Calamity of hailing a cab on Jan 1

Unhappy New Year to you. And me. How many hours of how many New Year nights have you spent staring at a metropolitan horizon, looking for the light? Of a taxi, not anything unimportant like the Answer to Life. I loathe one thing about the whole business of "out with the old and in with the new". Partying on the eve of the annual transition is tainted by the impossibility of a good exit.

There is a diktat somewhere that says it must either snow or be bitterly cold at New Year; inclement weather waits for the countdown and then starts its meteorological malice. And until Stella McCartney does a little black dress in Goretex and Ugg branch out from boots to sheepskin stilettos, or a Chinese designer does an "Evening Occasionwear Glamor Parka" in sequined taffeta, please - no woman can make the transition from party to pavement without an outbreak of fashion-related flu.

Every year I vow: Never again. But New Year is like childbirth. You eventually forget how awful it was. The result of such New Year amnesia: Here I am again on a kerb. Again.