BANG!!

Our stay-at-home, virtual Bonfire Night was an ultra-enjoyable triumph!

It may actually lead me to think ‘who needs organised displays?’ in the future. The outside air was perfectly crisp and still, our mini bonfire sparkled and flamed like a cosy slice of Winter warmth, and the grub we took out with us tasted marvellous.

I ended the evening by showing a video of the biggest firework ever set off – a gargantuan monstrosity of manmade explosive wonder that detonated over Colorado back in February. Even seeing it on a screen was breathtaking.

I would post a link to the clip, but I don’t want to be advertising someone else’s YouTube channel, so if you just type ‘WORLD’S BIGGEST FIREWORK 2020’ into the search bar I’m sure you’ll get a chance to see it. It’s not a fancy, multicoloured, lots-of-stages, cacophonous affair, it’s just a one-off sound-and-light ejaculation (for want of a better word). But WHAT a one-off sound-and-light ejaculation!

At first, you just see a black nightscape with a trail of a rocket racing its way into the sky. Then the damn thing goes off and lights up what appears to be an area with a 7-mile radius, including an entire valley and two separate villages. The camera is so far away from the explosion that it takes several seconds for the sound to reach it, THAT’S how enormous this baby was. It is almost unreal to behold. If we got our hands on one and set it off in our garden, I think we’d level half the houses in Suffolk.

My favourite firework of the night, however, was a cleverly designed Japanese one that left a pattern in the sky like a jellyfish.

I had a great time. I expected disappointment because I was comparing this year to previous ones, and I ended up trying something different and enjoying it immensely. A lesson for us all there, as we deal with another lockdown and an ongoing pandemic…

RC 6-11-20

P.S. Sorry for the nasty image about a giant ejaculation in the sky…