Last night didnt go so well, in the end. Gary's first words to me as Big Ben chimed and I rushed to look at the night sky were "Shut that window, its fucking freezing".
Mine to him, my husband of twelve or thirteen years, were "I promise I'll phone you next New year's Eve, we'll always be friends".
Trouble is I know that, even with a drink or three inside me, I am capable of such withering stares; a combination, practiced at length in my teenage years, of my mother's own killer glare and various noteworthy alternatives such as the 'Mr Spock eyebrow'. I can do dead-pan dissappointment laced with scorn at 100 paces and this one was full on, face-to-face, right between the eyes, as he was reaching round me to shut the window I had refused to close.
This morning we are 'back to normal'. This is to Gary's relief, I suspect; he has dropped tiny hints that he perhaps drank too much last night, and thats as close as he'll get to admitting that he might have been a bit of a jerk by the end of the evening. I in turn have told him, almost but not quite tongue in cheek, that I do love him and really will phone him next New Year, because I promised.
That, in this household, is as close as we will get to admitting anything was said at all.