Of bombs, plots and pyros

On November 5, there is nowhere in the world I'd rather be than London. Which makes it incredibly frustrating that I've spent most of the day out of London, in Glasgow for work.

In the UK, there is not another day of the year that comes close in terms of bangs and crashes. It is the day of commemorating the foiling of a plot to blow up the English parliament. Seems the Catholics weren't all that impressed with life under James I (James VI for the Scots out there) and planned to blow up not only the parliament, but pretty much the entire ruling class. Although there was a fairly large group of them, Guy Fawkes has remained the best known of the conspirators who planted gunpowder beneath the houses of parliament. And what better way to celebrate a failure of the gunpowder plot than blowing up everything? Poor Guy is burned in effigy once a year while fire works light up the sky and give the fire department their busiest day of the year. It's almost enough to make me understand why fire works are so restricted in Australia.

As I sit in my living room, being a sado and typing from the couch, I can hear a constant round of bangs. On the way back from the airport, there were flashes lighting up the sky. I couldn't always see the actual fireworks. Sometimes it was just the hint of light, like thunderstorms just over the horizon. It gave a hint of what the Blitz must have been like, but without the carnage, generally speaking. I think I might have said something similar before. The bombs dropping must have been terrifying, hearing the roar of the planes, the explosions getting closer. It's gives enough of a fright when there's fireworks on the round about 100m from my flat. I can't imagine what a series of bombs exploding on houses must have sounded like. Especially if you were in the house at the time.

Glasgow is no stranger to bombs more recently - or explosions of a type, anyway. It isn't that long since terrorists tried to blow up the Glasgow airport. Fortunately, all they succeeded in doing was driving a burning car into the terminal. Only part of the building was damaged. The airport has been partially closed off ever since while repair works were undertaken. I went through the terminal for the first time in months this week, and the change was enormous. Suddenly, Glasgow has a modern airport. Turns out, the terrorists did them a favour, in the end, with the new airport emerging, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the old. Not only that, the old undamaged areas are now being refurbished as well. It seems that the English aren't the only ones able to salvage something good from terrorism...