What’s the fascination with Fireworks?

It is very much bonfire time in the UK, that annual event where we celebrate the capturing of an anti-government protestor who attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament a few hundred years ago (today he’d be called a terrorist).

I was at a fireworks display on Thursday at Roundwood Park in Willesden at It crossed my mind how many different people were there watching along. People from different ethnic backgrounds, ages, gender, all gathered to watch a twenty minute display of controlled exlposions that produce loud bands and bright lights.

What is the human attraction to such things? Animals don’t like them, why do we?

I think it’s to do with experiencing something different – it’s not often the average Joe in the street will come into contact with loud explosions for example.

What I loved though was that a vast range of people, from young families to old grandads and grannies, were all stood, in the cold, together, watching and hearing the spectacle, regardless of whther they knew each other or not – what brilliant things humans can be.