The Madness of Crowds: New Year’s Eve

These are the coldest collations of the year: shards of glass tossed on the kerbstone, dressed with vomit. Nearby stands a seven-eighths empty bottle of supermarket champagne; while if you follow the straggle of pink streamers you can see beer cans lurking by the wheelie bin, tinnily jostling. The party has well and truly pooped out.

Last year there was comparatively little hoo-ha: the failure of the Mayan prophecies to come up to scratch left the credulous with sod all in the way of an apocal...