How to celebrate the New Year – French style

Do one of the following in the hours approaching midnight:

1. do one final ammunition check, dash out to buy up any last stocks of contraband ‘petards’ from the nearest corner-shop, double check you have a cigarette lighter or ‘briquette’ to see you through til morning
2. attend a ‘reveillion’ (New Year’s Party), eat well, drink expensively
3. watch some seriously low quality television show featuring cabaret acts or ‘funny’ home video clips

Then when midnight finally arrives:

1. get together with a bunch of hoodies on a street corner
2. kiss everyone in the room, on both cheeks, and wish them ‘bonne annee’; even if they’re of the same sex
3. flick through all the channels and wonder why none of them are showing the fireworks in Paris at the Eiffel Tower

Just after midnight:

1. spark up the first banger and chuck it at one of your friends, laugh hilariously when he catches fire
2. down that last glass of cremant/champagne then head out into the street, shouting ‘wahey’ as loud as you can (repeat several times if you’re really really drunk)
3. switch off the TV and then hide under the dining room table with fire-extinguishing equipment at the ready

From midnight until the wee small hours:

1. ‘accidentally’ set fire to a few cars by chucking bangers in their general vicinity (consider both stationary and moving vehicles)
2. collapse unconscious into a doorway
3. call the police and yell (over the sound of explosions) ‘the Iran-Iraq war has just kicked off outside!’; then shrug hopelessly when the police simply reply ‘well bof, it is New Year you know?’

Happy New Year