Happy New Year. I know that is a rather conventional opening but as you can realistically only use it once a year, I don’t feel as though I am in danger of excessive repetition. I suppose I could have said Happy New Decade, which is a much rarer salutation. So, yes, Happy New Decade. There has to be a reasonable chance it’s the last time I will be able to say that, unless they use the Gregorian calendar on Cloud 9. At least I was able to say Happy New Millennium too and I’ve had cause to remember that occasion a few times over the Christmas holiday. I spent the Millennium Eve, 10,000 feet up on the Monta Rosa massif in Italy along with a few old buddies and my first wife, an extremely accomplished Canadian skier. We stayed in a beautiful old hotel that was in the process of being rescued from terminal decay by the grandson of the original owner. The downstairs was wonderfully cosy with electricity supplied by a generator and water from melted snow. The upstairs rooms were wood-panelled and did have beds, but modern luxuries beyond that were conspicuous by their absence. After a fairly simple climb up to the top of the mountain on skis we arrived there in late afternoon under clear skies and with the mercury plunging to minus twenty degrees. We had been forewarned to take our arctic sleeping bags, which were reasonably essential as the pine-lined bedroom walls were white with a layer of hoar frost. Getting in and out of bed was interesting and any need to pee at night was firmly resisted. In addition to our group of eight there was a table of loud and entertaining Swedes, all in dinner jackets and long dresses (against modern convention the men wore dinner jackets and the women were in the dresses) and another fifty or so guests from Italy, who certainly knew how to party. We had taken up a reasonable supply of fireworks to brighten the midnight sky, but stupidly I had allowed an old mate, who was suffering badly with flu, to rig up my piece de resistance, a multi-barrelled rocket launcher that was going to hurl multiple pyrotechnics into the star-struck sky. “Was going to” probably gives the hint that something went wrong! The Wally had strapped it to a post upside down and having lit the blue touchpaper and retired we watched in horror as the expensive box of tricks emptied its load into the unsuspecting snow three feet below it. It didn’t quite produce the effect we had hoped for. However, we did have a wonderful view of the dramatic displays around Milan and Turin in the valleys miles below.
All this was brought into sharp relief as I met the son in law of very old friends a couple of days after Christmas and he had spent a number of years as a ski instructor in Champaluc and knew of the hotel high above, which heartbreakingly burned down a few years ago. Maybe it was the Millennium Bug……
Having seen in the New Year, in extremely sober and boring fashion, we plan to frolic and cavort on the first day of 2020 with newish friends from whom music oozes from every pore and who love to play games. An evening of song, dance, Monopoly and charades beckons. With three young sons from different families who all play table tennis to a high standard, I fancy that Ping Pong will feature quite highly too. Fourteen year old Master Tutt is a few years older than the other two, so there may be tears at midnight if he doesn’t reign supreme. Our hosts’ son, four years younger, does have a national ranking though, so competition will be fierce. There will definitely be tears if they beat me.
The decade is already fifteen hours old. The trick now is to remember to sign everything 2020. Good luck.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 