The 5 O'clock Toast

I forgot to have a drink at 5 O’clock this New Year’s Eve.

I had a drink at midnight and several before and plenty more after, finally wrapping up (I’m told) at about 4:30am. But I forgot to have one at 5 O’clock and thereby broke a tradition I’ve maintained for thirteen years. Why 5 O’clock? Well, because that’s midnight in Britain and even though I’m gradually losing touch with many of my old friends from the old country, it still feels appropriate to raise a glass and see in the New-Year in with the folks back home.

The practice began when I was in Australia for New Year 1991 and was suggested by my pal Roy. He told me that if I arranged to have a drink in my hand at a given time, the gang back in Britain would make something of a ceremony out of having a drink with me across the miles. He considered, quite wisely, that they would be well liquored up by the time midnight came around and could easily forget so instead he pitched the idea for 9pm, when they’d still be functioning. Unfortunately, he made something of a miscalculation with the time zones and didn’t realize that this would be 5am where I was. I was willing to push down a beer at that time, but had no desire to be awake. It was too late to tell him that, so instead I sank a beer with a nod to the old team, right on the stroke of midnight, Greenwich Mean Time.

By New Year 1992 I’d been in the US for about 3 months. I had the 5 O’clock drink but not until after I’d called my folks. This time it wasn’t simply to wish them a happy New Year, but to tell them they were soon to have a new daughter-in-law. Dear Wife and I had decided upon marriage just a few hours before and as we’d only known each other for a few weeks before this, I was anticipating this might come as something of a shock to my dear old Mum. I took a deep breath, dialed the number and prepared to launch into my carefully rehearsed speech. She cut me short.

“Happy New Year. We’ll need to call you back as we’re off out to watch the fireworks”.

Yeah, OK. No biggie. I’ll wait. By the time midnight USA came around, we’d received the blessing of my family several times over. Dear Wife’s family was a slightly different matter. While I welcomed 1992 in with friends in the living room, my new fiancé spent our first New Year’s Eve, sitting on the bathroom floor with the phone pressed to her ear while my mother-in-law to be lectured her on what a mistake she was making.

The tradition of the 5 O’clock toast became even easier to follow when a “British” pub opened in Phoenix. This was a delightfully seedy bar which was about as far from a traditional British pub as it was possible to get. Manchester United scarves hanging from the rafters and a mug shot of the Queen on the wall do not a real pub make, but it did have British music on the juke box, Boddington’s Bitter behind the bar, and some pretty excellent fish and chips. New Year’s Eve was a big old party but what was especially wonderful about this whole deal was that not only was it a convenient stop on the way home from work, you could have several drinks, see in the New Year in style, then go home for a couple of hours shut-eye before heading out to do it all again.

During our final few years in Arizona we headed out into the desert with a group of friends and celebrated New Year around an enormous camp fire. People would save wood for the entire year just to burn when New Year’s Eve came around. One year somebody had a nine-drawer dresser which took hours to burn. Another time, a piano aficionado brought the shell of an upright along and that kept us toasty until the wee hours. We were in the desert for New Year 2000 and were all relieved to see the fire continue to burn as Y2K came and went.

The five O’clock toast tradition continued here as a couple others in the company were also Brits by birth. Of course there’s seven hours to kill before midnight so somebody usually brought along an atlas. That way every hour we could find somewhere that people would be celebrating the midnight hour. Beer cans, wine bottles, paper cups and plastic glasses were raised to welcome in the year with our friends around the world. Way off in the distance, we could hear a party of good ol’ boys following the same ritual by loosing off their cannons into the night. Every hour, on the hour. Except in 2000 when they apparently used up all their ammo by 11pm. That or their guns didn’t work following Y2K.

For all my adherence to the 5 O’clock toast, it’s a curious fact that New Year’s in Britain, tended to be something of an anti-climax. Over there, the big celebration is on Christmas Eve and tends to continue right through Gift Grab ™ day and well into the next week. By the time New Year came around, the liver, not to mention the pocket book was usually pretty hammered and it was hard to get “up” for the occasion. Furthermore, a lot of the pubs tended to be infested by part time drinkers; people that would normally balk at having more than two drinks in one night, but felt the need to impose themselves on the rest of us at this time. Many pubs imposed a “No Admittance After 11pm” rule, which meant one had to strategize in order to be in the best location by midnight. “Best” location in this instance being the bar with the most girls. I still shudder in horror at the memory of the year we mistimed our move and got trapped in a wine bar of all places. The horror, the horror.

We’ve celebrated New Year twice in Colorado; both times at a party in the mountains above Idaho Springs. There’s always lots to drink, lots to eat and some killer jello shots which aren’t exactly drinking and aren’t exactly eating. This year’s shindig was a blast as always and the hangover lasted well into January. As far as I can recall, I acquitted myself well and had more to drink than I’ll need for quite a while.

But I still wish I’d had one more drink. At 5 O’clock.