I'm old enough to remember when the only time you would hear fireworks going off was on November the 5th - bonfire night.
These days it seems to be a year round thing with people letting off fireworks for various foreign religious festivals and even private parties. For some reason most of these new firework displays don't take place until sometime after 10pm - which is annoying enough.
But by far the most annoying is the recent tradition of letting fireworks at midnight of New Year's Eve. I think it started with the millennium because I really can't recall that the sound of explosive detonations ushered in the new year before that 1999 event - and at the time I thought that was OK. After all, a new millennium is quite an event, but a new year isn't.
It went on last night for more than an hour after midnight last night. There was the usual cacophony of explosions from the strike of twelve, but it actually seemed as if some people waited until there was a quiet moment before they set off their own.
It used to bother me when the kids were younger, but they were up till late with the rest of us seeing in the new year - we had a modest little party with a few close friends. Even so, it still bothers me that this is happening today even though it isn't keeping me or my kids up.
The thing is, it symbolises the lack of consideration that now exists in Britain today - a perfect representation of the "I'll do what I want and sod the rest of you" society that doesn't care that what they do may bother someone else.
I hate it.
5 comments:
I hate them too. And this year, a house just down the road added a new twist - coming out into the street to bang together pots and pans like beaters driving a tiger to the Maharajah's guns!
And our poor old dog,who has to be sedated.once a year OK ,but as you say Stan it's all year round.
They were quite restrained round here for once. Two minutes' worth of bangers and rockets at midnight then everything went quiet again. Must be the recession.
When I first moved here, 30 years ago, to what has since evolved into the African Colony of Greater Woolwich, you would hear the ships on the Thames sounding their foghorns at midnight. Which was quite impressive given that I am at least a mile away from the river.
I agree with you, although in my youth I probably wouldn't have, lol.
You probably wouldn't like living in Holland at the New Year though. Maybe it has changed now what with the Eurozone, immigration, and health and safety etc., but when I lived there in the early 80s there were so many fireworks going off in Amsterdam (people just throwing them around everywhere too, lol) at the stroke of midnight the noise was so intense it sounded like a helicopter overhead.
Well, one reason could be the dramatic increase in foreign travel for most people. Go anywhere in southern Europe, esp Catholic countries like Spain, and just about every week is some sort of celebration of a feast day or other, with the accompaniment of fireworks.
We return home feeling that other countries seem to find more reasons to have fun than we have.
Put simply, we don't want to get left out.
I blame it on the deadening effect of the Reformation and the rise of killjoy Presbyterianism.
Gordon Brown would understand.
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