1/1/08 Some years ago, Elliot Young, Spencer's closest friend, anaesthetised himself with a bottle of vodka and attempted to saw off his own thumb. For some reason, he imagined this act of melodramatic stupidity would impress a girlfriend already disenchanted by his tendency to self-pity. The operation was aborted when he fainted, but the damage inflicted was sufficient to present a significant handicap. Elliot had somehow muddled the thumb with the pinkie and thought it was expendable. For the next three months, his girlfriend was obliged to assist the semi-invalid perform the most rudimentary functions. The last time I saw him was at my mother's funeral. I remember watching as he staggered out of the toilet, his shirt only partially buttoned and his shoelaces trailing behind him. "Can you zip me up, please, Linda?" he wailed, eliciting a glower of contempt that stopped him in his tracks. Linda's inability to conceal her irritation, I suspect, precipitated Elliot's second grand gesture, the overdose of anti-depressants that, quite unexpectedly, killed him.

It's often occurred to me that this is exactly the sort of wrong-headed response to adversity that my brother might emulate. In Spencer's world, the amputation of a finger is probably a romantic gesture equivalent to the composition of a sonnet. Rather than leave him unsupervised to dismember himself, I decided to spend the evening at home. Christine, who usually hosts the Coe Hogmanay, prepared a cold buffet while Muriel agreed to come on condition that she could bring her friend Jackie. This proviso, I have to confess, didn't please me in the slightest. The coincidence of Spencer's predicament and New Year had presented an ideal opportunity to alert Muriel to the consequences of hanging round churchyards, smoking cigarettes and indulging in unkind impersonations of well-meaning relatives. I'd gone so far as printing a list of resolutions for her to consider. While Muriel's old best friend, Hilary, cruelly jettisoned after a disagreement about Marilyn Manson's allegiance to the church of Satan, would have earnestly participated in any such discussion, Jackie's smirking presence, I anticipated, would undermine the entire exercise. Despite my objections, though, she tagged along. Within minutes of arriving, she and Muriel were sprawled in front of the television, watching a d.v.d about a cod-philosophising American vampire who swanned around in a leather trench-coat, seducing waitresses and quoting Neitszche to anyone who'd listen. As anybody who attends the Drumfeld Film Club will confirm, I practise a zero tolerance policy toward people who insist on chattering through movies. The Coe Hogmanay, however, is traditionally about communication and reflection. Ignoring Muriel's sighs of exasperation, I tried to explain this to Jackie, mentioning the importance of discussing our resolutions. "I think that Hamilton should resolve to shut up and let us watch the film," muttered Muriel, causing Jackie to snort diet coke onto the carpet.

Spencer, who spent the bulk of the evening skulking in the bedroom he's preserved like the tomb of a sulky teenage pharoah, eventually emerged five minutes before the bells. While he was intact and less drunk than I'd anticipated, he refused to acknowledge my heartfelt "Happy New Year, Spencer!" with so much as a nod. "Stop bugging him, Hamilton," hissed Christine after I'd followed him round the room, hand extended, repeating the greeting. Christine's tendency to condone rudeness, particularly when I'm the recipient is another matter that will have to be addressed in 2008.

A row was averted by the arrival of Christine's friends Isobel and Liz, a bright spot almost immediately nullified by the unexpected appearance of her estranged husband Guy Pearson with his father en tow. Despite my protestation that we didn't have enough food to cover for uninvited guests, the pair lingered. Spencer, who would normally have backed my objection, returned to his room leaving Pearson, Senior, a cash-crazed dwarf who once offered me a job shifting bags of mulct in his garden centre, to take over."What sort of party is this, anyway?" he demanded. "There's no music!" My explanation that we were going to discuss our resolutions was dismissed with, "Why don't you resolve to get a job?" a lame jibe that caused Jackie to snort more cola onto the carpet. In the time it took me to go to the kitchen and find the stain remover, Muriel had put on a c.d. and Pearson, Senior, had commandeered the centre of the room where he was belligerently stamping one foot in time to the music and encouraging Liz to join him. When I protested that Liz would rather discuss her resolutions as planned and that if she were to dance at all it would be with Isobel, he shouted, "I thought you'd gone to look for a job!" The mere repetition of such a pathetic joke didn't, of course, make it any funnier, but ensured the desired response nonetheless with embarrassment prompting everyone present to laugh. "He's quite a character," said Isobel as we watched him bob gnomishly in front of Liz, his face twisted into a leer of thwarted yearning. This is a description I often hear apportioned to pests, loudmouths and misfits about whom we don't wish to be unkind. Consideration of other people's feelings is, of course, an admirable quality, but having idenified someone as a knave we should treat him with the ruthless detachment we'd apply to a verruca. Malfeasance is invariably infectious. This was the case last night. Within ten minutes, Pearson, with the insistence of someone used to getting his own way, had everybody, quite literally, dancing to his tune. The party ruined, I went up to my room, returning in my pyjamas at four a.m. as an indication that it was, perhaps, time for everyone to go home.