Sorting through some old photos this Hogmanay reminds me of the first year I went to the street party in Ashton Lane, which would have been 2003.

For reasons that are best known to themselves, the owners on each side of the lane clearly couldn’t come to an agreement about paying for staffing and security and safety, and so decided to each run their own, separately ticketed parties.

This of course necessitated a big chain-link fence being erected right down the middle of the (not very wide) lane…

Madness – especially when you see how unequally popular the two parties were.After midnight, there were emotional scenes of people trying to kiss loved ones who’d ended up on the wrong side of the fence, and couldn’t get to each other!

Thankfully by Hogmanay the following year (2004), the pubs had come to some kind of sanity and agreement, and just had the one single street party…

The Wall had come down…