Ring in the new? I'm off to bed

One of the great pleasures of getting older is evading organised fun. I can't remember how many times in my twenties and thirties I attended awful, raucous New Year's Eve parties where the atmosphere of hedonistic enjoyment seemed desperately manufactured. I do remember that, for several years, I was the host, so I suppose I've only my younger self to blame.

There were drinks parties where the numbers in our meagre living room topped three figures, dinners for 25 people, extravagant cocktails, excruciating party games. (One time, we forced a friend's unpopular husband to act out Battleship Potemkin in charades, greeting his increasingly desperate mimes with cries of: "Is it The Jerk?")

These evenings have coalesced in my mind into a homogeneous blur of noise, sweat, and fizz-induced heartburn. Only two clear memories stand out, both from the year 2000: kissing strange women on the way back home after watching the fireworks from Vauxhall Bridge; and stumbling, still drunk and in black tie, to the shop over the road at dawn to pick up the first newspapers of the new millennium and ascertain that, actually, the world hadn't ended.

Well, no more. Tonight we're having five friends over for dinner. At 11.45, we will again undertake the short stroll to Vauxhall to see if Mayor Boris's bangers match up to Mayor Ken's. And then, to put it bluntly, my guests can shove off home. For us fortysomethings, 12.05 is the new 6am.

* Proof the credit crunch is really biting: Top Gear is to scale back its expensive, gas-guzzling stunts. More shocking than this, though, was the revelation that Jeremy Clarkson's televised mid-life crisis is the BBC's most watched programme. I've never met a single person who admits to viewing it. Perhaps in these straitened, eco-conscious times, Top Gear is the equivalent of pornography, consumed in secret.