On the stroke of midnight, I was where I (almost) always am. If you’d asked me at midday if I would be where I wanted to be I’d probably had scoffed and said I’d rather be anywhere else, but preferably with my family. I always miss them, but I especially missed them last night. I’ve spent 29 New Years Eve’s with them. This one was different. At midday, I’d have told you the telly would be rubbish and I would rather have been with my parents at the watch-night service.

All evening I missed them. All evening I was restless, thinking of a friend hundreds of miles away at a watch-night  service with their family in their city, and another at a party, others still were with family, or chilling out with boyfriends by their side. I longed to be anywhere but here. Fed up, I asked my carer to help me get into bed.

Still restless an hour later, up I got, searching the channels for something to watch. I saw Alan Carr make a right idiot of himself on his own show, smashed and swearing, a humour-full self-depreciating kind of drunk. One of his guests, I am unsure who, quipped that most hosts of most shows would use ‘fake’ booze, but not him! By this point, the show was in the midst of an end-of -year quiz, which required Carr to wear a penguin suit.

I have NEVER seen anything like it. Well worth a watch on ‘4-o-D’. Anyways, next moment, Carr’s on the floor and all panelists rush to his aid. Queue jokes about ‘accidently-on-purpose’ falling so the pretty girls would come to his aid. Wrong gender, obviously! He’s only just up on his feet when over he goes again. Eventually, Jack Whitehall and someone else, perhaps Jonothan Ross, wrestle Carr out of the suit. Even this is worth a watch, honestly! I wished I were in the audience, belly-laughing along. It’s not something I would usually have watched, switching on only because a friend wrote about how funny the show was.

All too soon, I was hunting for something else to watch, and decided to try Jools’ [Holland’s] Annual Hootenanny. Instantly I remembered a good few years ago, making a fuss because I wanted to watch the show rather than BBC Scotland’s coverage of Edinburgh’s New Years Eve Celebrations. That year however, I was reprimanded  rightly by a parent for being so rude, and put in my place, truth be told, it was not my thing. This year however, there was such a party atmosphere I felt as though I could almost have been there, dancing in my chair to the music and listening to the anecdotes from celebrity guests.

When it came to the countdown, I mouthed along with the audience. Just as 2013 arrived, I jumped due to an explosion of sound from my right; FIREWORKS! On the screen. the party continued, as did my jovial mood. One by one, friends descended on my Facebook page to wish ‘Happy New Year’.

If you’d asked me again, where would I rather be, I’d have said, nowhere, oh nowhere, but here.