Changing the Calendar

I don't know how Swanvale Halt saw in the New Year this time round, as I was in London having dinner with Citizen Globaljumper who is over for a few days from Cairo where he is publications manager for the regional office of the World Health Organisation. We were meeting in Archway, not far away from the flat he used to share with his brother. I couldn't remember what the area around the Underground station used to be like, but it is currently what I suppose ought to be called a plaza with a few seats and a lot of empty space where, my friend tells me, there was a particularly hazardous road junction. The restaurant we went to was nearly fully booked although we were squeezed onto a side table (and fed some very pleasing fare), but the Angel, Highgate, our designated drinking hole afterwards, was surprisingly quiet.

Abandoning Mr Globaljumper at Archway I went to The Albany in Great Portland Street where Mal and a couple of the other longest-standing DJs in the Goth world had decided to stage a small event while the rest of that world gravitated towards Slimelight. Small it had to be, because the Albany's basement can't fit that many people. 'Tarantella' is a continuation of a string of occasional club nights Mal has run with others over the years. It reminded me a bit of how Tanz Macabre was in its Soho days though without the Arts Theatre Club's decadent elegance. Moments before midnight the music ceased and the PA system broadcast the bongs - isn't Big Ben still out of action at the moment? or perhaps it was turned on again for the occasion? - and we all toasted the year to come, hoping, as one always does, that it's better in some respects than the one past. I enjoy New Year and the sense of hope it brings, though of course January 1st and the clicking over of a date means nothing at all: the emotion and the aspiration are real enough. 

The journey back to Surrey was by no means as disagreeable as it had been in earlier years. The gyratory system around Waterloo didn't take us as far away from the station and the train, though crowded, was quite civilised. The guard kept up her announcements before and after each station doggedly, reminding passengers to check the folk around them weren't sleeping past their disembarkation point, and apologising for 'sounding like a broken record'. I thought she was perhaps a bit hysterical with weariness, but even that made the experience more tolerable. A Happy New Year to you!