A Happy New Year to One and All!
I'm not really a New Year Person. Oh, I used to get drunk and riotous, then maudlin and weepy, but now I'm just glad when it's all over.
     I don't make any resolutions, because I've never stuck with them in the past, so don't see the point in lumbering myself with more things to feel guilty about.
     So we all sip our drinks, alternating between glasses of Rum and something, Snowballs, a nice Single Malt and Bubbly, and watch The Hogmanay Show on BBC1. Jackie Bird has been hosting it since Mario Conti was an Altar Boy and we always have Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham, though for some unexplained reason, Aly was absent for Auld Lang Syne last night – he must have got “tooken short,” as we say here!
     But the Headliners were The Bay City Rollers! Not the original line-up, but the latest get-together.
“The money must be getting tight,” is our cynical response, but it's always fun to hear that breezy singalong stuff from childhood. Of course no-oone admits to actually being old enough to have gone to gigs then, but we can pull our scarves up and sway out arms and join in the choruses. And I did have white breeks with tartan turn-ups back then, and tartan scarves and even a tartan tammy, though if I went out dressed like that night somebody would probably call the men in white coats to come and take me away, HA HA!
     But it is a time when we all find ourselves reflecting on the past twelve months, perhaps wishing we had said or done some things differently – or not at all; missing those who have died, or gone away, particularly – in my case – the ones we have loved but now must never see or make contact with, for when love ends it seems to nring down an iron curtain and all that talk about still being friends, though no longer lovers, just doesn't bear water. We protect ourselves from pain by shutting all the doors, windows, shutters and never mentioning that person again, whose name was never off our lips.
     Sometimes, life really sucks!
     But this is a New Year, a New Adventure.  We don't know what it might bring – well, apart from the appointments already in the 2016 Diary and reflect that when once our diaries had been filled with Dates, now they are only appointments – with editors, bank managers, HMRC, doctors, dentists and hairdressers, garages and dieticians, and the parties in them are more likely be for children's birthdays than our own and our friends, for we become less interested in our birthdays as time passes and we realise that they are not so very important or significant and that age is only a number and it is the Spirit that matters and if, singing along with The Rollers, I can still be 15 in my head, who has the right to tell me that the number is wrong and I'm really . . . . . . . . but no! I'm not going down that road.
     So: do I have any regrets? Well, I'll let Frank answer that question – though the implication that it's the End Time is, I hope, a bit Previous, nevertheless, the words – which I've altered slightly to make the gender more appropriate – do sum up my overall feelings. Mostly. A bit.

And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.

I've lived a life that's full.
I've travelled each and every highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, I've had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.

I've loved, I've laughed and cried.
I've had my fill; my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
"Oh no, oh no not me,
I did it my way".

For what is woman, what has she got?
If not herself, then she has naught.
To say the things she truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!

Yes, it was my way.
Miss Teri Regrets, she's unable to Regret Anything, Today!