My name is jjimm and I’m a firework addict. I fucking love fireworks. A major reason I went to the Hong Kong handover party in '97 was to see two of the biggest fireworks displays in the history of the world. I love the things.
But I’m not loving them at the moment. Things are getting seriously out of hand in Dublin.
For a start, they’re illegal in the Republic of Ireland, except at an approved display. However, people get them all the same, they’re sold openly in street markets, and every Hallowe’en it’s a tradition here to have private displays. I don’t really mind this - I think it’s a good laugh.
Problem is, the people smuggling them in start earlier and earlier each year. And the firework fun started up in my estate about a month ago. At first, it was just a few whizz-pop bottle rockets and little firecrackers. But the bangs have got bigger, and have turned into explosions that are way, way bigger than anything I’ve heard before. The windows shook. The first one that went off made mrs jjimm nearly jump out of her skin, and the cat run and hide in a closet. It made a crump like a mortar shell landing. It is some serious ordnance.
And the little fuckers setting them off do so all night long, up to about 2 or 3 in the morning. Every 10 minutes there’s one of these massive booms. According to our Community Newsletter, it’s like “Beirut or Baghdad” in our street. It’s not quite that bad at the moment, though down my street last Hallowe’en really was like a war zone.
The main concern I have is that most of the people setting them off are under the age of 10, and are totally unsupervised.
Today, on my way home from work, a group of small girls of about 7 or 8 years old approached me with a handful of firecrackers and asked me for a light.
Last Hallowe’en two little bastards were firing bottle rockets at cars, including mine.
It’s annoying, it’s keeping me awake, but worse still, it’s dangerous to the kids who are out unsupervised with seriously big fireworks. Someone’s house is going to get burnt down this year, and some child is going to get seriously hurt, if not killed.
Where are their parents? Where are the police? Fuck knows.