At this time of year, I can feel the sadness all around me. The snow hardens shortly after it hits the ground and soon devolves into a grey block of ice. Outside the car, it’s twenty degrees below zero. Even with the heating on maximum, the cold gets into your bones.

The months between December and March are tough. The skies are dark and grey, blue is just a fanciful memory. The clouds form a uniform mass, there are no storms and it barely ever rains. The only green to be seen belongs to pine trees but even their colour seems dulled by the climate. Nothing smells of anything.

The buildings are perfect parallelepipeds embedded in the snow. When the wind gets up it beats against their sides. Although it’s ugly and depressing, it doesn’t have that fierce ugliness of certain places in Buenos Aires like La Boca or Dock Sud, which have grown so run-down that they have a charm of their own. Here, it’s arid and hostile. It’s hard to develop an emotional attachment to one’s surroundings. They hold no secrets. Most of the buildings have built-in parking lots. Everything fits together perfectly, like a simple puzzle. It’s very different to Buenos Aires where the properties abut one another and you never know how far they go on for or what’s around the next corner. There, you get a sense of the unknown, of being swept along. Here, there’s no room for the imagination. You can easily calculate how big a restaurant’s kitchen is because you know exactly where the building ends.

This northern ugliness is even more tangible at Christmas. The cold weather has set in in earnest, people are in a hurry to get back inside and don’t say much to one another. They carry packages and wear coats, hats, scarves and mittens. They’re preoccupied. There are preparations to be made, money to be spent, gifts to be bought that then need to be wrapped well, with a card and message attached for loved ones and acquaintances alike. There are lots of parties, usually at work. People get drunk, especially the shy ones. Gatherings that abound with clichés.

Shortly before New Year I went into a Seven Eleven, which is open twenty-four hours a day. It’s somewhere you go when you’re in a bind, like today when I felt like hotdogs and the supermarket was closed. As I left, I saw a sign that read:

                                                               Holiday Season Opening Hours

                                                               24 December:   24 hours

                                                               25 December:   24 hours

                                                               31 December:   24 hours

                                                               1 January:           24 hours

These were some of the few occasions when a country with such a strong work ethic allowed itself to rest without feeling guilty. And the Seven Eleven was going to be open. I grew depressed over the plight of others, a fairly regular occurrence. I started to think about who was going to be there on the 31^st of December. One person on their own in the store. Celebrating New Year alone. The idea saddened me as I walked home.

While I was making myself dinner I decided that I’d visit the shop before midnight. I wasn’t sure whether it was out of solidarity or curiosity. By the time I’d finished my meal, I knew it was more curiosity than anything else. I wanted to know who it was left on their own on the 31^st, bringing in the New Year in such sterile surroundings,

What else was I going to do? Sleep with Julia. That didn’t tempt me. Neither did going to see any of the few people I knew in the city.

That morning I slept in until eleven. Then I tidied up my desk. I went for a walk, came back, read and took a nap. By nine o’clock I was feeling impatient. My parents called me, big deal. The shop was a fifteen minute walk away. I turned on the TV but the programmes were so inane that I turned it off again. I left the flat at eleven thirty-four.

I volunteered for the shift. My culture doesn’t celebrate this holiday and I wouldn’t have anyone to share it with anyway. The most important thing is they pay double the normal wages, not just one and a half times like normal overtime. But I have other reasons.

I walk slowly, there’s time. It’s a long walk but I get there fine. There are two customers. Jeremy serves them. He closes the till. I count the change, tidy the mugs and wipe around the coffee machine even though it’s already clean. I tidy up behind the counter. Jeremy leaves. I’m on my own. A strange feeling comes over me. This year is going to pass just like the last and the one before that.

There aren’t any customers. At ten minutes to twelve the door opens. It’s him. He looks like an immigrant, on his own. A student. He’s come to see how I spend other people’s New Year.

Copyright David Mibashan. Translated from Spanish by Kit Maude.