by Henry VIII tries to watch the London fireworks and discovers even midnight now requires advance planning
I once rang in a new reign with a single proclamation read aloud in every town square, no ticket required. Watching the London fireworks on the Thames required a ticket I should have bought in September.
The Discovery
Dev informed me, on the twenty eighth of December, that viewing areas along the river had required tickets since early autumn, all of which had long since sold out, a piece of information that arrived considerably too late to be useful and considerably too calmly delivered given the scale of the disappointment involved.
The Alternative Plan
We settled instead on a rooftop bar Dev knew of, arriving early to secure a spot, only to discover the bar itself required a table booking with a minimum spend that would have covered the cost of an actual small war, a pricing structure I found genuinely aggressive even by the standards of a man who once personally set taxation on salt.
The Crowd
We abandoned the bar and joined the general public crowd instead, packed shoulder to shoulder along a stretch of embankment with a partial view blocked by a pillar, surrounded by families who had clearly arrived hours earlier and were now defending their small patch of pavement with a territorial determination I recognised from several border disputes with Scotland.
The Countdown
The countdown itself, chanted by several thousand strangers in imperfect unison, produced a genuine wave of feeling I had not expected, a shared anticipation that struck me as more honestly democratic than any coronation I ever personally staged, given that nobody present had been required to swear loyalty to anyone, they had simply turned up, cold, hopeful, and slightly drunk.
The Fireworks
The display itself, viewed partially around a pillar and partially reflected in the eyes of the small child perched on her father’s shoulders beside me, lasted twelve minutes and drew a genuine cheer from the entire embankment, myself included, and I resolved, walking home afterward, to book a proper viewing ticket considerably earlier next year, a resolution I fully expect to break with the same reliability I once broke most of my marriage vows.
The Booking For Next Year
I have already set a reminder for September to book proper viewing tickets, a level of forward planning I never once required for anything in my original reign, given that in those days I simply decided something should happen and it happened, usually within the week, occasionally within the hour, and almost always without a single queue involved.
Dev has already suggested we try the fireworks from a friend’s balcony next year instead, an offer I have accepted gratefully, having concluded that dignity, unlike a good view of the Thames, does not actually require a ticket booked eleven months in advance. Further failed plans of this exact shape are catalogued permanently over on the homepage. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: a separate London festival’s own creative solution to overcrowding, the proper London pub where history finally sat down for a pint, the full eyewitness account of how I came back in the first place.
