A Happy New Year

I started last year with the Mother-of-all-Hangovers. Mainly, this was because I had no idea quite how much alcohol there was in my wife's punch - at least not until the next morning when I counted the empty bottles in the kitchen and tried to determine why I felt like I had been lobotomised. Well, I was determined that wasn't going to happen this year so I went for Hogmanay driving duties which both minimised alcohol consumption whilst gaining the accolade of "Most popular man in Scotland."

In fact I felt so lively on New Years Day that I decided to take my five year old son and eight year old whippet for a long walk in the local country park. This is were things started to go awry. It was very icy. In fact, the dog was sliding about like Bambi even with the advantage of four spiked feet. Even so, I managed to make it safely back to the path leading back to the entrance when I went arse-over-tit on the ice and landed very heavily on my elbow. In fact, it was very heavily indeed as the arm no longer worked and a bone was broken.

Every so often, there is a heart warming story on the news about a dog or young child who takes charge of the situation and gets help for their incapacitated parent/owner. This was not one of those occasions. Jake kindly informed me that, "It's all gone Pete Tong, Dad"; whilst Eddie, the erstwhile whippet, buggered off and chased a squirrel. Eventually, I did manage to get back to my feet and Jake did help by holding the dog's lead for me - at least until Eddie saw another squirrel and Jake was dragged through the undergrowth at 40 mph.

I made it home and my wife drove me down to the hospital. I had hoped this would be the fancy shiny new hospital in Larbert which is like something out of a Sci-Fi movie and is run by robots. As it was, I ended up in the old casualty unit at Stirling Infirmary which looks like a war zone - at least it did yesterday as they were still dealing with the drunks and brawlers from the previous night's "festivities". I have to say the staff were great as they had mainly been on duty since the previous night and working on New Years Day is rotten at the best of times without having to deal with vomiting Buckfast-fuelled Neds and thirtysomething singletons suffering from Gin and Tonic abuse.

All of this misfortune rather stole the thunder from my eldest son, Raymond, who was meant to be celebrating his ninth birthday. This was somewhat made up by ITV showing the first episode of the new series of Primeval. This is ITV's answer to Doctor Who, although it's more of a complimentary show than a rival as it draws a similar audience to both Doctor Who and Merlin and, whilst Doctor Who involves travelling through time and space fighting monsters, Primeval involves travelling through time and space fighting monsters a little less camply. It's all good fun although we no longer get to see Hannah Spearritt dancing around in her knickers every week. It's on again tonight so we can marvel as they tackle the completlymadeupinCGIasaurus whilst Ben Miller gets all the best one-liners.

So that was New Years day. My efforts to drink responsibly and take some exercise have given me a broken arm. Next year, I'm going to drink like a Glasgow Jakie instead.