Betrayal by a friend and an explosive start to the Millennium are just some of the New Year's memories retold to CIAN TRAYNOR
KEN WARDROP
Film director
I spent New Year’s Eve 1999 working at a bar in Dublin that expected thousands to descend on the place, so they were charging a heavy fee to get in. About 25 people showed up. The staff outnumbered the clients and we had a mighty night because of it. I was dressed as an Oompa-Loompa and painted orange, giving out free shots – though for every one poured I had one for myself.
I remember thinking, “this is the way to do it,” because if you can’t be around the people you want to be with, which is impossible sometimes, you might as well help others enjoy their celebrations and get paid handsomely for it.
The worst was the time I was landed with babysitting my niece when I was 15. I was just on the cusp of the age when you think you could have that first New Year’s Eve on your own terms. But my brother was a young dad so I allowed him and his wife to go out on the tear and have a proper one.
I ended up ringing in the New Year on my own, watching Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show. I think my mother might have popped in with a Babycham at one point – they only lived next door.
Come to think of it, my parents may have been getting rid of me by having the kids in a separate house. My niece, meanwhile, was fast asleep, unaware of the disappointment her uncle was going through while opening another Ferrero Rocher.
HELEN McALINDEN
Fashion designer
When I was a teenager in Belfast in the early 1980s, I went to a party with two girlfriends and managed to get stranded by 3am. The Troubles were still going on, so it wasn’t exactly a super-duper time and place for three young girls in skimpy miniskirts to be wandering home in their bare feet, carrying their high heels.
We had no transport, no boyfriends, and it started to snow. It took four or five hours to get home and I more or less had pneumonia afterwards; I couldn’t go back to college for three weeks.
I don’t even recall anything about the moment we brought the New Year in – that memory is lost. When things go that wrong, you only remember the bad bits.
The best was the Millennium. I had a party in the front room of my house in Blackrock, overlooking the fireworks going off above Dublin Bay. We had a roaring fire, lovely food, great decorations and a warm atmosphere of 30 friends and family.
There was a lot of cleaning up with a hangover the next day but it was worth it for the excitement of bringing in a new century with the ones you love. It’s the best way to begin on a note of optimism.
DONAL MacINTYRE
Investigative reporter and author
My very best was when I was at a skiing party with my twin brother in Garmisch- Partenkirchen in Germany. We had to drive for six hours through high mountain passes from Grenoble over the Italian Alps in fear that we might tumble to our death.
We hadn’t anticipated how bad the conditions would be and we didn’t have snow chains, so what started out as a stunning experience quickly became nerve-wracking. I was terrified. By the time we got there it was about 10 to midnight and we were more interested in celebrating the fact that we were still alive rather than the entry into New Year.
When I lived in Celbridge, I would always get caught halfway between Allen’s pub and our house when New Year came – the closing time for pubs was 11.30 back then. It was always a damp squib to see everyone else celebrating in their houses as we made our way along the half-mile or so home up the Straffan road.
You’d hear the dongs just as we passed Vanessa’s Bower, where Jonathan Swift reportedly met his lover, and knew you hadn’t made it in time. But if that’s the moment you are going to hear the echo of the New Year bells and the sound of the Liffey, then it’s not a bad substitute for the clinking of glasses.
SANDRA CURRAN
Actor
About eight years ago, a gang of friends and I decided at the last minute to spend the night in a haunted castle somewhere just outside Offaly.
My car broke down on the way, the weather was awful and by the time I caught a lift there it was almost midnight. I was expecting a nice, refurbished hotel but it was pitch black.
There were no beds, just sleeping bags on the ground. We were given a tour by candlelight and I can’t even describe the feeling – there was a weird, eerie coldness around you that had nothing to do with the temperature.
It was an absolute disaster: I couldn’t sleep, there were spiders everywhere and I didn’t have the option of leaving. I think I learned my lesson and, since then, I haven’t done anything crazy.
I think my best was last year because my baby was seven months old, which is a great excuse not to go anywhere. My husband cooked dinner and we just sat in with a bottle of bubbly, escaping the mayhem and relaxing in front of the television.
I remember the years of having to buy tickets just to go to certain bars for New Year’s and queuing for hours for a taxi. It felt good to get past all that. I hate New Year’s Eve. It’s anti-climactic.
CLAIRE KILROY
Writer
My best and worst New Year’s were on the same night. It was 2002 and my then-best-friend and I were all dressed up and sitting in the Morrison Hotel when she announced that she had kissed my boyfriend. I got upset, walked out on her and phoned him in New York.
He told me I had even been in the room when it happened, which turned out to be true and meant that I had caught her lying about it.
At that point it was 11 o’clock and Dublin was at a standstill: there were no taxis or buses to take me home and the streets were empty. I was walking down by the Liffey as the bells started ringing out in Christ Church Cathedral. I’d never been outside for New Year’s before – usually you’re indoors, counting down – and it’s a lovely moment.
Just being on my way home to my family and having the New Year’s text messages coming in from people who do care about you meant an awful lot. There was a sense of bad things coming to an end.
I realised I was entering my 30s without a destructive relationship that had been there since childhood. My friend and I had travelled to New York together when I finished my debut novel and that was where I began seeing this guy. It was going well; there was a talk of me moving over there, so I think getting out of both of those relationships was a mercy. That night was my “get-out-of-jail-free” card.
