Of fireworks & family

I’ve come to the conclusion the recession must really be biting locally. As any person from these islands will know, tonight is Fireworks Night, the night when bonfires & fireworks are lit in nominal memory of the night Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. As is also customary, in more recent times communal bonfires are usually lit on the Saturday night nearest the 5^th of November. Increasingly parents of schoolchildren have done the same so the children are not distracted from homework.

Since we moved here in 2000 we have been entertained by the wonderful free shows from all our neighbours’ gardens. Saturday night few appeared. Our conclusion is that less money is around & smaller fireworks are cheaper than great exploding rockets or candles that shoot their colourful sprays skyward.

But Sunday night, just as we were under way with cooking dinner a great deafening screech shattered the peace. After we had returned to ground after the shock, I went out into the garden. Sure enough a rocket was coming over the roof with this deafening sound. A second followed. We hastily shut the door - we usually leave it open when cooking to let some of the steam out. - & pitied the poor animals around. All the flashes & bangs are disturbing enough for them without that unearthly screech. I found myself wondering how my cousin’s dog would be doing. He’s always nervous of fireworks & odd bangs. This really would have upset him.

My cousins are on my mind at the moment as I spoke to them over the weekend. My cousin Ann’s husband had a knee replaced mid-week & I was pleased to hear he was hoping to get home on Saturday. Ann herself, who has cancer & had started a new course of chemotherapy the same day he went in for the op, was relieved to find this course was better than some previous ones so she’d felt up to making the trips into the hospital to see her husband.

As for my cousin Trudy, she’s been having a worrying time. Apparently her daughter was in the USA at the time the hurricane, Sandy, struck New York. Indeed that very day she was due to fly from Philadelphia to Boston. Fortunately she had no problems. She was in Boston when the hurricane hit there but found all that meant was she had to stay in the hospital all day, which suited her fine as she’d gone down with a tummy bug. It gave her a day of rest before attending the conference she was meant to be at. Still it was all very worrying for her parents back in England.