How to Avoid Having Another Shitty New Year's Eve

Your NYE house party in full swing

New Year's Eve is a night in which man's innate inability to seperate the potential of expectation from the crushing weight of actuality is made painfully apparent. We've experienced NYE's that redefine bleakness, evenings so rancid they make you resolve to never bother with the whole charade again, vowing instead sit in with a tumbler of squash and an old episode of Have I Got News For You on iPlayer. Tempers flare. Tensions boil over. Surge charge taxis drop us home in morose moods. We tell ourselves that it'll be different next year, that we'll find better friends, or better clubs, or at least better bedrooms in other people's houses to drink warm Carling in.

It doesn't have to be this way, you don't have to wake up to the eerie stillness of a New Year's Day with a heavy heart and a needless hangover. Take a deep breath. Focus. You can do it. Just follow the steps below and try not to fuck it up as badly as you did last time. Or the time before. Or the time before that.

Don't Peak too Early
You've probably spent the last week in a perma-pissed haze in front of the telly, occasionally swapping the Peronis for Pringles. The train journey back from your actual home to the place you now think of as home is probably the longest you've gone since the last day of work without sinking a pint or extracting the faintly boozy nectar of a chocolate liqueur or ten. Thus we don't blame you for trying to keep warm in your now freezing cold flat by banging a six pack in double time. The thing is, it's only just gone four. You don't want to be leaving the house till eleven and you probably - if you pick somewhere decent - won't be stumbling in til the doors open at Wetherspoons and you can have your first sit down beer of the new year.

Plan ahead. Have a casual drink or two while you have a relaxing bath. Maybe sip at a glass of prosecco while awaiting the arrival of your friends. Leave the serious shit for the club/pub/someone elses kitchen. After all, no one wants to stink of puke, Apple Sourz, and a hastily consumed pack of Wrigley's Extra at 11pm. Save that treat for the morning.

Dress Properly
Yes, I know it's New Years Eve and yes, I know you've stuffed some mistletoe in your back pocket, and yes, it would be nice to snog someone as the trap remix of Auld Lang Syne blares it's way through the Macbeth, but it's still the middle of winter so please, boys and girls, put some actual clothes on. Wear that nice jumper your grandmother got you. Slip on a pair of sturdy shoes. Fuck off that Palace coach jacket you got and stick a proper coat on. You'll thank me when you're not sitting at work on the 13th with snot dribbling uncontrollably over your keyboard.

Stop Moaning about Money
Yes January is a tight month for all of us financially. Yes Christmas is expensive. Yes you're three weeks late on last month's rent and you shouldn't really be blowing cash on pills and a ticket to whatever's on at Dance Tunnel. I know this because I am also a human being with a bank account. What kind of miserly fucker bangs on about overdraft charges on the one night of the year where it's a near legal requirement to get legless? Shut up about penny pinching and drink your five pound pint like an adult.

Pick a Party and Stick with It
It doesn't matter if it's a club you've dropped the best part of forty quid to be in a shit club or if you've bowled into a grubby flat in the studenty part of town, the principle is the same: just stay there. You won't suddenly enter a powder white nirvana three doors down the road. All that'll happen is that you're going to realize that you're pissed and tired and, actually, going to bed doesn't seem like a bad idea. And that, obviously, will make you a massive wuss and you'll lose all your friends and be condemned to a life of unceasing loneliness. All because you took objection to someone wearing a policeman's hat and a 'I Heart 10 Pints and a Curry' t-shirt.

Never Overthink Things
It's easy to forget that NYE is meant to be fun. Between the strain of having to corral the disparate group of people who all laughed at a Kat Williams video after sharing a joint once who you now begrudgingly call your friends into actually agreeing to go to something, and actually finding an event that's worth bothering with - one that isn't either an old fucker joylessly playing "Blue Monday" and "1999" or some brash young upstart rinsing shit snapback techno - the celebratory aspect of the evening is at risk of being forgotten entirely.

Fretting about timing, transport and exactly how you'll get trollied is a waste of energy. Hours spent in agonising Facebook messenger social logistics meetings are ones that you'll never get back and ones you'll resent and regret for time immemorial. Sit in your lounge with a bottle of Blossom Hill and Bonobo or something on the stereo if that makes life easier. Don't actually do that though because that sounds absurdly depressing. That's what people who get excited about the London firework display would do.

Be the DJ
Obviously not everyone's able to demand free drinks and granted the license to act like a total fanny all night because they've figured out how to drag a few tracks into Serato, but should you sack off the club queues and keep things homely, beg the host to give you at least a few hours behind the lappy. You don't want to be subjected to some jumped up little shit with a student radio show thinking he's Ben UFO because he can play thirty seconds of a jungle track before fucking up his YouTube cues and slamming into the "Music Sounds Better with You" vocal with "Eskimo" playing underneath.

If you're lucky enough to stash your blue bag of tins underneath the chair the laptop's resting on, stay strong. Don't give into peer pressure: be a bit of a cunt and play what you want to hear and not what some prat with empire state pupils and a coagulating slug of snot dropping into his mouth shouts at you. "GOT ANY CHAKA DEMUS AND PLIERS MATE? CAN YOU PLAY "STILL D.R.E"?" Nah mate, fuck off. If you want to play Kevin Drumm tunes and the Blackest Ever Black back catalogue do it. It's your night now.

Come to THUMP's Disco Emporium
We absolutely guarantee you that this delightful evening of disco decadence will be the best NYE party you've ever been to. Ever. Treat yourself to a ticket here.

Follow Josh on Twitter and come and watch him play records alongside Mr Pedro from NTS and the other top notch Thump DJs at the Disco Emporium.