Across the darkening locality, dogs bristled, cats spat, and a particularly devout parrot squawked violently about the end of times as the rosary slipped through its talons.
In their distant, warm beds, dozing citizens tutted and tossed, serenaded by the whizzes, whistles, cracks and booms of what would be a long and fondly remembered event.
Those that had ventured forth, and there were legions, were being treated to a fantasmagorical display that, in turn, brought choral oohs and aahs from the assembled throng.
Chief Fire Officer Ludlow, convinced that all were safe and nothing more was to be done, motioned to his crews that they may now remove helmets and enjoy the unfolding spectacle. More than one took the opportunity to disappear into the queue created by one entrepreneurial member of the townsfolk, who had taken it upon herself to swing by with her salivatingly welcome hot dog van.
Meanwhile, Mr R.J. Beardsley, experiencing something of a busman’s holiday, considered that his tenure as senior health and safety officer at the factory was coming to an end. Poring over the gleam of the tablet, the risk assessment, although it had considered the potentiality of an errant firework, had always quantified it, as it turned out, with an underestimated probability.
Indeed, the site’s fire truck, parked near the gunpowder stores, had always been deemed a great bonus. Mr Beardsley pondered the irony whereby the explosion of the shiny red appliance had first ignited the gunpowder and set off this entire sequence of events culminating in the melting of his safety brogues.
Meanwhile, at the airport, the flight of Mr Wise, proprietor of this family-run business, was cancelled by smoke on the runway. With police entering the terminal, the flaw in his plan became cruelly apparent.