Lord Mayor’s Fireworks

It’s been an age since I blogged (again) and honest I’ll try to explain why as soon as life stops being this ridicously hectic, but while I’m here and before I forget, this is important…

http://www.lordmayorsshow.org/

So every year the Lord Mayor of London gets a big show.  And there’s parades and stuff and balloons and a man in a very silly hat and a big red coat and a large chain of office and it’s something that’s been going on in London for hundreds of years.  Not that timing makes it necessarily a good thing, in the sense that in the good old days the Lord Mayor of London was quite a serious political dude who had a tendency of causing trouble for the crown and parliament in a traditionally shirty yet somehow authentically Londoner way; these days the Lord Mayor is more of a guy who shakes hands around the world for the sake of the financial sector of the Corporation of London, and I suspect that an industrial quantity of little things on sticks are eaten in the process.  Anyway, on November 13th, the Lord Mayor’s going to trundle down to the Royal Courts of Justice, swear allegiance to the crown (because you can never be too sure…) trundle back to the Embankment for a knees-up and…

… and this is why its important…

… there’ll be fireworks.

I love fireworks.

And these are free!

And by the river!

And so, as a civic service to anyone who happens to be a) in London on November 13th and b) reading my blog, let me just say once more and for the record, November 13th, 2010, between Waterloo and Blackfrairs Bridges, 5 p.m., fireworks!  BOOM!  (And for anyone wondering, there’s some quite nice pubs just behind Fleet Street that do decent bangers and mash if you’re peckish after…)