It was just after four when the first rocket went up. Funny, but I thought I would have had longer. Which is something everybody says in the end. You thought you would have longer to spend time with your dog. You thought you would have longer in the job you just got laid off from. You thought you would have had longer in the club to talk to somebody you thought was special...
You always think you should have had longer, but at 4.30pm, it was getting dark already. Fireworks are the bane of my existence when it comes to taking care of Hector. He’s a big dog. He’s a brave dog, but when it comes to fireworks, he lies on the floor facing the wall and quivers for hours. The percentage of dogs I know who are like this is 50/50. Who knows why some dogs are bombproof and others aren’t. I don’t know about cats or cattle, foxes and badgers or even birds come to think of it but for three or four nights of the year, I despise people in the extreme and it’s a good thing I never know who these people are.
Instant karma is what matters. The response has to be swift and immediate otherwise people don’t know what they’ve done. I stood in the garden with some apples from the fruit bowl and launched them in the general direction the rockets had come from. I know I was never going to hit anybody actually lighting the fireworks but it made me feel good to take a stand.
The first one didn’t seem to land. I listened but there was nothing. Maybe a passing seagull caught it. I’ve seen them do some crazy things in all the years I’ve lived by the sea. I once saw a gull take a whole baguette stuffed with beef and piccalilli from a woman who wasn’t paying attention. It dropped it and a lot of other seagulls reaped the spoils of war but still…
The second one was a good throw. I heard glass smash. I think I hit a greenhouse and there was a lot of chattering and it seemed as though the nuclear family a few doors up thought one of their fireworks had come down hard. I have no idea if it was their garden or not but that particular bunch of fireworks stopped abruptly. I stood outside for a little while trying to catch hold of what they were saying but all I could make out was some kid saying how he thought the back-yard display would have lasted longer.
C’est la vie little man.
They seem to have started early this year, so after fruitlessly telling Hector there was nothing to worry about, I ended up scouting the TV stations for something loud enough to at least partly drown them out. I stumbled on a show on Sky Arts about the making of The Doors debut album. The Doors are my answer to a lot of things in life - particularly when people say dumb things like “name one band better than The Beatles!” Personally, I think there are many but I always use The Doors as the unquestionable answer to the question.
(They’re better musicians for one. More adventurous in their songwriting. Better live, still sound like they were formed yesterday and Morrison’s lyrical ability is so far beyond anything Lennon and/or McCartney could conjure, my response is solid in all directions.)
But H still isn’t convinced that Breaking On Through To The Other Side is a good solution to the immediate problem.
So I cover him with a blanket and sit on his cushion with him, too concerned to leave him alone to go out and get more apples, watching Lucha Underground at a volume that my neighbours have willingly agreed to because they have a dog too. The blanket is our substitute for something called a ThunderShirt that is suppose to help - their adverts show smiling, happy dogs in every picture though I am highly suspicious of the real world results - but trying to get a shirt onto Hector is like trying to put a king size duvet into a cover during a hurricane. I don’t know if the blanket helps but again, it makes me feel like I’m doing something that doesn’t involve me getting arrested. Non-dog owners say helpful things like “it’s only one night” (and maybe it would be OK if it really was only one night) but they would be the first out into the street if I parked outside their house and played the complete works of White Zombie at a volume that’s very pleasing to me to ‘celebrate’ a 16th century vagabonds plan to blow up the King.
People are weird when you put it like that huh?
As the evening grinds on, parents get home from work having passed by the supermarket for a box of fireworks. This 6pm - 8pm period is the worst. No amount of wrestling at high volume can cover the noise from outside. No blanket is thick enough, no amount of vitriol that mounts up inside my head will change anything, thus, we simply live through it and I sit on the cushion with him thinking how I could write whole articles about how you could change disadvantaged peoples lives with the amount of money being spent on cheap spectacle but they’re probably the ones outside getting it on anyway looking for some respite from how shit their lives are. I will see them tomorrow and will say hello whilst secretly wishing some foul twist of fate will befall them for how they made my dog feel.
Every year, I pray for rain and storms to keep the casual idiots from going outside with a box of matches but it only prolongs the misery into other nights. What can you do? You can do nothing because the a small minority of people think it’s just fine to turn the sky into a war zone for a few hours, but we know this already because some people voted for the Reform party instead of doing something useful with their life.
(Voting for Reform has now replaced ‘some people buy Coldplay albums’ as the being lowest format a human being can squeeze themselves into).
So we sit on our cushion and listen to The Doors for the evening. This is a good way to spend time with your dog for sure but I wish the circumstances were different. It will take him a couple of weeks to get used to going outside again in the evening and the same amount of time to fully trust me again because I lied by saying everything was fine when it really wasn’t.
On and on it goes. Just when you think it’s safe, somebody gets home from work late and decides that 10pm is a fine time to set fire to half a dozen cruise missiles all at the same time that will displace the entire satellite network that circles the planet but it seems to be the last of them. My best guess is that this person has no kids at all but now he’s a grown-up, feels a need to assert his manhood around the place.
You’ll wish you had longer with the wing mirror on your car, my friend.
Wish you’d had longer being able to get your key in your front door.
‘Never go to bed in the same day you got up in’ has served me well when it comes to getting things done. I have all the time in the world tonight.
In better news, Jim Morrison doesn’t look the type to let off fireworks in a residential area. Then again, Jim never really had the opportunity to consider if he would have had longer and I’m not sure he cared that much, but then again… who knows.
Here’s Jim with a dog who isn’t still sulking:
