Yes it's true, New Year's Eve 2022 is not particularly festive.
No fireworks, no gatherings, you have to eat seated: pretty much, we almost recommend to drink lying down.
But remember: the passages to the New Year are far from always being guaranteed successes, so bad luck seems to be an integral part of this holiday that we would sometimes prefer to miss.
We asked eight people to share their worst memories with us.
Arguments, falls and bad plans ... So many reasons, perhaps, not to celebrate the New Year.
Read also Unmissable event for youth, the New Year's party disrupted by the question of the screening test.
The surprise guest
“We forget what it is to be 16 and have no plans for New Year's Day. Panicked at the idea of ending up with our parents, my friends and I ended up, that year, accepting the only proposal we had: that of a boy from the slightly strange class, whom we took for a mythomaniac who dreamed of being a gangster. On the 31st, the evening takes place in a small HLM studio, in a rather difficult neighborhood. The owner seems tense: obviously, he does not know half of the guests and the apartment is crowded. Around 10 p.m., the place is invisible, filled with cannabis smoke. I wonder what I'm doing here: innocently, I had put on a shirt - and I'm the only one. A fight breaks out over the music, shots get lost, there is some blood on the floor.
At 11:30 p.m., someone knocks loudly on the door.
I think it's the police, and since I'm sober, I open.
Everything goes very quickly: I find myself in an instant pointed against the entrance wall by the revolver of a hooded and massive man.
The music stops, there is no more noise.
Barely a few stifled sobs.
The man finally lets go of me and rushes into the room and addresses the owner:
"So, no one invites me?"
The man in the balaclava sat down on a chair and remained there, gun in hand, smoking and insulting the assembly.
And I called my parents to come get me.
A good moral lesson in the key. "
Fall story
“Party room with mezzanine.
We had a big, rather fancy dinner party, the kind of party that doesn't get out of hand.
A few seconds before midnight, we meet on the dance floor for the count.
One of the guests went upstairs to get party favors.
He reappears with a broad smile, brandishing a bottle of champagne ... And skids down the stairs, almost catching up, like in a cartoon gag, but no, he gets agitated, and falls into a frightening glide.
A rib and a few broken teeth, we spent the New Year waiting for the firefighters. "
Chocolate
“Separated parents know it well: sharing Christmas and New Years is always a heartbreak. That year, I have the children for the 31st. The opportunity therefore to work extra hard. I bet on a meal "all chocolate almond": verrines with cocoa cream, capon in cocoa sauce, Espelette pepper, log with almond cream ... Sweet and salty from starter to dessert. Hours and hours of research and just as much in the kitchen. On the big day, everything is ready. The two children arrive.
“We have a problem,”
their father blurted out to me as they left. The oldest had a chocolate orgy over Christmas. To the point of doubting: what if he was diabetic? The doctor was clear:
"Diet without sugar for 15 days before the blood test."
And too bad for the chocolate poultry. "
The first epidemic
“In retrospect, this New Year 2020 sounded like a prophecy, foreshadowing all the catastrophes that were to come afterwards.
Context: In the world before, the tension comes from the transport strikes that have lasted for a month.
Everyone is exhausted and stressed.
A couple of friends devote themselves to lending their apartment in the 17th arrondissement of Paris.
Very quickly, alcohol and winter illnesses form an explosive cocktail: all the guests fall like flies.
The room is transformed into a field hospital, with its patients, bedpans and improvised nurses.
There is vomit in the elevator, and people burst into tears without knowing why.
We are getting ready to leave when a voice from beyond the grave holds us back:
"Are you leaving already?"
The party is not over, but the year of the epidemic has only just begun. "
Full
“Bruges is a romantic city.
It is less so, on a 31 in the evening, at night, in the cold, when all the hotels and restaurants possible are full.
Of course, we hadn't booked anything.
Three hours of looking at our shoes, in the dark and icy, before finding a gloomy and badly heated hotel.
We went to bed before midnight, in dirty sheets, before a nasty argument about my organizational skills.
I don't remember having dinner. ”
Account settlement and settlements
“My best friend from Strasbourg doesn't have a New Year's Eve.
I manage, after much negotiation, to get him invited to my own Parisian party with good colleagues, very good colleagues, even, but colleagues all the same.
Three minutes after his arrival, he breaks a Chinese porcelain vase.
The awkwardness could have been touching, if he had not blamed the breakage on "this bourgeois apartment."
Then he drinks, too much, too much.
He laughs at one of the guests' outfits, before attacking the political opinions of another.
We fail to fight.
I tell him to go.
"Impossible"
, he objects.
We are on December 31, 2020, in full curfew. "
Separate room
“Everything was going well: a hotel room reserved in a beautiful Parisian hotel, a bottle of champagne for the count and a lovely romantic evening in prospect.
We get ready when the phone rings: one of his friends complains, his New Year's Eve is frankly average.
I hear, dumbfounded, my ex-husband offer to join us in the hotel room!
After a rather embarrassing evening, the friend ends up leaving.
I explode.
Hasn't he thought of asking my opinion?
The conversation flares up.
I end the evening on the carpet trying to sleep on the floor.
Lying on the floor, I heard from afar the New Year's countdown and people celebrating.
The next day he drove me home without saying a word.
We parted ways after that evening. ”
come as you Are
“I had a file for a large school to send before December 31, midnight.
Procrastination requires, I had to resolve to spend New Years Eve in my room to finalize my work, while my roommates organized a dinner in the dining room.
The fire alarm goes off.
Let me not worry, assures a guest, it is simply the loudspeaker that has started to emit smoke.
Obviously, they did not see fit to unplug it since we quickly find ourselves in the dark: the said speaker blew up the electricity in the whole apartment.
Impossible to turn it on again: I sent my file at 11.58pm from a McDonald's in the Paris suburbs, alone in a deserted restaurant. ”
