Listen, when I was 19 and just starting a blog for the first time, it was easy.
Why? I hear you ask. Well. Let me tell you. It was easy, because I had nothing else to do. And now I am a grown up and so instead of blogging I do things like hoovering, or choir accountancy, or baking, or sometimes I just slump in front of the TV because I am SO TIRED.
Honestly, how do people do it. Maintaining a blog presence while also being an adult is mad.
I do still have things I think about writing. Ideas pop into my head often. But there’s something about getting home at 11pm and writing a blog post that I just can’t get behind. There’s a little whisper in the back of my mind that honestly feels like it is somehow unprofessional to post ramblings at 11pm. As if any of this has ever been professional in the first place.
Tonight writing is easy, because tonight I am cloistered and hiding (fairly unsuccessfully) from the fireworks. People who know me personally will have heard the fireworks rant plenty of times before, but maybe a stranger will read this post, so here goes.
Why on earth, in the world we live in, do we still think it is acceptable to sell practically anyone brightly-coloured explosives? Why? They are offensively loud, stupidly expensive, and easy for a stupid person to light and throw at a car. Or a cat. Or another human person. To explode. Like explosives are designed to.
I am not here to suggest that UK bonfire night is on a par with the horrible violence that exists in other communities around the world, but it continues to baffle me that we don’t just ban fireworks except at organised events. Some reasons:
- They look better, because they are professionals and not your uncle Steve
- They cost less, because you pay a fiver to get in rather than spending £100 in Asda for a makeshift light-show in your grubby garden
- People who don’t want to be involved don’t have to be (for example, a bloke in a 4×4 would not have just pulled up opposite my living room window earlier and set off 20 minutes of fireworks on a residential road, because no-one is paying £5 to watch that. I’d have paid him £5 to leave but I didn’t really feel safe leaving the house because he so evidently had no clue what he was doing)
- Just go spend time with other humans rather than bothering me
- No seriously
- Also, pets would not be traumatised
- Also also, other humans with very valid reasons (babies, the elderly, those with mental health conditions) could avoid the fireworks
I really don’t like bonfire night.
Except for the interesting history, where some people wanted to blow up the houses of parliament (as we all do, regularly, at the moment) but they got caught, so we…light fires…and blow things up…to celebrate them…not?
Honestly, the whole thing is a mess, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a tired blogging adult.