1st January, New Year’s Day - Cold Meats & Alpacas

No hangover. Just dehydrated. I still felt nauseous. I was woken up by an Australian girl traipsing past me down the stairs for breakfast. Yolanda and her husband, Robert, were already clearing up last night’s carnage. I offered my assistance but was eventually just seated in a corner of the kitchen with a cup of tea. Burnt bacon followed quickly. Then coffee. Sophia asked if I could drive the trio to the local train station as everyone slowly gathered downstairs. Olympia had already dipped off to drop off Sophia’s other flatmate, Mafi, at that same station. I agreed and skulked around the kitchen while they got ready. 

The Austrians were headed to Bicester next. The plan had been to take a train to Oxford and then be picked up by the cousin they were staying with. Tragedy had struck. All the trains to Oxford and Bicester had been cancelled. I’d volunteered to drive them to Oxford last night, as I was heading back there anyway. It was now the classic polite refusal, but actually, really, we would love it, but we can’t be too obvious. I wasn’t fussed. I drove Sophia, Caspar and the incredibly hungover Hugo to the station and popped back to the house for lunch.

Cold meats, cranberry and ginger ale. I was talking to Ben, Vie’s other uncle, and when I mentioned Oxford, he said he only knew one family there. They turned out to be my parents friends. Apparently, when they’d moved back to France, as they were borrowing the house, they’d flogged off their alpacas onto Ben. He was now making socks out of their wool. Their daughter volunteered to take them from her school when it shut down during the pandemic, and it’s still comedic to think of a Lieutenant Colonel, her father, driving around with a van of alpacas that had essentially been stolen as they couldn’t officially hand them over. Too much bureaucracy is involved in the alpaca business.

Happy New Year messages are an interesting dilemma. I found myself following a list I’d prepared a couple of days ago, of whom I experienced a response of maybe a quarter. Social interaction feels rather fake and scripted since the rise of social media. I was possibly more upset that only a couple of people had gone out of their way to wish me a Happy New Year unprompted. I was mortified further by the fact I hadn’t been the one to send the message, making me feel awful for not remembering people who cared enough to reach out.

Essentially, it is a lot of overthinking about a non-existent issue.

The same could be said of Christmas if I think about it.

I was suffering from the fact that I was well into my second year at university now, and I’d started seeing who could be bothered to keep up pretences, make an effort, or generally be friendly. Many of these responses were expected, and the loss of a few acquaintances was welcomed. It was when those you considered friends decided that it wasn’t reciprocated. I was still seething over a few. The growing distance from people who didn’t even dislike me, just didn’t have time for me anymore, was almost worse. These were people with whom we both agreed there was a friendship. Why was it struggling?

There’s a reason I’ve never liked birthdays. It feels like a repeat of Christmas and New Year, where I am forced to quantify who cares by whether I occupy enough space in their mind to warrant a quick message.

It's pathetic, but ultimately, I think human nature pushes us to seek proof of the relationships and bonds we build.  

Can you tell I may be more hungover than I let on? I believe this is called hangxiety – the act of being more anxious after drinking alcohol.

With lunch over, Yolanda was keen for us to leave. I packed the car with almost excessive luggage and crammed the Australians. A string of goodbyes that honestly took longer than lunch itself followed, and away we went.

The trip's highlight was only fifteen minutes in. My car is an old Ford Fiesta, remarkably resilient but worth less than £600 at its last valuation. When faced with a steep hill and an overburdened car, I made it halfway up before we stalled. With the hazards light on, I reversed down the hill—much to the other cars' annoyance. Bad luck to them. The girls offered to leave; maybe they could leave their luggage and return for it. Or maybe they could turn around and find a train? Instead, I found some flat road and, in first gear, revved the car as high as it would go before crawling up what was possibly the fiesta’s greatest challenge in the fourteen years it had existed. Thankfully, it worked. Otherwise, I would make one of them walk up the hill with their luggage and get back in at the top. That wouldn’t have boded well for my image as the kindly soul driving them to Bicester. I wanted the family to like me so I’d be invited back. Helping Yolanda’s goddaughters seemed like a simple solution.

It was smooth sailing from then on. They shared their observations from the night, and I learned that Hugo, or “Baby Hugo” as they referred to him, had been more a jester than a contender for their affections. Eventually, I realised it was actually faster to drive them straight to Bicester than into Oxford. They called their cousin, and we drove over. He was very tall and kind enough to let me use the bathroom. He reminded me of Roahl Dahl’s BFG. Halfway through a cup of tea at the kitchen table, my sister called me upset. I’d missed her calls and was meant to pick her up from the train station. Oops. So after apologising and assuring them it was no trouble and they’d been lovely, off I rushed to the other side of Oxford.

One drowned rat of a sister later, who, to her credit, wasn’t openly annoyed at me, and I was home.