Lock all the doors

Last night, Mr Coffee and I scaled a new height of unsociability. We extended a New Year's Eve invitation which was phrased with such grumpiness and sarcasm that our guests failed to show at all.

Another couple might feel hurt by this. Not us. We curled up gleefully under a blanket with a bottle of wine and watched The Day of the Triffids, our M&S party snacks all forgotten at the back of the fridge. We would have completely missed the turn of the decade if it had not been for fireworks somewhere in the neighbourhood, which went off just as Brian Cox was having his arm torn off by a man-eating plant.

"They're probably where the fireworks are," we said of our missing friends, before snuggling further down on the sofa with delight to watch poor Brian's grisly demise.

You might dismiss this as the grumpiness of age; but if you did, you wouldn't know us at all. At the tender age of 23, Mr Coffee and I could most commonly be found sitting in the middle of the carpet together, drinking a bottle of port. Withdrawing from society is one of our favourite things. Don't get me wrong - people are nice in their way. Some of them are perfectly lovely. But they're not us.

So this was going to be a post about resolutions (including Littlest's bonkers New Year vow - 'To Run About In the Sunset'). But how can I talk about resolutions, and plans and schemes, when it turns out that going to a poetry reading eighteen years ago and then giving the bloke who was taking ticket-money at the door a lift home to his mum's was the best and most life-changing decision I ever made?

Here's to another Happy New Year, Mr C.