Fun with fireworks
It hadn't been a good New Year's Eve in the slightest. In fact, it had gone as wrong as wrong could be.

Everything had started off well that day; I'd bought copious amounts of booze and food and also a firework that Arnie himself would have been proud to let off.

When you spend £40 on one firework, it's big. Especially when it's just one rocket, none of this "multi-phase" nonsense that goes on for hour - just one big bang.

I turned up at the door armed with the goodies. They'd only just moved into the house; as he was an expert DIY-er they had bought cheap to do up. Bastard had already put in a new home-made kitchen in 2 weeks. Anyway.

The faces at the door looked wrong. We went in.

"What's wrong ?"
"We've just had a call to say two relatives have died in a car crash in Ireland".

Well, we were 170 miles from home. Happy to drive back there, but they wouldn't have it.

"Stay. We'll carry on. It's what they would have wanted."

Hadn't even met these poor dead fuckers. Commiserate. Sit quietly, watch TV while they phone round other relatives and organise getting over to Ireland.

Not what was planned.

Finally, it gets close to midnight. I decide that it's time to let off the rocket on the strokes of midnight.

Fuck, the garden's small. 10 metres tops. This thing says people should be 25 metres away. Bugger.

Ground's a bit hard as well. The rocket wasn't one of those ones on a stick, it was a cylinder roughly 2' in diameter. Trying to plant it in the ground wasn't easy. The garden's a tip, like the house. Oh well, done my best.

Got everyone outside. Try lifting their spirits. Tell everyone to stand well back, and hope. Do the countdown.

Light fuse paper and run and...

THUNK is the sound I make coming into contact at high speed with a concealed milk crate in the long grass.

Going through my brain is the urgent message to get as far away from the rocket as possible. I run on all fours, through god knows what shit, wondering when I'm going to get a gunpowder-propelled enema.

This is not the night to call out the ambulance.....this is 23:59 on the 31st December, 1999.

So I start my New Year, nay my Millennium, covered in crap and scratches scuttling away for dear life in imminent fear of certain death.

I miss the explosion.

"It was good" they say but I can tell it didn't make them any happier.

We go back in whilst the city explodes around us in pyrotechnics.

And listen to "Tragedy" on repeat for another hour or so.
( I_Was_Mordred, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:22, 1 reply)

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I too had a crappy NYE that year. It was my first NYE as an adult too, so by rights it should've been a good one.
This is the fist "my millennium NYE sucked" story I've heard that is actually worse than mine (in all fairness, mine was just incredibly boring) so sympathy clicks for you and your friends.
(xanthine, Mon 16 Feb 2009, 4:15, closed)