Lost in transit

Going off with a bang!

It's fireworks season here in London. Our nights - - which are drawing in earlier and earlier with each passing day - - are peppered with the constant sound of bangers and crackers going off. Last night, from our fourth floor flat, we were treated to an amazing fireworks display. By whom, we don't know. All these explosions can only mean one thing. Bonfire Night is on its way.

Bonfire Night is one of those weird traditions that even we Australians once used to celebrate - - until the Government banned fireworks and took all the fun (and danger) out of the proceedings back when I was a teenager.

But the English are still crazy for it. So crazy that celebrations aren't just restricted to November 5; they've been letting fireworks rip, burning off old stacks of wood and setting light to effigies for the past two weeks. Even as I sit here writing this now, I can hear the sounds of bangers exploding in the distance. Going on past experience, we probably won't have a quiet evening in West London for at least another month. . .

I'm kind of used to it now. But when I first arrived here in 1998, I used to jump with fright every time I heard something go off. It was especially alarming to walk through Holland Park (on my way to the YHA I was staying in) and have crackers exploding all around me.

Only the other night, while strolling through the rain along a busy thoroughfare, a 'fireball' flew through the air, zig-zagging unpredicatably from one side of the road to the other, narrowly missing pedestrians on one side of the road and me and my partner on the other. The other-worldy noise it made was only overtaken by the laughter of those who, hidden on an elevated hotel terrace behind us, had set the bloody thing off.

It's not so much Bonfire Night I don't like; it's the idiots who derive so much pleasure from putting other people's safety at risk. Ironic then, that the night celebrates a man -- Guy Fawkes -- who did just that way back in the 17th century . . .

Posted by kimbofo at November 2, 2003 05:32 PM