God Send Us a Merry New Year

The old year now away is fled,

The new year it is entered;

Then let us all our sins down tread,

And joyfully all appear.

Let's merry be this holiday,

And let us run with sport and play,

Hang sorrow, let's cast care away -

God send us a merry new year!
From Carol for New Year's Day,

And that, dear friends, perfectly sums up my attitude at present. I welcomed in 2012 with enthusiasm and misplaced optimism, and what I got was a year full of struggle  and disappointment:

I have been looking forward to the new year for months now, and tonight, I intend to stay up til midnight, as I usually do, only I will not so much be welcoming in the year 2013, but ensuring that 2012 is properly dead and buried - ideally, burning it effigy, and burying its ashes at a cross roads with a stake through what is left of its heart. In reality, I shall probably just go outside at midnight, play a few pipe tunes, including Auld Lang Syne and, upon coming in again, partake of a bit of whisky, which is all very right and proper behaviour for one conducting a wake. After that, I intend to shake the dust of 2012 off my feet, and set my face bravely to the new year. Nothing like a bit of pipe music to help with that:

PS. You'd be surprised how hard it can be to find a non-cheesy version of this tune to post. My long-suffering sister put up with 2 hours of me listening to the first few measures of various clips, only to have me say, "Good heavens, NO!!!"  and go back to searching. She also put up with me dissolving into hysterical laughter over some of the more truly awful covers of it that I came across.