Tonight the cold skies over London are a battlefield - explosions, whizzing, shrieking coloured lights. Guy Fawkes night. And over all a pall of thick grey smoke. That's the worst thing about being out on a night like this, not the noise, or the threat of marauding teens brandishing firecrackers, but the chemical soup that passes for air. It's a clear night, but there are no stars.
The poet's mother was a refugee in wartime Italy, her village and the surrounding countryside decimated by the Allies and the Germans, who holed up in the monastery at Montecassino. One day a shell exploded in a cooking pot next to her, and she saw too many civilians blown to pieces. On nights like these I wonder whether, holed up in her cosy living room, she's taken back to that time, if the explosions in the sky frighten her the way they freak the neighbourhood cats and dogs. Even our goldfish is hiding in his glass jar within the aquarium.
I much prefer fireworks in Australia, where you have to have a permit, and so generally the only fireworks you see are big organised, orchestrated extravaganzas like Brisbane's Riverfire. Amazing spectacles, the best fireworks set to music and handled by experts. Safely. Here, anyone over a certain age can legally buy as many fireworks as they like, and so you get kids throwing firecrackers at each other and passersby, little raggedy 'displays' in every second back garden, and as far as I can see, there's no real excitement about the wonder of these beautiful explosions. They're so readily available (new shops open up at this time every year just to sell fireworks and then close down once the season's over) that they're not special. People start with the fireworks some time in August (Diwali?) and you're not guaranteed a quiet night until after New Year's Eve. And then there's the safety issue - people are injured and blinded by fireworks every year.
As a child at Brisbane's Ekka (the yearly Royal National Show), I was awed by the sparkling, fizzing lights in the nightly firework show. I still feel that way when I see a good fireworks display. I look up into tonight's sky, with the occasional unfolding sparkling flower, or glittering tower of light, but mostly just a lot of bangs and nothing to see through the smoke, and all I feel is irritation at the pollution and annoyance at the noise. Bah humbug!
The poet's mother was a refugee in wartime Italy, her village and the surrounding countryside decimated by the Allies and the Germans, who holed up in the monastery at Montecassino. One day a shell exploded in a cooking pot next to her, and she saw too many civilians blown to pieces. On nights like these I wonder whether, holed up in her cosy living room, she's taken back to that time, if the explosions in the sky frighten her the way they freak the neighbourhood cats and dogs. Even our goldfish is hiding in his glass jar within the aquarium.
I much prefer fireworks in Australia, where you have to have a permit, and so generally the only fireworks you see are big organised, orchestrated extravaganzas like Brisbane's Riverfire. Amazing spectacles, the best fireworks set to music and handled by experts. Safely. Here, anyone over a certain age can legally buy as many fireworks as they like, and so you get kids throwing firecrackers at each other and passersby, little raggedy 'displays' in every second back garden, and as far as I can see, there's no real excitement about the wonder of these beautiful explosions. They're so readily available (new shops open up at this time every year just to sell fireworks and then close down once the season's over) that they're not special. People start with the fireworks some time in August (Diwali?) and you're not guaranteed a quiet night until after New Year's Eve. And then there's the safety issue - people are injured and blinded by fireworks every year.
As a child at Brisbane's Ekka (the yearly Royal National Show), I was awed by the sparkling, fizzing lights in the nightly firework show. I still feel that way when I see a good fireworks display. I look up into tonight's sky, with the occasional unfolding sparkling flower, or glittering tower of light, but mostly just a lot of bangs and nothing to see through the smoke, and all I feel is irritation at the pollution and annoyance at the noise. Bah humbug!
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