Explodey Boom!

Is it just me or are the building works around the city spiralling out of control? I have no idea where anything is anymore. (Except traffic cones, I can always find those. More's the pity.) So it was somewhat predictable that having left the firework display at the Albert Dock last year, I returned this year to find that it was no longer there and was actually taking further down the river at Pier Head. I'd actually been kind of dreading the evening. The weather having been supremely miserable all day, I figured I'd show up, watch a few rounds of fireworks and then die of hypothermia, but fortunately the temperature raised itself to something a little more bearable before the evening got properly underway.

Now, as anybody who has attended one of these shows before knows there are three main activities.

1.) Milling around waiting for the boats to get into position.
2.)Watching the boats intently in case one of them catches fire.
3.)Trying not to get burned by all the small children running around with lit sparklers.

Regarding number two - just so you don't think I'm a terrible person - it's not that I want the boat to catch fire, I just live in terror that the one year I decide to skip the display will be the year a rogue firework plummets back to earth and makes the boat explode. Then the rest of my days I will constantly be having the "Hey were you there the day the boat exploded?" "No." conversation with people.

I was underwhelmed by the announcer. If it was a pre-recorded message, then they should have done a couple of takes until they had one where the guy wasn't stammering his way through it and if it was being done live then they should have got a guy who could tell the time. Maybe he was trying to convince us that the thing wasn't actually starting 45 minutes late, but the clocks on Saint Nicks and The Liver Building were illuminated right behind us, so I don't know who he thought he was fooling.

Anyway, the Liverpool Culture Company has dedicated 2005 the 'Year of the Sea', so all the songs had a nautical theme. They played Morcheeba's 'By the Sea', that one from the Guinnes advert with the surfer and a few sea shanties. All of this led to the newest activity:

4.) Guessing how long it will be before they play Yellow Submarine.

I love my adopted city. I love it very much, but it can be a tad predictible.
Anyway, the fireworks themselves were rad. Highlights were the little fizzly ones that sort of putt-putt-putted into the air, vanished for a second and then exploded into giant concentric circles. These would have particularly rocked set to the 'Tick, tick, tick, tick, BOOM!' part of 'Boom, Shake the Room', but I suppose that wouldn't have really fitted with the nautical theme.

Juvenile creature that I am, I was also very amused by the little white tadpole shaped fireworks that wiggled off in all directions, before vanishing into blue circles. From now on I think all sex education lessons should be taught using fireworks.

I was a little disappointed by the ending though. Since it was the 400th anniversary and they’d already bought fireworks shaped like hearts and things, I was kind of assuming that there’d be a big finale with “Liverpool” written in the sky or something. (Or maybe just “08” since we know how the LCC likes to slap that logo on anything that stays still long enough.) In the end though, there was no big finale and the whole display kind of just fizzled out.

A lot like this post, really.