Countdown to Midnight: New Year’s Eve on the Thames

After days of sightseeing from morning until night, I felt a little wobbly but didn’t have the heart to squelch the excitement felt by the rest of my family. They wanted to see the fireworks show over Big Ben.

It was New Year’s Eve and we were lucky enough to be in London.

We would take the subway to the Westminster station and find a spot from which to watch the fireworks. I doubted the soundness of our plan when, immediately, we were barely able to squeeze ourselves onto the train.

At each stop, we checked with hopeful hearts to see if anyone was getting off (anyone at all), but nobody was. People just crammed themselves in more tightly. We were all going to Parliament Square or to the Westminster Pier area along the river.

When we arrived at the Westminster station, we realized that just getting off the train and out of the station was going to be a feat.

We looked for the “Way Out” sign (they don’t say Exit). It always made me smile to see the sign. Looking for a “way out” seemed so much broader and more intriguing a concept than to simply want to exit.

But anyway, on this particular night, escaping in any manner would prove challenging. Hundreds of people packed themselves in as we approached the turnstiles where we would have to once again scan our tickets before we could leave the station.

One by one, each person dutifully scanned his or her ticket, only to be just as stuck on the other side of the turnstiles.

We waited our turn, like the polite tourists that we were, and were met by a solid mass of people now trying to get up the stairs and out into the open air. So, in one solid hunk of humanity, we edged along until we reached street level.

Once outside, we looked straight up into the massive but friendly face of Big Ben.

Slowly and awkwardly, we made our way to Parliament Square and stood under the statue of Winston Churchill. We’d visited the Churchill war rooms and I felt as though I knew Winston fairly well. He had an American mother, after all.

The night was mild and dry (!), the bells at Westminster Abbey rang out to our right, and I would have happily stayed right in that spot. But before I could stop him, my husband walked over to a London policeman (I believe the technical term is “Bobby”) and was busy asking him for advice.

I frowned unbecomingly because any advice we’d gotten so far from the Bobbys had ranged from clearly inaccurate to pure fantasy. Oh good—the officer recommended that we make our way to the edge of the river for a better view. Sigh.

So, only because it was three against one (as usual), we headed toward the river, along with thousands of other people (we found out later that 250,000 attended the festivities that night). We hadn’t advanced 50 feet when we hit a wall of people.

In all my life, I’d never attended an event where I was caught in the middle of a mob, and it was just a little terrifying. A mobile and agitated block of humans pushed from behind, but nobody was moving in front of me.

Incredibly, a woman pushed a stroller determinedly through the mass of bodies and was extremely put out that she was having trouble.

In the midst of a mild panic, I took the time to take note of all of the languages being spoken around me: French, Castilian Spanish, Russian, German, Italian, East Indian dialects, Japanese, and on and on.

One young man on the wrong side of sober whispered in my ear, “Why can’t people just be polite?”

I would have found that funny except that I felt like a human Panini sandwich and was checking to see if my offspring had been lost forever. No, there they were, having a fabulous time.

When we finally broke free of the mob, which I doubted would ever happen, I almost stumbled and fell to the ground because I had grown accustomed to being kept upright by a wall of people. I guess I would have to walk under my own steam.

We walked and walked. Rob checked with various Bobbys who motioned that we should keep walking. Well, I glanced up to see the statue of Admiral Nelson and realized that we had walked all the way to Trafalgar Square! And signs all along the river said that the viewing areas were full.

So we kept walking until we reached a viewing area that had not been closed off. The Bobbys carried clickers and were keeping careful count.

We kept walking and were suddenly funneled into a crowd that veered to the right, toward the river. When we were jostled to a stop, we could see Big Ben across the water and were finally in place to watch the fireworks show.

I pulled my arm up to my face to look at my watch. It was only 10:00! Festive music blared from somewhere in the distance as people continued to pour into the area.

Apparently I would wait out the last two hours of 2012 staring at the backs of the shoulders in front of me. Then the crowd was singing, “We will rock you” but only that one line because they didn’t know the rest of the lyrics. No matter, the song suddenly turned into an unintelligible rap song.

I lamented that not six hours earlier, I’d been strolling serenely through Westminster Abbey, listening happily to my audio tour, and admiring the crypt of Anne of Cleves (Henry VIII’s 4^th wife).

I was dying of thirst but hadn’t brought anything to drink for fear of having to use the portable toilets. Then I realized I’d lost track of my family completely. A group of Asian kids clustered nearby and I edged closer to them and pretended to be part of their party.

Suddenly a head of curly hair appeared and I realized that my daughter had come to fetch me, or “collect me” as the Brits say. They also say “crisps” and “rubbish.”

She dragged me to where my husband and son had staked out a spot and to where I would wait out the last hour and a half of 2012.

Intermittently, a voice came over the PA system and asked, “How are you doing, London?” and everyone would scream. I watched the man next to me type out a text in Polish. Someone was blowing bubbles in front of us. People under the age of 30 danced.

The lights on Big Ben and the London Eye changed colors every minute or so, from blue to purple to green. I realized we were standing 50 feet from the monument called Cleopatra’s Needle.

The group next to us passed around a bottle of Jack Daniels and laughed heartily. To think that five hours earlier I was gazing, spellbound, at the tombs of Elizabeth I and her sister, Mary Tudor (buried together after the horror of the Reformation!).

Unbelievably, yet another woman pushed a stroller (with a baby in it!) through the rowdy crowd. I would wait out the last hour of 2012 marveling at that.

The Bobbys must have roped off the area because the crowd stopped growing and redistributed itself more efficiently. People perched themselves on ancient fountains and monuments. A plane flew overhead, which confused me for a moment.

For six days, I’d been blissfully steeped in British history (wasn’t it 1550?). Just the night before, I’d enjoyed a half pint of Guinness at a 400-year-old pub that was once a plague pit! Fantastic!

The day before that I’d explored Windsor Castle, which has been a royal residence since the 11^th century. Now I was choking on the cigarette smoke of a tween.

Since I had time, I plotted how I would convince my family to make the trip out to Hampton Court Palace instead of visiting Abbey Road.

A line of Bobbys walked by and everyone cheered. They glanced up at the very drunk people who had climbed on the roof of a bus stop and kept walking (wow). In the crowd, I spotted grandmas and babies and everything in between.

A condom balloon drifted overhead. A young couple danced unsteadily on the roof of the bus stop.

I was so thirsty. I would wait out the last 30 minutes of 2012 longing for water.

At the 20-minute mark, a voice came over the PA system to inform us that we were now live on BBC and that the world was watching. Yikes! I fluffed my hair and retied my scarf.

Because I still had time, I considered the mystery of the princes in the Tower of London. Surely Richard III (their uncle!) would not have had two little boys killed. But who had more to gain??

The wobbly girl on the roof of the bus stop leaned over the backside of it to throw up and had to be helped down. Ten minutes later, she and her male friend were back up there, and then the man dropped to one knee and handed her a ring. Everyone cheered.

I noticed that my 18-year-old son was practicing saying “bloody hell” with a British accent and that my daughter just always looked happy. The music changed and we all danced (in place) Gangnam style.

So I waited out the last five minutes of 2012 dancing Gangnam style.

We heard the bells at Westminster Abbey ring out twelve times and the crowd was silent.

Then fireworks exploded over Big Ben and the four of us shared one tiny 8-ounce bottle of wine.

And then 250,000 people were swaying and singing Auld Lang Syne in perfect harmony. It didn’t matter that we came from every corner of the globe. Everyone knew the words and sang as though we’d been meeting for choir practice for weeks.

It was 2013 on the bank of the Thames.

I wondered about the young woman who would sober up and realize that she was engaged. I tried to remember which sites were on our schedule for the next day. Total strangers speaking with a variety of accents shook our hands and wished us a Happy New Year. We discussed where we would find the nearest tube station.

The business of living was once more underway.