Fireworks/No Fireworks

Back with the content for which you came

What do Donald Trump and Livvie from the Mr Darcy Project have in common? We both got an unexpected mandate on Tuesday night. Sorry (bad joke). Sorry (in general). What I mean to say is I went on a spontaneous date with a man on Tuesday evening. Please manage your expectations.

On the 5th of November 1605, a man tried to blow up Parliament. This of course means that, 419 years later, for the entire first week of November, every time I leave the house there will be at least one gang of teenage arseholes threatening to launch a firework at me. (I find looking straight at them, raising one hand and cheerfully but firmly saying ‘nope!’ works to prevent followthrough on the threat. And I am a particularly unscary person so I must attribute the success of this move to the Force which presumably emanates from my outstretched hand.)

It also means there are firework displays all over the country on the night of the 5th.

I never make plans for Bonfire Night because, frankly, it’s crap. It’s always cold and it’s never fun and the firework displays are never good enough to counteract the coldness and unfunness (subtle foreshadowing). It’s a bit like the 4th of July if you remove everything that’s good about the 4th of July.

You may recall from a previous instalment that I met a guy at a halloween party, he asked me out, I said yes, then retracted the yes and instead asked him to come to a group thing that was happening a couple of weeks in the future, to which he said yes. If you don’t recall, you are now caught up.

We texted a bit the morning after the party, and sporadically in the period following. Then, on the morning of the 5th Nov, he asked me if I had any plans for the evening. When I said no (without revealing my anti-Bonfire Night stance), he asked if by chance I fancied going to see the local big park’s firework display that night.

I was WFW (working from work) that day and would have to meet him without going home first. Which would be fine were it not for the fact that I was working entirely alone in a room by myself and had dressed thusly (leggings, trainers and a fuchsia half zip, rough ponytail, no makeup).

The only previous time this guy had met me I was wearing a little strapless dress and heels and makeup. After briefly considering whether it’s possible to catfish someone in person, I was comforted by the knowledge that, on the off chance he did happen to be horrified by my appearance, I was appropriately dressed to sprint off into the night.

When we met on the outskirts of the park, people were already in situ and gearing up for the fireworks. The park was very busy both with families and with groups who had already made a sizeable dent in their can cargos. After a while, we decided to make it more of a mobile experience and go for a walk around the park instead of standing in the viewing area. I was going to describe the event in more detail, but to save you the bother of reading it: unpleasant atmosphere, marshy ground, pissy fireworks going off one by one several minutes apart.

There was also a surprising number of dogs yelping and barking and trembling and, I hate to be crude, shitting all over the place, accompanied by owners who were looking bashful and saying things like ‘fireworks should be banned’ and ‘I tried keeping him in the house but he was bouncing off the fucking walls’.

Unfortunately, along with the lacklustre firework situation came a bit of a lacklustre vibe situation. I was trying to keep the chat going, but I was doing a lot of the conversational heavy lifting, offering an array of different topics, asking questions, finding things out about him, etc. and never getting much response. Without giving too much away (couldn’t if I tried, tbh), his job: ‘alright’; his hobbies: ‘going to the football’; in his free time: ‘pub’; music taste: ‘whatever really’; and his prediction as to who would win the election: ‘fuck knows’ (well, quite).

Potentially his longest string of consecutive words was, when we had exhausted every inch of available walking space in the park, ‘do you want to go to the pub or something?’ To which I said no. Any other night I probably would have gone—he does seem nice enough and, in fairness, I don’t think the firework park environment was conducive to the best date experience. However, I had other plans in mind for the rest of the night.

We confirmed that we’d see each other again as originally intended and I went home to stare at America for ten straight hours, for a long time with boredom and then with incredulity. At one point I did a deep dive on my new favourite town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire (very much the Houghton and Sunderland South of the US. Their not being twinned with each other is really missing a trick imo). Just as I was considering giving up and heading to bed, someone on the TV said they were 90% of the way to being able to project Pennsylvania. So I was locked in until that was done, then until Trump had spoken, then until I did some scrolling, then until the UK Prime Minister said something. Then it was like 8am and suddenly it was very much the next day.

I was WFH on Wednesday and I normally meet my granddad for a walk in the park on Wednesday mornings. I was too tired to pull myself together aesthetically in any way so I put on a cap to disguise the fact that yesterday’s rough ponytail had only gotten rougher. I was also wearing relatively chunky glasses, both in frame and in lens.

On my granddad’s request, I stopped at a shop to pick up a newspaper which shall remain nameless, and which he does not read for its political affiliations (he reads it for its insane medical advice). I then headed back to the park, now markedly less busy than the previous night, and sat on a bench to wait for my granddad. I decided to have a quick flick through the paper while I was waiting, when I saw the guy from last night running in my direction (as in he was out for a morning run and heading in my general direction, not as in he was, like, intentionally barrelling towards me).

Just to reinforce your mental image: at this point I was sitting on a park bench, in a hat and glasses, reading a newspaper. I was one fake moustache away from a cartoon spy. I considered ducking behind the newspaper for fear the guy might not recognise me if I tried to get his attention (genuinely. Mind you, this is less than 24 hours after worrying I looked like a completely different person without pink lipstick under my eyes. Yes, I do have a fairly loose grasp on my own appearance, why do you ask?), but I determined that that would be verging upon weirdo behaviour and opted to wave as he approached. Of course he did recognise me as I am not, in fact, a cartoon spy and am, in fact, still recognisable even in a hat and glasses. Really speedrunning the ‘seeing you in every state’ part of dating though tbf.

It might have been the sheer exhaustion (physical and mental, don’t know how all you Americans functioned on Wednesday) or maybe it was the fact that we weren’t sloshing through mud in the cold and dark while dogs lost their literal shit all around us, but the chat flowed much better that morning. He actually said that he was worrying last night that he’d put me off (or, in his words, ‘fucked it’) because he thought going to the fireworks display would be a nice idea. To which I said (lied) ‘it was a nice idea!’ and he replied with a self deprecating joke that really, properly made me laugh (points!). He jogged off leaving me feeling fairly optimistic about our next encounter.

At time of writing, the date of our next encounter, the originally intended plans, has now passed. But this is already plenty long so you will have to come back next week for that…

<3