I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported me - via word and deed - this December. This has been a hugely emotional project this year, and at times I didn't think I had the strength to get through it. Something drove me on though and I am enormously proud of this calendar and the stories I've told. For (probably) one year only, I am adding a particular New Year post. Christmas Eve told the tale of when I first told Gail I loved her; this New Year's Eve story is when we finally decided that we had to follow our hearts instead of our heads.
It's six years later. New Year's Eve 1993 at Xenon Nightclub in Piccadilly. The intervening years have been a vain attempt to right a supposed wrong. He's tried; she's tried. In fact, she tried so hard she even married another man and moved to the end of the country, hoping that by putting at least half-a-dozen counties between them, it couldn't possibly survive. It's not worked though. Sometimes through lack of will on the part of one or other of them; sometimes through astonishing examples of coincidence - one so ridiculous that even Richard Curtis filming a lovelorn scene for one of his movies would have rejected it as being simply too preposterous - they find themselves once again together on a night they should both be elsewhere. She's even wearing a dress he bought for her earlier in the week.
Dedicated to the love of my life. For as long as I see Christmas and New Year in this world, it will always be you, Pet.
It's six years later. New Year's Eve 1993 at Xenon Nightclub in Piccadilly. The intervening years have been a vain attempt to right a supposed wrong. He's tried; she's tried. In fact, she tried so hard she even married another man and moved to the end of the country, hoping that by putting at least half-a-dozen counties between them, it couldn't possibly survive. It's not worked though. Sometimes through lack of will on the part of one or other of them; sometimes through astonishing examples of coincidence - one so ridiculous that even Richard Curtis filming a lovelorn scene for one of his movies would have rejected it as being simply too preposterous - they find themselves once again together on a night they should both be elsewhere. She's even wearing a dress he bought for her earlier in the week.
The club is nowhere as busy as it should have been. It's as if everyone has just had enough of drinking and making merry. Even the DJ seems to lack heart in the venture. He puts on a number of slow songs as one-year ticks over to the next. This song comes on; a show tune from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that neither of them would normally give house room too. Tonight though, it sounds different. As they dance slowly, holding onto each other, the words drip into their consciousness; the close dance becomes something else as they seem to meld together. Eventually, they turn their heads to look directly at one another.
We don't need a crowded ballroom / Everything we need is hear / If you're with me / Next year will be / The Perfect Year.
Nothing was said but they both knew. It was time to stop denying themselves. By April, they had made it the Perfect Year.
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