Fran Whiting on why she won’t be staying up for New Year’s Eve
What are your plans for New Year’s Eve? I for one am planning on having a very big night, writes Fran Whiting.
Opinion
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What are your plans for New Year’s Eve? Well, I don’t know about you, but I for one am planning on having a very big night.
That is, if your idea of a very big night is to have something to eat around six, have a shower, put your jimmy-jams on, curl up in front of the television, nod off, wake up with a little tiny piece of dribble on your chin, say “I think I’ll turn in”, wander off to bed and congratulate yourself on staying up until 10pm.
Here’s the thing, after decades of waiting for the clock to strike midnight and the new year to tick over, so I could hunt down a policeman to kiss in the Queen Street Mall, I now find I don’t care.
And by the way, that hunting down a policeman to pash thing was real, wasn’t it ladies? I now see it was very, very weird, but it was real. Sort of like the entire ‘80s, actually.
Anyway, this year I very much doubt I will be awake at midnight in order to welcome in 2025, except of course, if it coincides with one of the many, many times I wake up during the night.
In which case, I will make sure to wake John up to wish him a Happy New Year, because I know he will want to share the moment with me.
Also because I will be incandescent with fury that once again I am spending my night tossing and turning, while he lays there blissfully asleep in EXACTLY THE SAME POSITION HE FIRST ADOPTED WHEN GETTING INTO BED. Again, ladies, who’s with me?
There is, however, a chance I will be up past midnight, depending on whether John or I will be picking up our daughter from a New Year’s Eve party.
Yes, what I am discovering now is that you cannot escape New Year’s no matter how old you are, because just when you are getting comfortable with the notion of staying in, one or more of your children will become desperate to get out. I’m talking a raccoon clawing their way out of a steel trap desperate.
This means you have now entered what my friend Ellen calls the “In Between Years of Parenting”. If you have a daughter it is also what Britney Spears referred to as the “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman” era.
Either way, whether you have a teenage son or daughter, this era is mostly marked by asking your child how their day was, who their friends are, and sitting in your parked car outside houses.
Your children will be desperate to get out of your home, but not desperate enough to catch a bus there.
They are also not old enough to drive themselves there, or when they wish to depart/have stretched the curfew time to the absolute limit, to get a taxi home by themselves.
This means all over Queensland on New Year’s Eve there will be parents, very likely in their pyjamas waiting outside parties, secure in the knowledge that no-one will see them, because they are not allowed to get out of the car.
To those parents - Happy New Year to you, and good on you for doing the pick-up. And the showing up.
Fran loves
All the people who religiously read this column - it’s not lost on me how special this is. I can’t believe so many of you have stuck with me for so long, and I look forward to your company in 2025. Unless I win the lotto, in which case you will never hear from me again.
Originally published as Fran Whiting on why she won’t be staying up for New Year’s Eve
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