Near my house, there are some incredible firework enthusiasts. In November 2020, when I’d just moved in, I thought it was an optical illusion created by lockdown; there were no municipal displays, no bonfires. Obviously a few catherine wheels coming out of a garden was going to look spectacular. OK, it looked more like a thousand catherine wheels, then 15 minutes straight of sky-filling light cascades, like beautiful waterfalls, that have technical firework names such as Whistling Palms, but that couldn’t be right: how much would that cost? Even if everyone on the block chipped in, they couldn’t have had a bigger budget than the London mayor Sadiq Khan.
In 2021, civic life had almost returned to normal, firework-wise, and amateur-hour across the road still looked pretty professional. That year, I ran over the road to say thanks. And the year after, feeling like a freeloader, I gave them £20. Both times they looked puzzled, like, “What’s the big deal? We are merely lighting up our neighbourhood like the Commonwealth, which is what any normal person would do.”
This year, with Guy Fawkes Night falling on a Tuesday and some mysterious committee decision (I’m guessing) to go earlier rather than later, the display started at 6pm. Footfall was high and there were schoolkids everywhere. The visuals were pretty but the noise was incredible, and passersby were – well, “cowering” is a strong word; let’s just say they were discreetly, if pointlessly, ducking as they went past. We were all just trusting to the fates that the fireworks would go up in the air rather than sideways into the crowd.
In one way, it was quite heartwarming, the sight of such neighbourly trust in action. And yet, at the same time, it’s also a little baffling, our universal tolerance of guerrilla displays from a bunch of overjoyed man-children with an Intergalactic Megabox.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
