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Do you still have cracker nights ?

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Mrs Wells and I are in the Top End on hols. That is the Northern Territory in Australa
Tonight we are in Darwin and they are celebrating Territory Day which is in remembrance of attaining self govt in 1978.
Anyway as we drove into town it seemed every second store was selling fireworks. 2 for 1 at Acme fireworks – Roadrunner where are you ?
They can only buy them and let them off on this one day of the year and as I type a lot of them are doing just that. With apologies to those who have experienced the real thing it is like a war zone the pop pop in the background punctuated by the squeal of a rocket passing overhead. Been going on for hours.
The last time I had access to fireworks to blow up the neighbours letter box was in the seventies.
So my question is – how common is the availability of fireworks these days ?

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Comments

  1. All bloody year, unfortunately. I hate the damn things; usually let off by those who do not seem to have any consideration for other people’s pets or livestock as if they have an inalienable right to ignite explosives whenever and wherever they wish just because they can. Fuckwits. OOAA it seems.

  2. As Foxy says, available pretty much without restriction all year round in the UK. I think you’re meant to be 18 to buy them, but don’t know how diligently that is policed.

  3. Children love fireworks but I know of no adult who isn’t already bored after the first two.

    And yet, people — adult people –  insist on making their guests — adult guests – go outside at parties so they can set them off. I suppose it’s to prove that they literally have money to burn, but I wish they’d spend it on a Beatles tribute band instead.

    • Generally, I agree but we have seen a few properly breathtaking displays, two in France and the closing show at Disney in LA. Not interested in standing in the back yard in November though. Warm weather helps, I find.

  4. Its 4th July here soon in the US.

    Fireworks will be out in force, but not within the city limits of Houston, only organized displays allowed. You face a fine if you set them off yourself.

    • Seriously? In Texas. Well fancy that.

      I had imagined that Texans had some ancestral right to let off as much ordance as they had to hand, of whatever kind – assault rifles, sub-machine guns, pump-action shotguns, that sort of thing.

      Can you fire a few Magnum rounds into the air from your Desert Eagle instead of letting off a roman candle?

  5. I’ve seen some great organised displays on bonfire night and new years eve. I don’t recognise these ‘year round’ fireworks that people going on about. You get them for a week or so either side of bonny night and that’s it.

    • Not ten miles from where I sit there is a shop that sells fireworks all year round. People tool up with barely civilised Chinese fireworks and let them off at family parties, barbeques, bar-mitzvahs and God knows what other events, as they see fit. It’s not every weekend and it’s not even every month, but it’s basically at random and there’s no way of predicting it. And that, Jim, is one reason why it is so effing inconsiderate.

      We have ponies in a field that is bounded on one side by a row of large detached houses. The occupants look out onto our ponies for 365 days of the year. On several non-November 5th weekends most years, one or other of the occupying families will trundle the gas barbeque out of the detached garage, invite their pals around, scorch some perfectly good sausages beyond recognition and get pissed.

      So far so good, but they will then end the evening by illuminating the adjoining paddock with the multi-coloured flare of burning exotic chemicals, often they have been launched skywards only to plummet into the fields (sometimes dry as tinder).

      The explosions and the fire will scare the living shit out of our ponies, but the people are too busy enjoying themselves to think about that. They could tell us in advance, and we’d make sure the ponies are all in their stables for the night, but they don’t. As I said above; fuckwits.

      • You can’t expect the whole world to bang to your drum just because you choose to own horses. Reminds me of a dog I saw at a packed fairground last week. It had a coat on saying ‘Stay clear – I am nervous in crowds’. Err…don’t take your dog to the fair then?

        • Sometimes the field is full of cows; we share its use with the farmer, who has been there since before the houses were built.

          It’s not asking the world to bang to our drum, it’s asking those who have chosen to come to live in a Wiltshire village to respect the community they have joined.

  6. I think all this talk of fireworks has lit your blue touchpaper, Vulpes. Mind, I am with you on the inconsideration of many firework users ‘ Well, it’s only one night, innit?’ No, it isn’t. Round my neck of the woods, Diwali rolls into Halloween, then Guy Fawkes and the run-up to Christmas/New Year, so getting on for two months of endless whizz-bangery.

    • Same in the Netherlands; every new years eve millions of damage (twice as much damage as money spent on fireworks). So more and more talks of outlawing fireworks. Might slowly happen in the next few years. Talk slowly moving from ‘F#$% you nanny state’ to ‘it is a nuisance and a small group of yobbo’s is ruining it for the rest’.

  8. Guilty as charged.

    Started as a thing my ex Anna and I did for her slash our kids and some friends and their kids but has become a tradition chez Fin the singleton. At the last one, my significant other Kate and two of her girl friends got a bit tipsy slash high, took their tops off and started kissing each other.

    Oddly, my letting off of the contents of the Waitrose Super Deluxe Bonfire Box seemed, not entirely, the focus of attention of the assembled partygoers at this point.

    I was on the verge of intervention but thought who am I to come between friends?

    Fin The Singleton. Three more from new release Verge Of Intervention later.

  9. Bloody pain the arse, Diwali is worse than bonfire night. Mind you NYE in Naples is a quite bonkers experience, the scugnizzi explode bangers around your feet. The only time they were banned was after the 1980 earthquake and oddly enough, near enough everyone complied

  12. There’s a woman in our community Facebook pay who has a small baby. I know this because every time there are fireworks/traffic/roadworks/aircraft noise/thunderstorms she says “I have a small baby, so (fireworks going off) does not make me a very happy mummy!”

  13. Gosh have awoken to fireworks on the good ship Afterword.
    I’m a bit each way. Short and scheduled and infrequent fine. Ad hoc explosions seems a hassle.
    Genuinely surprised that Britain has open slather and Tecas the opposite. Much as I liked it hem as a kid they are feckin dangerous.

  14. Who needs fireworks? Cycled back from station after work at 10.00 tonight and it was like Close Encounters up in the thick black clouds. Got home aprroximately three-and-a-half seconds before the rain got all biblical on me. Now a full moon beams across a clear sky.

    Beats fireworks any day.

    • Sounds like a really beautiful journey, which could only have been improved by setting off a few fireworks along the way, or maybe just a couple of Catherine Wheels or something.

  15. I *love* fireworks. The noise, the colours, the smell. And one of the very best things about being an adult with disposable income is that there;s nothing to stop you spending a shed-load of money on some superior pyrotechnics. Fortune has particularly smiled upon me in that regard, as my neighbour is Chinese and regards it as a cultural imperative to secure pyrotechnics of strategic=arms-limitation-treaty-violating proportions, sources from kitemark-free, dodgy online sources. Happiness ensues. Seriously, is there anything better in life than an exploding death star-style WHUMP that fills the sky and rattles your diaphragm? I think not.

  16. Down here they shoot off fireworks at the start of major sporting events. Trouble is these are coliseum like venues. The acrid smoke lingers in the stadium for the first 15 minutes burning lungs and obscuring sight.
    Bit silly really.

    • Yep, look what you started !

      We have fireworks here at sporting events in the U.K as well, maddening. It takes over from the sound and songs of the crowd when teams walk out to explosions and when matches end & the presentation starts, fireworks again. I much prefer the noise and songs of the crowds, fireworks aren’t needed.

  18. I flew into Heathrow during Diwali once. It was the most beautiful sight – the usual neon field punctuated by multicoloured flowers that bloomed and wilted in seconds, over and over and all around as we descended.

    Mind you, the horse in the seat next to me was necking Rennies like no one’s business.

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