HERE we are, on the cusp of a new year.

It’s a truism, I know, but it seems to come around more quickly every year, and the hope that comes with turning over a new leaf is tempered by the realisation that I am closer still to what writer Rabelais called “le grand peut-être” – the great perhaps.

It’s the sense of time passing that always makes me mournful at the turn of the year. My preference for New Year’s Eve is to take to my bed early and wake up with the dirty business of ‘passing time’ done and dusted for another year.

When I was a teenager, I did just that. Bed at 10. The radio on in the background lulling me to sleep.

Aoife Moore: Crime is falling – but some people don’t want you to believe that

Tom Collins: It’s time we embraced the bleak mid-winter

I was happily in the land of nod when the midnight bells were ringing out – only to be rudely awakened by my parents and siblings, who dragged me from my pit for a round of Auld Lang Syne. Let’s just say I did not enter into the spirit of........

© The Irish News