Hogmanay 2015

Hogmanay (or New Year’s Eve for my non-Scottish friends) is the biggest party night of the year in Scotland, where almost everybody uses it as an excuse to go all out.

Getting transport can be a bit of a nightmare, and clubs tend to jack up their prices due to the demand, so unless you live in the centre of town, the best time is usually had at a good old fashioned house party. There’s a bunch of us in the South Side or close enough by now, so we decided to play host for the second year running.

We hung up some of the decorations left over from the wedding around the place, since I’m a sucker for fairy lights.

We should really have hung them higher, but even with a ladder I’m not tall enough to get to the roof of a tenement.

My pal Zoe came along, and brought a couple of her pals, which it turned out I already vaguely knew anyway. Hi Steve and Laura!

My sister and her boyfriend Ash have moved up from Leeds recently, and are only about a 25 minute walk away – so it was nice to have them there.

Euan claimed he was only going to be having a ‘wee drink’, and ‘not getting too pished’.

Whilst Pazy sported a Charlie Sheen, Andrew WK ‘Party Hard’ t-shirt – the alternative to my Prince Harry version.

As usual, the party started out very civilised, with us sitting about chatting.

but as the night wore on, eventually drifted between the kitchen and living room…

and gradually got a bit more lively.

and the dancing started.

and then culminated in displays of pure joy. I think this may have been a mass singalong to ‘Sunshine on Leith’. Not that many of us could recall the actual words.

We had set up this app called ‘Festify’ on Pazy’s suggestion, which uses Spotify to create a Democratised music playlist. Everybody logs on and adds in the songs they want, and can vote on other people’s choices. The ones with the most votes get played first. I was skeptical of the whole thing, but we rigged it up so it could be heard in both the kitchen and living room, and it worked pretty well. It was cool to see the playlist shuffling about as people voted on the big screen.

I’m not sure why, but top hats eventually came out. Ash ended up with a pot on his head – apparently because he felt left out. We also were biting chunks out of lemons in some display of raw testosterone.

by this point, Euan ‘I’m not getting too pished’ McCreath was asleep on the couch.

My memory is fairly fuzzy from this point on.

I do remember us getting through a stupid amount of pizzas, and some delicious sausage rolls though.

I’m not sure why there were on the floor.

I’m also pretty pleased with my decision to use the Sony RX100 instead of one of the Leicas tonight – particularly as I accidentally threw it across the room a couple of times.