war zone

Harringay is like a war zone on bonfire night. Anarchy.
All night the blasts go off, near and far, and at times uncomfortably sounding like something is about to come popping straight through my bedroom window and join me as I read my unsavoury academic mulch each night.
There is a crescendo at about 9pm - I guess as people have finished their dinners and have drunk their 6-packs of Tescos lager or bottles of acidic Blossom Hill - and they pile in to their gardens, drunkenly waving rockets about and planting them in the turf at dodgy lopsided angles (after a bottle of Blossom Hill the average person is probably feeling pretty lopsided too) and drunkenly trying to attach a match flame to the short fuse... with comedy moments of "oh no, its gone out! oh, no don't go back! no no! leave it! at least 2 hours I read... it could go off any time..! oh god, don't... oh. well done. you re-lit it!") and slightly pathetic oohs and aahs as the fizzings and squeakings don't live up to what the packet tells you they're going to do...
I took Mol and Liz to fireworks last night in a friends garden and it was everything a garden firework party ought to be. BBQ hotdogs, nuts, cupcakes, Shrek, children spreading mud all over the kitchen floor, sparklers, adults trying to have conversations in between scraping ketchup off their kids clothes and cheeks, and the host, hovering outside over a pile of demon-looking rockets and wondering what the safest distance from his house is, but not making it too obvious that he doesn't care an awful lot for his neighbours' windows... OK kids. Its time. A grand statement and a hoop of excitement from 15 over-tired-end-of-week-its-friday-night (do kids have the same sense of Friday-night-itus as adults? Do they get out of school and all they're thinking of is heading straight to the sweet shop for an overload of sugar and then fall into bed having watched some crap CBBC with their eyes half closed, thinking, its ok, I don't have to get up in the morning...) kiddy winks who are so unjudgemental that anything that goes WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and SQQQQQQUUUUUOOOOOOOOOO and FFFFFZZZZZZZZZ with different sparkly colours is, well, pretty awesome. So nice to be the host of a fireworks party for 7 year olds! So rewarding! So powerful!
Now kids! For the grand finale!
And with some quick twizzles to the Catherine Wheel (the one before had managed one full rotation but was kind of a bit on strike generally) the thing went off like a, um, y'know? Well, I was going to say Rocket but that'd be inappropriate. It went off like a dingbat.
Many oohs and ahhhhs, and I was surprised to find that I was in fact making more noise than Mol and Liz, and most of the gang, put together. Quick glances behind them at their weird overly-vocal mum... Oh dear I foresee 'embarrassed child' moments in the playground coming up (no, mum, just GO AWAY and please stop doing that to my friends its NOT COOL...). In fact the other day Mol I think had a bit of a moment as I started singing a little rhyme at her class-mate - who had just told me he was in the choir, so I enthusiastically said, Oh brilliant, sing us a song? To which he said, No! To which I said, OK! I'll sing one instead! and made up a little (and pretty brilliant) ditty - to which Mol started to nudge me and sidle away from the weird-woman with toothpaste all over her mouth.
But that's a bit of an aside.
Anyway. A top night of homegrown organic yumminess.
And some genius woman who had a three week old baby clamped to her breast had somehow managed between sleep deprivation and exhaustion-hallucinations to make the most delicious chocolate cheesecake that had real exploding fairy-dust in the base. Too good. I was probably getting odd looks from my children because I was oohing and ahhing with a brown chocolate smeared mouth and looking a bit like a hangover from Halloween.
The girls were in bed by 8.30pm, with the blasts continuing outside their windows - and by 8.35pm - they were all fast asleep, despite them lying bang in the middle of a war zone.