Pubs used to be the heartbeat of New Year’s Eve but now the life has been sucked out of them - Sarah Todd

“So how old were you?” they asked. They are assured that their mother didn’t set off to a remote North York Moors drinking den by herself aged 15, that all the village and farm families would go along. There would be a big buffet and fireworks and a great atmosphere.

Clothes and hair would smell of smoke the next day - it hadn’t been banned back then - and there was always a bit of drama and excitement. The older lads swapped their farm clothes for suits, with the girls getting themselves done up to the nines.

There was a sense of community that has been chased over the next three decades or so. Before our own children started going out themselves, we often had a party on New Year’s Eve and gosh we had some fun.

Surfing along to The Beach Boys on the ironing board springs to mind. We put in a fair effort, with a kitchen table groaning under the weight of a post-Christmas reduced turkey to be carved into bread rolls and The Husband’s home brew beer and cider.

As an aside, the latter was graded using an A to C system. The superior stuff (in His mind, not anybody else’s) was squirreled away and the B offered to guests, with the children causing carnage of their own at teenage parties being dropped off with carrier bags full of the C.

“Don’t bring any back,” they were instructed.

Both will be in Sydney tonight, The Daughter meeting up with her younger brother who has been working in Western Australia driving a combine.

The other side of the world. Such a long way away. Yet there is no doubt in their mother’s mind they will have a dance together to The Pogues’ festive favourite Fairytale of New York, which was in the charts the first time around back when she was bopping away in front of a DJ shoehorned in behind a makeshift tinsel curtain in the corner of a country inn.

It is estimated that rural pubs are closing at a rate of about one a day, or around eight per week, with over 200 shutting in the first half of 2025 alone.

People blame drink driving laws, but they were in place back in the day.

Those families partying in that 1980s village pub would have had a designated driver, someone who had drawn the short straw, or a taxi booked.

It used to work that one person would drive at Christmas and another at New Year.

No, the life has been sucked out of pubs by soaring costs - energy, wages, business rates - and all the ridiculous rules and regulations.

Nowadays there would probably need to be a risk assessment for a village pub to have a party and then, of course, all the move-to-the-country killjoys would have some grumble or other.

They aren’t young either. The homes they could once have afforded are now bijou boltholes rented out or occupied by incomers with family to visit in another part of the country come the festive season.

Tomorrow? Making a point of watching a hunt meet. Back in the days of the pub party mentioned at the beginning we all met up the following day on our ponies (not Hooray Henrys just farm and country kids), but that particular pack has long gone.

Then tuning in to the racing on the television in front of a roaring wood burning stove.

The bland who lead the bland of Britain into 2026 have another thing coming if they think they can stop us lighting fires in our own homes, in chimneys that have burnt wood from within a stone’s throw - just think of all that imported oil, gas and coal - for centuries.

Time for folk to get some fire in their bellies and stop standing for this interfering in their lives.

Yes, it could well result in incarceration under Labour’s laws, but throw another log on the fire and turn the original (uncensored of its swear words) version of Fairytale of New York on at full blast. Life needs more dancing like nobody is watching.