Happy New Year, everyone. A friend and I wanted to go to one of the big Millenium Commission events, looked at the list on offer and the weather forecast and went to the new city of Brighton and Hove. Procession of huge paper clocks, bonfire of same, music on the beach and fireworks from a barge moored off shore. Not.

Horizontal rain, struggling against the gale, a few wet people standing around with more than one portaloo each. We decided not to wait, dropped in at my cousins, and drove home, sodden. Looked at the midnight programs on TV - none of which seemed set up to show the new year beginning at all.

We got ready to go out and see the new year in in quietness in a local wood, when Big Ben appeared, followed by a newsreader commenting on those who turned out in the absence of fireworks with an implied sneer at those few who maintained that this was the turn of the millenium, followed by a roar of fireworks audible through the double glazing, but invisible beyone the ridge.

We rushed out in the drizzle to a local viewpoint to see the whole horizon from Southend, round to London, north and south, North Kent and down beyond Gravesend alight with myriads of rockets, and the thunder of their explosions rolling round for a good half hour. A police car drew up, and its occupants leaned over to wish us a happy new year and shake our hands. The displays went on. Some were clearly professional, but others must have been private, so that the giant globes and disks of light bloomed surrounded by smaller sprays, but they just went on and on. I've never seen anything like it.

Only one thing was missing. Maybe we were too late out, maybe the sound was drowned by the fireworks, but from the length of the Thames there was no sound of foghorns from the ships.

Penny