please empty your brain below

Happy New Year DG, a glass (or Two)of champagne and Take That at the 02 on television was quite effortless, cheers to you all.

May there be more brilliant blogposts this year. Have a great New Year DG!

Happy New Year DG!

Sounds well 'orrible, Geezer. Stay home next year, eh. All the Best People (ie, me) do

Sorry you had a bad view of the fireworks.
I gave up going out on New Years Eve about 20 years ago.
I do go most years to the New Years Day Parade in central London. Far more civilised and not full of drunken mobs.
Best wishes for the New Year

Oh dear. I thought it was all a bit squibbish on the telly too. Agree with John above though, we went to the New Year's Day parade a few times in recent years and it's good, family-friendly fun.
Cheers!

Sound as crappy and worthless-waiting as Times Square's celebrations or our Easter Resurrection firework display here in Corfu, Greece...loads of people, you're packed like sardines in a tin and you can't see nothing at all, all you get is tiredness and lose of patience...

Happy New Year DG ... am I the only person who has noticed that comrade Ken has developed an almost unhealthy obsession about these fireworks . would be nice if he dared venture out on the streets and appreciate the very real cost(not just the evaporating gunpowder) and logistic/security problems this causes and maybe he'd then appreciate he has created a rod for his own back

ken aside (there's a tempting thought)...they looked good ok on tv! as long as you turned the sound off to avoid the inane commentary... when will the beeb learn to just play some background muzak and spare us having to endure the pathetic ramblings of some b-list presenter

maybe next year Bürgermeister Boris will add something to the proceedings in his own inimitable way!

bonne année :o)

Happy new year - things can only get better or something like that.

we always keep a few sparklers in the kitchen drawer ... xx and thanks ... your blog is great

we spent a couple of hours in the hyde park winter wonderland thing wondering how anyone could spend £7 on a ferris wheel ticket... then turned round and head back out of town for the local - we didn't want to stand in the rain for a couple of hours waiting for 10minutes of fireworks... sounds like that was the right decision... ... mental note - london doesn't do fireworks...

Other than being woken up at 12 by fireworks going off outside my window, the whole new year celebrations passed me by. Quite sad for a 23 year old, but at least I wasn't disappointed. After all, it's only a date, isn't it?

Happy New Year DG

St James' Park has never been crowded either of the two times I've been through it, and has a nice direct view of the Eye. Probably a good bet for next year.

You didn't miss much. I pressed on to Parliament Square (got to Piccadilly Circus at 10:45 and started walking). You couldn't hear Big Ben at all despite being barely 100 yards from it, so it took everyone several seconds to realise it was new year (there's no one to start a countdown or anything).

With all the smoke blowing your way we got a decent view of the fireworks. Like most fireworks they were pretty underwhelming to watch. Looked a lot better on TV when I got home.

I was at a party and we took the late boat into town in the hope that turning round at Blackfriars would give us a view of the fireworks. Well, it gave us a view of the smoke.

But at least we were in comfort and it was quite fun looking at the people on the banks, bridges and other boats. It's all about the company, really.

Happy New Year.

P.S. The only gaiety Boris could add to the New Year celebrations would be if he volunteered to ride on one of the rockets...

And how much are we betting that the Olympics will be vastly better on tv than in real life?

I went to the 2006/7 fireworks and got a decent spot on the north side of the river, and have to say those fireworks were excellent. This year, I was at the NYE party at the Southbank Centre, trotted outside to see the fireworks, and had a great view of the huge cloud of smoke. Luckily I was close enough to still make out a lot of the display, but I think it was worse this year anyway.

Also, if anyone can work out the motivation for the police stopping anyone getting into Charing X station when I could see near-empty trains leaving it while crossing the bridge, I'd love to know. Two years running I've tried to use that station (once just after midnight, once at nearly 2am) and both times there have been huge crowds corralled outside by police horses. If anyone's trying to get to SE London by train, I recommend London Bridge station, which was really quiet by the time I got there (via Southwark tube - there's another tip) and (as previously mentioned) the trains coming in were half-empty.

Phew, glad to get that off my chest, and happy new year dg, sorry the start was so crap!

Happy new year!
We ended up pretty much under the eye, yet most of what we saw was smoke. Crowd surfing was the only easy way to get back to Waterloo, only to find there was a four hour wait to get into the station - even the people at the front of the crowd were giving up. The trek back to Vauxhall might have been unpretty, but at least we got a train (and a seat)!

happy new year DG. the fireworks were cancelled in brussels (not that i go anymore) due to terrorists. the 14 terrorists are on the loose though as they didn't have enough evidence against them in court.

brussels is under a terror alert - or something.

Agreed - we were downwind of the display at Temple tube also and didn't see anything except smoke after the first minute...

Hmm. I have a theory that these things are best
observed by chance rather than design.

We abandoned the plan to visit and went to a club instead.

Future tactics may include thinking of a way to get into an upper floor of a tall building?

Have a very Happy New Year and excellent 2008!

rashbre

Went to bed at 9:30 feeling very ill (not alcohol related, sadly). Woke up by a tremendous bang at midnight and watched all the pretty coloured smoke from the comfort of my bed. Wasn't worth getting OUT of bed for, but jolly nice if it's delivered to your doorstep...
I knew there was one good reason for living south of the river...

I nearly missed the midnight celebrations, being in bed and sound asleep, but the adolescent boy next door obligingly woke me up with his fireworks.
A very Happy New Year to DG and all his readers.

Happy New Year DG! Personally I was asleep on the sofa, having been lulled off by a few cocktails and the Jools Holland thingiebob on 2...such a lightweight these days.

I was there Unfortunatelly.
The best fireworks that I haven't seen. And than the friends and family where telling me how much they envy me for seeing them live because they looked great on TV ((
Just a big LIE. I am never doing this mistake again. So tourists come to London... to see nothing!

Wow... I must have been the only one that thought they were amazing. But then being a country bumpkin I'm not used to displays on that scale! We got there about 10 and were right opposite the eye. Andyeah, it took a while to get home but I was with friends and had a laugh trying to locate a tube station that wasn't closed or full. I'm sorry you all missed it as it really was spectacular

Well I was standing in a club, pint in hand, watching it all on the flat-screen TVs. I noticed that some of the Beeb's cameras had the same problems with the smoke. When they switched to the ones that weren't right in front of the eye all you got was blurry flashes through smoke. They did keep going back to the blokes zipping about on their speedboat with fireworks shooting out of the back though - I bet most people on the riverside didn't even realise that's where some of the lightshow was coming from... it looked like great fun

I started my evening on the Embankment.

Got to Westminster station just before it closed at 9pm. We walked from westminster, to the south side of waterloo bridge (IMAX) which took A FULL HOUR. Then we waited for people to meet us, etc... by the time we met up with everyone, It was 10:30.. We walk upto the back of the London Eye, but no one is allowed up to it, So we decide that were going to try get to the Namco Sports Bar at the basement of County Hall...

So we try to get to the stairs on westminster bridge, but no, the police are blocking people getting near the bridge! So we decide to cut out loses and turn back around, and then find out that the police are now blocking waterloo road. AGGGHHHH. So we are diverted around waterloo station, with lots of roads getting blocked of... and we get all the way round back to the IMAX theatre and the police force us to waterloo road again, behind a building which is so tall, all I can see is 'Chicken Cottage' and no London Eye. (We were infact infront of the Shell buidling if you know it).

So anyway, there was an alleyway at the side of the shell building, and this was blocked off by a wire fence... Meanwhile My friends, girlfriend and I are getting squashed out of hell, so we lifted the fence up and snuck underneath it, went down the alley way, snuck under the second fence and got right behind the London Eye.

It was an alright view, apart from a tree the way. but I think the best part of the show is the embankment directly opposite the eye... of which you need a ticket for??

But yes, Happy new year! *rolls eyes*

Oh yeah, when it was all over, you should have seen the thousands of people out side of Waterloo station waiting for the train. So we walked to Holborn, Hundreds of people... So we walked to Chancery Lane. Tens of people. Thank fuck.

P.S. I think I'm going to use what I've just typed for a blog post on my blog. Hmmmm, great.

Whilst the train service from Forest Hill leaves much to be desired, one advantage of living down here is the view of the Eye (albeit six miles away) from the top of Canonbie Road. Stepped outside my front door at 1155pm, enjoyed 15 minutes of relatively small fireworks and into bed by 12:20am!

I have to say I thought they were spectacular, we were watching from the top of primrose hill and it couldn't have been more perfect - amazing view of the eye and the whole sky with the silhouette of the iconic BT tower in the forefront. The whole sky lit up. Meanwhile, we didn't have to cope with huge crowds, police telling us where to go, or risking what we did a couple of years ago which was miss the fireworks completely from trafalgar sq. because a building blocked our view...anuways, happy New Year DG and keep 'em coming...don't suppose you could recommend a good NYC blog could you?
Helen











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