Staying up late is a luxury I can little afford as the mother of a young child. My Spider Boy springs, jumps, leaps out of bed with all eight of his little yet super-fast legs every morning between 6 and 7am. Sundays, public holidays, New Year’s Day – it doesn’t matter – he just wants to get up and you know, jump, swing and shoot webs – live his life. Which is fabulous and how IT SHOULD BE, and I wouldn’t have it any other way… but sometimes, Mummy just wants a sleep in!

But on New Year’s Eve, when it was 1.00am and Prince’s 1999 was on late-night music TV, I thought, “How can I possibly go to bed?” I’d already seen Kool and the Gang, Earth Wind and Fire, ABBA, and now, Prince, followed by a Toto chaser (Hold the Line). Every one a winner!

I know I need to be fresh for the morning, but staying up past 1am to indulge in some retro music seems really mild and, these days, more satisfying compared to various New Years Eves of my 20s where I indulged in such activities as:

*Arriving at a party of a friend of a friend of a friend and swigging from a champagne bottle in the driveway before I went in
* Public pashing
* Going home at 4am, but only because I had to be at my temp job as a talk-radio switch bitch on New Year’s Day.
*Trying to get home from a dance party at 3am by attempting to hitch a ride in an ambulance
*Sitting for 9 hours on damp grass surrounded by discarded barbecued chicken bones and cigarette butts “to get a good spot” to watch fireworks harbour-side
*Walking home from Moore Park to Rose Bay (via Kings Cross for pancakes and orange juice at 5am) with two girlfriends because…sigh…that’s just what you have to do on New Year’s Eve sometimes
*Trying to find a better party than the one I was already at and consequently being in a cab, car, bus or being jostled in the streets at midnight. See below.
*Trying to basically walk, while being pushed and shoved through broken glass, beer, vomit and fried onion rings in any number of dirty Sydney streets.

See why a bit of retro music at home at 1am (with a splash of champagne…oh alright – and a smidge of chocolate mud cake), is all I need for a rollicking good time these days?

Mummy’s tired.