SO, it’s ‘that time of year’ again. You can’t go into Topshop without being blinded by sequins and every time you get on a bus or train you find that all the seats have been filled with shopping bags. It’s only a couple of weeks until university finishes… but that’s engendering little excitement considering the amount of work still to do before then. There’s no respite over the holidays either: no, that’s when you have the pleasure of studying for the January exams (when, really, what you should be doing is spending entire days watching box-sets and eating Toblerone). Adding to this stress is the annual debate over what to do for New Year in order to ensure it is a ‘truly fantastic’ night, a ‘night like no other before it’.

Ha. Everyone knows Hogmanay is the most over-hyped event of the year. Any night out that’s been planned weeks in advance is bound to be a disappointment, but since every decent nightclub in Glasgow sells out of their Hogmanay parties weeks in advance to panic-buyers, you don’t really have a choice but to be organised (ridiculously) early.

So what to do? Avoid it altogether? Or risk the evening being a failure? Staying in is simply too tragic; being ill or looking after children are the only acceptable excuses for such poor form. If the saying about ‘starting the New Year as you mean to continue’ it has any value then bringing it in with Jackie Bird and Gaelic folk music probably isn’t the way to go. But then again, starting 2013 stood in an over capacity nightclub having lost everyone you came out with and paying twenty quid for the pleasure is just as bad. Depressingly, I counted down to 2012 standing in the cloakroom queue at Optimo’s Glue Factory party. The rest of the night was forgettable apart from the hour-long walk home to the other side of Glasgow (there’s about as much chance of getting a taxi on the busiest night of the year as there is of making it through Christmas Day without a family argument).

Which brings us to the only solution to the Hogmanay dilemma: hope that one of your pals has a party, or if they don’t, throw one yourself! It’s guaranteed to be a more entertaining, cheaper and memorable night than another one spent dancing to David Guetta in ABC. You’ll get to spend it with the people you know and like, drinking whatever booze you fancy and listening to the music of your choice. Now that’s certainly the best way to start and continue the year 2013 that I can think of.

By Gillian Montgomery
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Strathclyde Telegraph