[fireworks] pretty displays or kaboom kaboom

Around the world, fireworks displays will be set off to mark the New Year but in Britain, of course, Guy Fawkes is the biggie. This, in my opinion, is a better festival because until recently, one could buy personal kaboom thingies and I used to love setting them off – great strings of the things.

To be honest, I never set them off in letter boxes:

Employees of postal service Íslandspóstur are busy locking all outdoor mailboxes in Reykjavík and nearby towns to prevent people stuffing live fireworks into them on New Year’s Eve to get an extra explosion, damaging the mailboxes in the process. Morgunbladid reports. This New Year’s Eve the mailboxes in the capital area will be locked so that only one letter at a time can be put into them. Bigger letters have to be taken to the postal office. The mailboxes will not be unlocked until mid-January.

... and never stuck them up ... well ... read this. And yet we had mammoth fun. However, not everyone is so rapt in the tradition:

I would personally favour a system them allows the sale of fireworks only to people with a certificate issued by the local authority stating they are running a legitimate professionally organised display. This would cut out 95% of illegal sales almost immediately.

But there are some supporters of the old ways. John Wilkes said...

I'm not sure about this. There are plenty of people who are miles from a licensed, professional display and would probably prefer to have a family display at home. One of my best childhood memories is my dad doing a fireworks display for us in the back garden - it was great fun.

Another recent worry is that the British fireworks industry has been steadily losing out to Chinese incursion and to some, that’s a pity. Personally, it seems to me like market economics.