Hogmanay (pronounced [ˌhɔgmə'ne:] — with the main stress on the last syllable - hog-muh-NAY) is the Scots word for the last day of the year and is synonymous with the celebration of the New Year in the Scottish manner. Its official date is the 31 December. However this is normally only the start of a celebration which lasts through the night until the morning of the 1 January or, in many cases, 2 January.
The roots of Hogmanay reach back to the pagan celebration of the winter solstice. In Europe, this evolved into the ancient celebration of Saturnalia, a great Roman winter festival, where people celebrated completely free of restraint and inhibition. The Vikings celebrated Yule, which later became the Twelve Days of Christmas, or the "Daft Days" as they were sometimes called in Scotland. The winter festival went underground with the Protestant Reformation and ensuing years, but re-emerged near the end of the 17th century.
The Cadet is going to Edinburgh with her family, so Mowgli and I put our kilts in our rucks sacks, fill the boot of the beetle with alcohol and head up to Glasgow.There is little or no plan, but basically, we will sniff out some parties with the assistance of Nine Inch Nina, my brother, and anyone else who gets in our way in the next 12 hours or so.
We have gone overboard on the alcohol, having decided that we are not going to run out. The boot of the care contains:
Red wine - six bottles:
White wine - 2 bottles:
Jack daniels - 2 bottles:
Spiced rum - 1 bottle:
Were we to drink this in the next 12 hours, even though we are wearing kilts, which surely increases your tolerance to alcohol, we would definitely die. The amount of alcohol exists in the boot of the car in order that it can act as our own personal stash which we can come back to if we run out of alcohol. Our first port of call is a drink with my brother in the Halt Bar on Woodlands road:
He isn't there and a phone call tells us that he is next door at the Arlington:
He lives near here, so is a main stay at most of the local bars. I know the mates that he's with, so we settle into the beers quite easily. It turns out that they have Budvar on tap:
Mowgli has been mourning Czech beer since he got back to scotland, so we take a few pints of it. It doesn't taste as good as it does in Prague, but it is still far better than Tennants.
After we've discussed plans for the night and had a few more drinks, Mowgli and I head to Nine Inch Nina's. She's nto answering her phone but she told us to come round, so we head over there to see what's happening. We check the boot of the car and take a bottle of wine for her house party. We have a taste for beer now, so we leave the rest and head to an off license for some cold beers. Having started on the Czech beers we get 6 bottle of Staropramen each:
We get a Taxi to the other side of Kelvingrove park only to discover that ИiN is AWOL. The Staropramen comes in handy as we walk back to the Halt Bar, while trying to get either Nine Inch Nina Ms. Diddley on the phone to find out what is happening.
We get back to the Halt and settle into more pints of Budvar, until Mowgli's kilted friend arrives, at which point we head into town to meet the recently contacted Nina at Miso the Japanese sushi bar:
It's a 15 minute walk into the centre, and we have returned to the car to pick up the last three bottles of Staropramen for the road:
By the time we get to Miso, we're not on the guest list, so have to wait outside until Nina arrives to network us in the door.
We sit on the wall finishing our beers until Nina arrives and gives us a big bear hug... Then it's into miso where we feel slightly out of place. It's a classy place, and a little far removed from the Arlington....
Nina and I always drink Jack Daniels together, and tonight is no exception:
Nina's art work hangs on all the walls of Miso, and I get the drunken Hogmanay tour. I have one bad photo taken in the club:
The bar closes and we do the New Year count down followed by the ubiquitous hugging and well wishing of people you have either just met or don;t know at all. During auld lang syne we did the can can to an array of flashing cameras. It maybe have been the kilts, or maybe the Offenbach appreciation society had chosen to spend their hogmanay in Miso. We are keen to go off and start on the first footing parties. Wikipedia defines first footing as:
First-Foot, in British folklore, especially that of the north and Scotland, the first person who crosses the threshold on Christmas or New Year's Eve. Good or ill luck is believed to be brought the house by First-Foot, and a female First-Foot is regarded with dread. In Lancashire a light-haired man is as unlucky as a woman, and it became a custom for dark-haired males to hire themselves out to take the New Year in. In Worcestershire luck is ensured by stopping the first carol-singer who appears and leading him through the house. In Yorkshire it must always be a male who enters the house first, but his fairness is no objection. In Scotland first-footing was always more elaborate than in England, involving a subsequent entertainment.
We have a couple of glasses of champagne and then leave:
The walk towards the west is fun. Everyone has now been drinking, spirits are high and there is a general agreement in the streets of Scotland at this time of year that you wish everyone happy new year and say hello and have random conversations. It's great, and it's very glasgow.....
We manage to have 1 hour conversation in a newspaper shop when we go in for a diet coke and a packet of crisps. By the time we get back to the Halt bar to track down my brother, its about 2.30 - its taken us the best part of 2 hours to walk 2 miles. The phone networks are down and my bro is nowhere to be seen, but eventually after many more drunken conversations and invites to parties in places which too obscure and far away. Eventually my brother appears to tell us that he's found an open window which leads to a party we can gate crash. We get a bottle of bourbon from the car each and head along....
It turns out that the party is extremely boring.... pretty inconsiderate of them to leave a window open when the party isn't up to much....
We head along great western road to byres road, where we are pretty sure there has to be some parties. We head into one party where my brother knows some people. Its a standard student party, and isn't up to much, but we stay for a little while and drink a few more JD and cokes. It's been a while since I was at a student party, so the general attitude and arrogance which everyone seems to emit gets on my nerves somewhat. The party is not interesting enough for Mowgli and I's European pallettes, or more to the point out fantasy of what Glasgow should look like on Hogmanay.
This is the major problem of Hogmanay. Everyone expects this wonderfully wild party to happen so people are disappointed. We are quite happy, but it certainly hasn't been the wild times we expected. Sometimes you feel liek you have to force the good party, just because you are trying to top 19?? when it was so wild that you don't expect it to be anything else, but we tend to look to the past with rosey tinted specs. We are now on our way out to downanhill where there is the promise of a subdued, but still awake party.
We have decided that we aren't going to be in Scotland for next year's Hogmanay. It's too good an opportunity to discover the pulse of another city, and it appears we've ran too far to get home.
We wander through the big houses and winding streets of Hyndland and Dowanhill until we get to the house in question, checking along the way for suitable parties. It appears that everyone has retured early - although it is about 6am.
When we arrive, it is indeed a quiet party, but it's some friendly people and low and behold, there's a guitar:
Okay..... It's a robust beast with pretty high action which makes my drunken fingers ache, but it is a guitar. Between swigs of Kentucky's finest we blast out a few Lemonheads, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Neil Young covers, before settling on a 12 bar blues. We manage to do what by memory was a 45 minute blues jam with Mowgli improvising lyrics based on what we'd got up to in the previous year(alright most of them were based on the previous week, but you get the picture); which is quite a good way to end a year. Maybe it was our drunken ears, but it sounded amazing - improvised solos, improvised lyrics etc. etc.
The drinking and playing continues until about 8am, until we find ourselves wandering aimlessly along Great Western Road trying to hail a taxi, a half empty bottle of Jack daniels each. We contemplate various possibilites at finding a party - another scout along Byres Road??, Murano street student halls?? but eventually since the sun is coming up, we decide to head back to the flat and go to bed.
After visiting the bank, arranging a mortgage and managing to pay the extraordinarily inflated rate for the taxi we make it back home. We are about to go to bed, but can hear a party somewhere, after sniffing around for a while we discover that its coming from the fan in the Kitchen:
We can hear a party through the pipes. It's about 9am. We are in a dodgy area of Glasgow and we after listening for 10 minutes, we decide that we can't hear enough women or Seattle Grunge to merit dirtying our kilts by doing a Bruce Willis through the heating system......
And so with that note the year is over.......
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