Hogmanay in Edinburgh.
Millenium Celebrations. - I must apologise to anybody hoping to get hard information about this years events - I don't know anything definite yet apart from what is available on the official website! There are plenty of rumours circulating but so far I wouldn't trust any of them!
Hogmanay is just an old scottish word for New Years Eve, in the old days it mainly involved waiting for midnight to chime, (often in a crowd at the centre of town, in Edinburgh at the Tron Kirk in the High Street), then going around the homes of friends and relatives (and complete strangers) to join in the various parties going on all over. Traditionally, when you arrived at a house you had to be bearing a gift - normally either shortbread (or black bun, a rich fruity cake), whisky or a lump of coal - signifying that there would be plenty of food, drink and warmth in the home throughout the coming year.
Later that morning, (or possibly afternoon), you would wake up, find out where you were, make your apologies, (whether or not you knew what you were apologising for) and make your way to the pub to meet your friends and get suitably inebriated for the New Year derby Football match between the local teams that afternoon.
That was how things were in the old days when people who had taken too much drink tended to fall asleep rather than imagine that it was an excuse to go fighting and smashing bottles everywhere, - o.k. in the old days bottles did get smashed but believe me, it was nearly always accidental and much regretted - how much regretted depended on how much drink was left in them when they smashed.
Nowadays, our glorious leaders on the local council have decided, (in their Infinite Wisdom), that the celebrations are far too important to be left to chance. Edinburgh's Hogmanay Must Be ORGANISED! Street closures, Concerts, Funfairs and giant TV screens are what is required, two years ago this attracted an estimated 400,000 people to the city centre - I don't know who was sober enough to do the estimating, in case you were wondering. Nowadays our Glorious Leaders have decreed that it will be necessary to limit the numbers and their plan to achieve this is to issue free tickets to the city centre celebrations, no ticket - no entry. (I'm glad I'm not in charge of telling several thousand drunks that they can't come into Princes Street because they don't have tickets).
If you think that you detect some small trace of dissatisfaction here, it might have something to do with the fact that there does not seem to be any arrangement made to accomodate those wonderful people, the taxi-drivers, who will be expected to pick up passengers who have booked cabs to pick them up at points which cannot be reached to take them to destinations which are impossible to achieve. However, this is not a problem that troubles our Glorious Leaders, they will have made their own arrangements.
That Was Hogmanay, That Was!
Well, Hogmanay of 1998 is over and I survived it! If you live in Britain you may have seen some of the festivities on the T.V., if so then you saw more than I did. All I really know about the organised events is what I have seen on T.V. highlights or was told by the passengers I picked up after it was over - and most of them were somewhat incoherent (or intoxicated, or inebriated, or something else beginning with i). The overall impression seems to be that it was even better than last year, the crush was well down, the police presence was lower key and more sympathetic (probably due to less pressure from crowds) and the whole atmosphere was less frantic. The most abiding memories seem to have been of the fireworks to welcome in the New Year - three and a half tons of them! (the noise even woke me up.) The entertainments laid on by the sponsors Virgin/McEwans were also highly praised, with acts headed by the Pretenders appearing free on the various stages erected in the city.
I must give credit where it's due, the erection and removal of the barriers keeping non-ticket holders out of the central areas was completed quicker and with less disruption than I would have believed possible. Considering that when I finished my shift, there were still hundreds of people wandering the streets, carrying on their own private celebrations and leaving mementoes of various sorts littering the gutters (including several people who had apparently decided that they had had all the celebration they were capable of!), the speed with which things were returned to more or less normal was amazing. The support teams from the various emergency services were also very highly praised. I haven't any official figures, but the unofficial statistics being quoted are about 41 taken to hospital (almost all for falling over and spraining or straining parts of themselves), and 25 arrested (mostly involving a nights hospitality and a not so hospitable talking-to before release next day). I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty damn good out of over 200,000 official and several unofficial passes. [Regarding these unofficial passes, I heard that there were quite a few produced in a spirit of free enterprise, but I haven't heard exactly how successful they were yet.]
