When the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, I was surrounded by a group of naked men.

And I was the only woman present.

Okay, so they weren’t naked.

And when I say ‘a group of men’, I actually mean… three.

And they were all gay.

So although I was technically speaking the only woman present, I was certainly far from the only queen.

You see, those were the only men I could find in my new hometown of By George above a certain age who, like me, are unmarried, childless and therefore available to party the night away.

I was in bed by 1 a.m.

But actually, our low-key start to the New Year wasn’t the queens’ faults. I was simply knackered from old age a long year.

I was really not sad to see 2006 go. This is weird for me, because I’m usually such a sentimental creature, I can hardly leave a room.

I suppose when you’ve had as many New Year’s as I’ve had, the novelty is bound to wear off eventually. Besides, the entire holiday season brings out the annual performance angst in me. The pressure always seems to be on one to have to come up with something frightfully exotic (which by default happens to be frightfully expensive) to do in order to celebrate.

And if you’ve been a big enough sucker and you have been reading this blog for a while, then you should know that I’m not good under pressure. To put it mildly.

In South Africa, Christmas and New Year’s are summer celebrations. So unlike the wealthy Northern Hemisphere residents who tend to seek out the warmer climates to spend their holidays, the wealthy South Africans, I’ve learned, tend to head north in search of those magical White Christmases you northerners have been taunting our snow-deprived southerners with for years with your Christmas cards, movies and carols depicting and describing magical winter wonderlands while we stand by the barbecue under the scorching sun and sweat.

Hence I’ve had many recent conversations that went more or less like this:

Me: What are you doing for the holidays?

Other person: Oh, nothing special. We’re going skiing.

Me: Oh, fun! At Hartbeespoort Dam? (A lake near Pretoria.)

Other person (with disdain): Not WATER-skiing. SNOW-skiing. At the Swiss Alps.

And when they see the naked envy on my face, they ask smugly: And what are YOUR plans?

Knowing full well that I obviously don’t have any.

I hate the holidays just as much as a married man who is firmly in the closet must hate being with his wife: It’s just too much pressure to perform, to measure up to, to outdo…

So how did YOU all outdo me?