Dads Eye View on: New Years Eve by John Freeman

Before we had children New Year's Eve celebrations involved a simple set of decisions. The choice was between which party/pub/club we'd attend and the only gripes were about overpriced entrance fees and double-fare taxi rides - if we were lucky enough to bag a taxi. One year was spent in Prague, drinking mulled wine with strangers and ushering in the New Year in the beautiful Old Square, before partying on through the night until we needed to leave for the airport and a cheap-wine-fuelled-hangover-journey-from-hell.

Then we became parents and New Year's Eve became a little trickier to plan. Babysitters are like gold dust that night. They want to go out and party - one even offered to sit for us on December 30th, so we could "celebrate the Eve's eve" - and if they don't, they are probably suffering an emotional crisis and in no fit state to look after children.

So, as parents of small offspring we would stay at home and invite friends to a select soiree. When our kids were tiny, this wasn't too bad - similarly-fixed new parents would bring their babies and bedrooms would become crammed full of travel cots. Things would go well until a neighbour's midnight fireworks woke up one of the children, who woke up another and another, until the house was akin to a Dolby Surround Sound screamathon.

As our children got a little older, they would want to stay up and experience the 12 o'clock festivities for themselves. This was fine, apart from it being way beyond their usual bedtime and the spectre of a 1st of January spent with cataclysmically over-tired pre-schoolers and a raging hangover being too horrific a prospect. Compromises were made - our children would be woken a few minutes before midnight and then go "straight back to sleep" after a quick blast of ‘Auld Lang Syne' and some fireworks. It doesn't take a genius logician to spot the flaw in that plan.

As our children grow up, New Year's Eve may get easier. They will be able to stay up until midnight and might allow their parents a tiny lie-in the next day. Their dad might even get to do that coal-bearing, dark-haired stranger first footing ritual. But soon, it will be our children that are out at parties or clubs and we will be sitting up, awaiting their return in a double-fare taxi. Unless, of course - as I once requested of my teetotal father in a 3am phone call one New Year's morning that - ‘Dad's Taxi' be called into action. Shamefully, I was 35 years old at the time. But at least I got to wish him ‘Happy New Year' in person.