A New Year's Eve to remember

I was just moseying around in the corners of my mind as I rattled some floss between my teeth and encountered a rather strange thought: despite rarely having Singledom Status over Valentine's Day for the past however many years, the one I look back on most fondly was a freezing day in Copenhagen when I was 17. Thinking about it now I've no idea why Copenhagen seemed like a good idea at the time, but I went there anyway with a friend from school. We spent most of the first night desperately trying to find the youth hostel, bumbling back and forth between the city and the back of beyond on a series of buses; much of the next few days was passed mildly horrified at the cost of anything there so we resorted to chocolate from the vending machine for the majority of our meals.

On Valentine's Day itself, she jokingly bought me a blue plastic rose – epitomising some kind of tacky hideousness – and we went to the cinema to watch the Southpark movie. I remember it as a day when I laughed a good deal.

Since then, the 14th February has been a series of ghastly disasters. Every guy starts throwing out the excuses weeks in advance about how it is commercialised nonsense and romance can be applied to any day (why yes it can, and a demonstration of that would be nice occasionally).

Birthdays have been similarly brutal as far as guys are concerned. I'm sure I've ranted about that on here before, but suffice to say that my best birthdays have been spent with my mother – the most excellent by far being a week on Capri in the midst of me supposedly writing my Masters thesis. Let's face it, it's impossible to go wrong with sunshine, a glittering sea, and an endless supply of gelato.

I went to Australia when I was 18 and have had a damn fine series of New Years' Eves ever since with destinations including the likes of New York, Sydney, Buenos Aires and Cape Town. Because I've invariably been away from the UK and my family at Christmas that holiday has come to mean less and less to me over the years, and instead New Year's Eve has taken on a significance. I like the feeling of marking a year that has passed, looking back over the highs and lows and wondering what the heck the next 12 months have in store for me.

Yesterday, I very nearly booked a flight to Los Angeles to spend New Year's Eve over there. I reluctantly allowed the twin bores of Reality and Sanity to reach over and stop me handing over my credit card details to British Airways, and I realised I'd need to rapidly form an alternative plan.

After staring blankly at the wall for a while, with not a little rocking back and forth, I hit upon the only viable option. Armed with a bottle of Champagne and every item of warm clothing and bedding that can be rammed into my car, I'm taking myself off with my tent to somewhere or another – maybe Land's End, perhaps Lizard Point (the UK's most southerly point, if you're wondering). I don't care that a storm is brewing and for the sixty seconds it takes to erect my canvas home for the night that I'll probably be lashed by stinging rain. At least I'll feel alive for those brief moments.

And then I'll curl up inside, break out some music on the iPad, pop the cork, and quietly consolidate a year's worth of events and emotions. If you're at a loose end then feel free to come and join me. It might be cosier in your own home surrounded by familiar comforts but unless something drastic happens – a bulldozer invading your living room, for example, or the chimney catching fire – you're unlikely to remember it. I'm going to pack one more mini experience into 2013 and start 2014 on what will doubtless be a tired but satisfied high.

'Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.' (Aldous Huxley)