London has gone ballistic. Literally.

[Hassan i Sabbah]

London has gone ballistic tonight. Is anyone here watching / listening to the fireworks?

I live in Stoke Newington, in the north, and right now it’s insane. Since sunset the estates have been firing ordinance. There’s swanky warehouse conversions opposite and they’ve been firing rockets and sundry screaming, squawking, exploding fireballs of their own from their terraces,

WOW! That was a big one: set off a car alarm! Damn!

When I lived in London’s Fashionable Notting Hill I had a roof terrace and from there you could see fireworks all across the city on Guy Faulke’s Night. It was beautiful and I sort of miss it, but that was nothing compared to the sheer war-zone intensity of this.

It’s a great, cloudless night, too. I wish I was seven. I’m on a deadline and have to stay in working, sadly.

Anyone else listening / watching?

BAM! That was a WHOPPER!

[Fellowship]

Hassan, I was pissed off at you not seeing you around the boards and all. Glad to have you back!


Keep your #$%# around here more often.

Fellows ;)

[Alex London]

Hassan, yes it's whoosh BANG all the time for me too in Turnpike Lane- nothing compared to the display at Ally Pally at the weekend though, that was fantastically mad. Some of those bangs almost opened up my chest again.

[Powerdoc]

As Fship said : glad to see you here again, with one year more : i wish you a delayed happy birthday :)

[jwri004]

[wet-blanket mode] I hate Guy Fawkes, nothing more than a waste of time, money and effort. The sooner they ban it the better. Lets give potentially dangerous explosives to minors with no social responsibility and see what happens!

If they are used in controlled situations fine, but I get sick and tired of stories where people are putting firecrackers in dogs ears, or shooting rockets into houses or forests. [/wet-blanket mode]

[Alex London]

I was a bad lad once, a friend and I used scaffold poles as rocket launchers at somebodies house. If the copper hadn't shouted "Oi!" at us first he might have caught us, but I agree with your wet blanket mode thoughts now I'm older and, well just older.Did you see that footage of the phone box being blown up by some youth? Scary.

[The General]

Originally posted by jwri004
[wet-blanket mode] I hate Guy Fawkes, nothing more than a waste of time, money and effort. The sooner they ban it the better. Lets give potentially dangerous explosives to minors with no social responsibility and see what happens!

If they are used in controlled situations fine, but I get sick and tired of stories where people are putting firecrackers in dogs ears, or shooting rockets into houses or forests. [/wet-blanket mode]

wanna outlaw bags too(I bet people like you made them put the warning on plastic bags), I see Leave the warning off! if you are too stupid to let your child or yourself play with it and die, then all the better, less stupid people in the world.

[jwri004]

[fire-blanket mode]No trouble with my kids - don't have any.

Bags and fireworks comparison. Nice - but you're stretching it a little. A bag has a functional purpose, fireworks does not.

No surprises we had to stop 2 kids trying to light up a car yesterday. Ask the police unit who got attacked by 500 youths whose bonfire got out of control, or the firefighters who spent all night putting out fires, or the animal shelters who have a sudden influx of 'lost' animals, what they think.

What redeeming feature does fireworks have?

hmmm... pretty lights that go boom!

Thank you but no thanks, I'm not buying[/fire-blanket mode]

[Hassan i Sabbah]

OK, it’s getting mad now. There’s a sort of… constant rumble outside.

I just went to the shop and bought some chestnuts to roast: gave up, wasn’t staying in. I walked along the edge of the park; the air is full of gunpowder smoke, like a mist, and you see fireworks everywhere. Behind the trees, behind the houses, in the distance, in the park, everywhere. BANG! (Big one.) Kids laughing and (inevitably) crying. Awww.

THIS IS BRILLIANT!

Americans: is the Fourth of July anything similar to Bonfire Night? Sort of… a spectacular anarchy? Because this is GREAT.

[Hassan i Sabbah]

Fellows and the Doc and Alex hi there. Thanks for the birthday wishes. I had a great time in the USA. They have the best toilets in the world bar none.

[Alex London]

Great to see you back so hale and hearty, you must tell all about your toilet experiences, they seem to think we're fixated for some reason. I'm off into to the night to get the whiff of cordite in my nostrils and the living daylights scared out of me.

[ColanderOfDeath]

Yeah, where is the full trip report on the funny talkin no football lovin Americans? Surely something weird must have happened in Utah if not Hartford.

In Detroit they used to burn down hundreds of houses on devils night. Not quite as fun as fireworks if it happened to be your house. Although mostly it was abandoned houses.

[kneelbeforezod]

Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
Ithe Fourth of July anything similar to Bonfire Night? Sort of... a spectacular anarchy? Because this is GREAT. It's a lot less anarchic...at least in NYC. There are big organized displays (there were at least three this year that I could see from my friend's roof downtown) and occasional instances of people setting off their own fireworks (the police will usually show up and tell you to stop if they you do it for too long), but nothing like the "let's all go to the park and burn things" near-breakdown-of-society that I witnessed on the one Bonfire night I spent in England.

[Hassan i Sabbah]

Originally posted by ColanderOfDeath
Yeah, where is the full trip report on the funny talkin no football lovin Americans? Surely something weird must have happened in Utah if not Hartford.

No. Nothing funny happened to us in New England during our Crystal Meth Foliage Tour in a borrowed Mercedes Benz.

Trip report pending. Nice hotel in NYC. We didn’t make it to Utah but we did see Portland Maine and Vermont. Introduced records on a radio station in Boston. Had a bonfire.

[Harald]

New sig!

[Alex London]

:lol: :lol: "And the award for best sig this year goes to..... Harald. "
" I'd like to thank Hassan for making this all possible, you're the wind beneath my wings man etc..." :

[Harald]

Seriously. It sounds like Falluja on July 4 tonight. Anarchy. You have no idea ... CONSTANT rumble, flash ... like a 1000 carriage train 3 streets away.

[BRussell]

What I've always wondered is if you're celebrating the fact that he didn't blow up parliament, or the fact that he at least tried.

[Alex London]

That he failed, though of course it wasn't a Parliament by anyones' standards, it was 1605 after all.

[digitaldave]

It was pretty mad here in St Evenage too. Even though there's a big free display put on by the council, people still put on their own displays in their back gardens. Some pretty loud ones too, but I guess nothing like what London has seen. I stepped out the front door a while ago, long after the fireworks had stopped, and you could still smell the powder :wow:.

Dave.

[Alex London]

We have a fog of spent explosives, not quite a pea-souper but pretty dense nonetheless.

[BRussell]

Originally posted by Alex London
That he failed, though of course it wasn't a Parliament by anyones' standards, it was 1605 after all. Yeah, I know (that you're celebrating that he failed), I just find it funny that you celebrate the fact that someone didn't blow you up.
:err: ;)