EVERY family has its New Year traditions. This year some of you will have insisted that a member of the clan - not usually the most popular at the party - stood outside in the freezing cold with only a lump of coal for company until they were invited back in again, only to find that in the meantime someone had extinguished a cigar in their eggnog and snogged their missus senseless.

Others will have sung several incoherent choruses of Auld Lang Syne, shed a few tears, hugged and kissed warmly, declared undying love and then will not exchange so much as a single syllable for another 12 months.

But my family's tradition is a little different; we inflict actual bodily harm on ourselves.

It doesn't happen every year, that would be pretty unbelievable even for us; but it is a regular enough occurrence to make the dawning of each new year something of a game of chance. A game of Russian roulette if you like, only with party poppers and sausages on sticks instead of a gun with one bullet in the barrel.

It doesn't always happen on the night itself either, but this just means that the injured party has to actually attend a New Year's party on crutches or in pot up to their eyebrows, much to the amusement of the other intensely concerned guests, rather than be carried out of it on a makeshift stretcher.

And come to think of it, you don't even have to be an actual blood relative to be struck down by the curse: simply being a pal of ours is just cause for your life insurance premiums to skyrocket.

Don't believe me? Don't blame you. Unfortunately, the evidence is on my side.

Take our chum Linda. One minute she was twirling around the garden happy as you like, shaking her not insubstantial thing to a groovy tune (if dad was on the decks it must have been Dusty Springfield or The Kinks) and the next minute she was out of control, whirling distinctly dervishly through the fence and into next door's garden, where she lay in agony until we stopped laughing long enough to pick her up.

Then there was my Auntie Dot. Hers was a pre-party calamity but, as I said previously, turning up wearing a pot counts in my book. She had simply been walking - walking mind, not running, whirling or hopping blindfold - past her Christmas tree on the way to bed when she slipped on a forgotten piece of wrapping paper and ended up flat on her back beneath the baubles with a broken leg. And there she remained, moaning quietly, until late the following morning when her dozy brood managed to stagger out of bed to ask what was for breakfast.

Next came my sister-in-law Sharon. No stranger to our home, she inexplicably forget there was a step down into the bathroom and plunged dramatically in a tricky tipple-over-cum-belly-flop fashion, not unlike a slightly tipsy Olga Corbet, until she came to a halt in a crumpled heap underneath the sink. The story didn't end there, but as it involves Sharon being arrested on the way to hospital, I think this time it will.

Then we have this New Year, a year when not one but two - a married couple no less - of our friends ended up in spasms of agony.

Denise was picked up by a Richard Branson wannabe, who proceeded to run around Leeds' Millennium Square holding her upside down before tripping, falling on top of her and crushing her pelvis (ouch!). The next day, after spending seven hours in the Infirmary by her side, her husband Dave's back painfully locked as he was trying to lever a very slippery and very stuck Denise from the bath.

Then inspiration struck. The crooked and crushed couple remembered that one of their neighbours was a chiropractor. So Dave hobbled across the road, no doubt with several children in tow shouting "The bells! The bells!", to ask for help, only to find that their white-coat wearing neighbour was actually a chiropodist.

And that is why I think the time is fast approaching when I will have to leave the country come New Year. I've been dodging bullets for far too long now, so maybe I should go away - far, far away - next year. Somewhere nice and safe. Afghanistan perhaps.