Fireworks

Last week our beach hosted an international fireworks festival, a competition between six different nations.

On Saturday night we decided to go and watch it and, as it had been a beautifully warm and sunny day, we took a blanket (for sitting on the sand) and two bottles of beer (to slake our thirst.)  Saturday was the turn of Germany to slug it out against the Netherlands; the first at 10.00 p.m. and the second, the host nation, at 11.00 p.m.  Each display lasted 15 minutes.  For various reasons that I won’t bother boring you with, we only managed to make it to the 11.00 showing, so parked up the bicycles and found ourselves a suitably romantic space on the sand.  The display was somewhat underwhelming in nature but I totally enjoyed the whole experience.

We have recently acquired a novel semi-independence which means that we can go out without planning and paying for the services of a baby sitter, all thanks to the fact that Fourteen-and-Three-Quarters has attained a suitable (and legal) maturity and is now tasked as resident child-carer.

It was wonderful to sit on the warm sand with the sounds of the sea beside us and the black sky all around us.  The fireworks were beautiful, though some would and did say, not spectacular but I found them quite magical all the same.  Some even burst outwards into heart-shaped cascades of red sparks.   Now that’s clever – how do you make an explosion heart-shaped?

The whole experience was lovely, mostly because it was an hour of Us-Time spent sitting on the beach together, chatting late into the evening, enjoying each other’s company.  That’s something we haven’t really done since pre-children days.

I’ve always dreaded the thought of our baby birds flying the coop and leaving us with a quiet, empty house.

Now I can appreciate that there might be a positive aspect.