Wright On! A wry look at life, with Shelley Wright

THERE'S less than 12 hours to go until the new millennium and I don't even know if I can be bothered to go out let alone celebrate, thank you very much.

It's just not like me, I know, but two weeks of larging it big time have finally caught up today and I don't know if I can even face raising a glass to Y2K - never mind drinking the contents of it too, if you know what I mean.

In fact, it seems like 2000 years ago since I had a good night's sleep and, I must admit, I certainly look like I've been burning that millennium candle at both ends.

But it is Christmas you know and, as such, the unwritten rule that everyone over 18 can throw all the sense they were born with through the nearest window and over indulge to the point where they unceremoniously pass out always applies.

Honest, it's fine. It's Christmas. Be merry I say.

That's what I told my friend on Christmas Eve anyway when she called in to deliver some presents and found me looking bleary-eyed and still wearing last night's clothes - and it seemed to work a treat.

Which is more than it did ten minutes later when I got a look of absolute horror after she heard the unceremonious results of my toothbrush touching the fur on my tongue, though I must admit I blamed it on the Sausage McMuffin I had for breakfast.

Now I'm sorry to go on about being sick again - and not least because the editor is a bit squeamish where this is concerned - but I'm afraid it's become a huge part of my life. In fact, I think it must be a Wright family trait because my brother seems to be forever doing it too - and he doesn't even drink, so goodness knows what's going on there.

Personally, I think it may be something to do with the amount of take aways he consumes but as we're back to Sausage McMuffins again I think we'd better stop right there.

There's also a legendary story he loves to tell about my dad and a stray fish bone which involves fish and chips and the inside of a Transit van door, but that's somewhere else we don't want to go. It's not good.

With that in mind, maybe I'd be better off stopping in tonight. I mean, I don't want to welcome the new millennium in by being ill and as I'm already sick to death of the whole thing there's a good chance I will. And I'm not the only one to be fed-up with the millennium, I'm sure, though I may be the only one with 99 reasons not to celebrate it thanks to a book that landed on my desk earlier this week.

Included in those reasons is the worryingly plausible fact that as Pope Gregory only demanded new calendars in 1582, we've probably got the wrong day anyway.

Some historians also believe the millennium happened in 1996 due to the fact four years were lost when AD and BC were introduced and I've been trying to remember what I was doing that night.

Probably being sick.

Happy New Year.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.