year's Eve, Why?

What is it that makes normally polite members of society, who sip sherry and fiddle with delicacies the rest of year, go out and drink four pints of industrial strength tequila, dance naked on tables in front of complete strangers, and even eat the mescal-sodden worm out of the bottle?

Answer? New Year's Eve.

It's the one night of the year when the energy of 12 full moons melt into one, the plot is optional, and the director is called Mr. Excess. It's the night when love is a verb. It's the night that we deliberately go out of control, and do things that are spectacular enough to be worth exaggerating about later.

I was safely back in my cave - having just taken the mammoths out for a late night pee- when the old year was still receiving it's last rites. My genius of a girlfriend was already brilliantly asleep.

Suddenly, her tail twitched, and dressed only in moonlight and inspiration, she told me to lie down. She then proceeded to wheel out her new invention for the New Year; a homemade, pedal-driven, acupuncture applicator.

" It's only a prototype," She hissed. " Why have you turned pale?"

" Ha! I'm not afraid of that !" I replied haughtily. " I've seen more frightening things fall out of a cheeseburger.

Later, the hospital nurses were sympathetic-but giggled just the same-as I lay drugged, hostile, and sore. Down the ward, I heard my girlfriend trying to convince an incredulous doctor to use solar power to regulate my drip-fed morphine. As her voice rose to an elegant shriek-mangling perfectly respectable grammar along the way-stray dogs began to roll over and cover their ears, while sensitive medical equipment blinked on, blinked off, and then blacked out.

I remember the doctor running away, chased by flames. I remember a hissing sound, and I really don't remember anything else.

I came to at home. She was peering at me through a large magnifying glass. " Facial astrology, " she said, as though answering a question. " To ascertain your fortune in the coming year."

It turned out that Saturn was in the ascendant, the moon was somewhere else entirely, and my grammar was shipwrecked on the wrong side of a passing comet.

However, something was moving in the right direction because she murmured seductively in my ear, " Is that a work permit in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?"

It's hard to make resolutions for a new year when you are full of holes and can't even remember the last one.

But under the intense gaze, I promised my pretty little fire maker that I would:

• Look up every word I didn't understand, starting with the word " budget."
• When noticing " Suggested Price " labels in shop windows, immediately go inside and make a suggestion to the person who suggested it.
• Keep my passport ready and the engine running.
  
• Buckle my swash more often.
  
• Send car stickers of sympathy to friends in Australia which read,
  " IF YOU MUST DRINK AND DRIVE, TRY TO DO IT WHEN THE HEALTH MINISTER IS CROSSING THE STREET."
  
• Promise to stop cashing God's checks because they always bounce.
  
• Then there was a sharp crack as the magnifying glass connected with my skull.
• "Oh, and to light my baby's fire everyday…," I added quickly.
  

She hissed me a " Happy New Year," slithered alongside, and handed me her two favorite creations; a scale - massager, and a bottle of uncoiling lotion. I have to say that when I got to work with them, old acquaintances were completely forgotten.

By Roger Beaumont

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