A good fireworks display requires attention to colour combinations as well as a grasp of timing. These skills are equally important when planning a flowerbed – the key difference being that fireworks explode simultaneously. The Japanese call fireworks “hanabi”, which means flower fire. In the winter, when I can no longer find vibrant colour in my flowerbeds on the ground I try to make a giant flowerbed of the sky!
On 5 November we celebrate my daughter’s conveniently placed birthday rather than The Other Matter. As a patriot and a Roman Catholic, the absence of a legitimate excuse to cheer and shriek might leave me as solitary as a sandpiper. But we do not restrict ourselves to one evening of pyrotechnics. I like to turn to the firework cupboard to mark birthdays or the arrival of friends. I have an odd premonition that, as with the ravens at the Tower of London, if I were ever to find the firework cupboard completely bare, the kingdom would fall.
