I LOVE LORD MAYORS FIREWORKS!!

WHEEEEEEEE!  BOOOM!

Ahem.

I may get a little giddy whenever I see fireworks.

By the river, I may get even more giddy.  Also!  Thrillingly, this year the Lord Mayor of London is a lady… the only second in 800 years, which is slightly less thrilling.

My mate, with whom I saw the fireworks on the Thames this year to celebrate this ancient and politically not very relevant office said, as the first rocket went up, “Oh yes, why not celebrate killing Catholics?”

At this my indignation rose.  Sure, we celebrate an attempt to blow up the King and all his Parliament and then the brutal and sadistic murder of the Catholics who’d orchestrated the plot around about this time of year… sure we do.  But that’s not what the Lord Mayor’s day is about!

“The Lord Mayor is awesome!” I replied.  “It’s about London, it’s about the freedom of the city, about the power of the office, about Magna Carta granting London its rights, about big hats and silly carriages, the Lord Mayor’s fireworks are awesome fireworks with no one dying at all!  Wheeeeee!!!”

Of course, the role of the Lord Mayor has changed down the centuries.  In the good old days, it was a serious office with some quite impressive powers and duties.  These days, however, we have the official Mayor of London (Boris Johnson, the horror… the horror…) who’s in for a sizable elected term (more horror).  The Lord Mayor has become much more ceremonial, but more interestingly, it’s also now a job designed to try and promote the financial sector of the city abroad.  Quite how this is done, I don’t know… but I imagine there’s a lot of shaking hands.

Perhaps more thrillingly for the vast majority of London that isn’t a banker, every year it’s a damn good excuse to have a party by the river…