Going out in London on New Years Eve is always a terrifyingly expensive, seldomly fun and almost never a satisfying affair. I think the 'end-of-the-year' and 'I paid my two-weeks-grocery-allowance for the ticket excluding the drinks' effect puts a pressure on having an epic night comparable to The Hangover movies, result of which is you end up either drinking too much and not remembering a thing, or giving up on the idea of going out all-together and eating your own tears at home.
One of my most memorable and serene New Years Eves - that one time when I confused herbal indigestion drops (it's been a junk-food-heavy Christmas - as always) with sleep aid drops (to be fair if you've ever tried A.Vogel's herbal tinctures - they all look the same), ended up falling unconscious in the middle of dressing up for the night, and slept all the way through the fireworks, and only wake up the next morning to 74 missed calls and messages and a new year in full swing.
End of February 2017 we've spent a night glamping (but not really) in gypsy wagon deep in countryside somewhere along the route London-Brighton. Shockingly enough we have been the only campers in Blackberry Wood Farm campsite (honestly do check it out - apart from the wagon you can spend the night in a helicopter, double decker or a tree house!) at this time, just the two of us, wine classily served in empty Pringles mini cans (I feel this was a moment when David lost his French citizenship for good), woollen socks lovingly knitted by my mum, rain on the roof and smell of smoked bacon which terrifyingly came from our hair (the exhaust pipe of the tiny stove needed re-sealing).
For the end of this year, our dear friend Corinne had a brilliant idea to do a double date getaway only to finally drop out, but we've made a decision to persevere and completely against the character still go and spend our New Years Eve in isolation in a showman's wagon solitary standing somewhere in the fields not far from Faversham, regardless everyone's warnings this is exactly how all the horror films start (cue in Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
A day before leaving for our (possibly deadly) adventure, we had a brilliant idea to finish watching the whole Hobbit trilogy late into the night
(admittedly I never made it past the first film as I know both the book and the previous Lord of the Rings films by heart, page by page, second by second - yes, there were times where we watched, re-watched, re-enacted in the woods, re-read, watched again and made homemade audio dramas on old school cassette player inspired by it - I was always left to play a hobbit for some mysterious reason), followed by a very lengthy fight in bed (now, now, put your mind out of a gutter, I literally mean fight), because none of the parties wanted to admit defeat, we only got about 4hrs to sleep before having to rush to King's Cross to catch early morning train.
In a Christmas sugar delirium I thought walking 16km from Faversham to the Showman's Wagon farm on 31st January was a brilliant idea - you know, to work for your treat and enjoy the coziness and dryness that much more.
Also the only other alternative is - no jokes - taking a bus number 666 which takes you there in 12 minutes, but ..on top of all the friends and family concerns about being chopped to bits and fed to pigs.. it didn't seem like a very good omen.
It's only an hour and a half trek, what can go wrong?
What can, and what did go wrong, is I did not account for the shopping bags loaded with food and alcohol, the fact we'd be walking by the busy road through a bleak windy muddy wet day, breaking our backs with the load and having to make little stops every 15 minutes to shake some life into our freezing exhausted arms and top up the vodka.
Ingeniously, I also manage to leave our only umbrella at one of these stops, which we only realised when...yes...when it started to rain.
But one thing I got right...the reward. Oh the feeling of reward when huddling inside by the crackling stove wrapped in a crochet blanket.
We have arrived a good few hours earlier (after a military bootcamp style jog through the rain and vast abandoned settlements plastered with alarming number of missing cats posters, imagining we're the only two survivors in a post-apocalyptic, post-zombie virus breakout world), but our host allowed us to check in anyway, collected some eggs from his chicken for us, so we can try some non-Sainsbury's diary goodness for change, and re-assured us we could stay as long as we wanted as there was no booking for the 1st Jan (surprise!). He'd also give us lift back to the station in time to catch our 6pm train back home.
So here we were...listening to music, cooking on the stove, mixing vodka into prosecco (trust me, it's a thing and it's magical..and lethal), playing Talisman for the first time since my voice broke - an epic adventure and at least THREE HOURS long board game - I used to be completely obsessed with and spent hours and hours re-visiting and re-inventing with my childhood friends (both married with kids now, and undoubtedly soon to introduce them to Talisman too).
1st January also marked a first attempt on tarot reading to see what's ahead of us in dynamic tumultuous but apparently highly successful 2018. I found Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot under the christmas tree & got hooked immediately. Also, if you have a chance, do read on its fascinating history
(Crowley issued the tarot with a tortured artist and eccentric aristocrat Lady Frida Harris, with whom he shared a fascination for everything mysterious and transcendental, and who's relationship was marked by a psychosexual gender-crushing Weinstein-like terrorism, set against the backdrop of Second World War with twisted occulty and explosive sexual sessions with literal bomb explosions outside, as they blitz London and shakes up people's lives and beliefs. Dread of both supernatural and human origin directed by Roman Polanski - starring Jared Leto and Tilda Swinton - can you patent a movie idea?).
Instead of TV we watched a horse fighting a sheep in a field outside our window (that's not a joke and we were a bit worried for the sheep first, and for the horse straight after) - there was a whole lot of headbutting, stomping and biting, but they seemed to have drop the grudge after some time and remained friends, feeding side by side and ignoring each other.
Also the shower (and flushable toilet hurraah!) located in a separate little trailer -only a minute swim through the mud away - so drafty and cold, the water immediately vaporize and makes everything look like a bad eighties rock ballad music video.
I said earlier with this little NYE adventure we did something against the character..but it happened and we did it, and I guess that means this too is us.
And as far as I'm concerned a chainsaw massacre type of retreat with sausages hissing on the stove, tarot reads and turning each other gleefully in toads (as a toad in Talisman you can only move 1 field per turn and leave all your objects, followers and gold on the spot) is a pretty awesome way to welcome yet another adventurous bonkers year. Maybe a new tradition?
