Who's The Daddy: Silent fireworks would be better for our nervous pets

I’m not saying ban fireworks altogether, but to borrow a line from US comedian Chris Rock, just make them £5,000 each.

The first “whizz-bang” of the season exploded six inches above our house about a week ago, and our sighthound Walter has been a bag of nerves when the sun goes down every night since.

I made him an anti-firework fort last Sunday night out of sofa cushions and blankets, which seemed to do the trick for about 45 seconds, until the sky lit up like the crowd pyrotechnics at a Stone Roses gig and sounded like the 50th night of the Blitz.

Inconsolable is the best word to describe his condition. He was so upset and frightened that Mr Robbie, one of our cats who he gives whale eyes to when he thinks no one’s looking, even went to see him in his little fort to check on him. And for the past nine years since Walter’s Gotcha Day, they’ve tolerated each other at best.

It’s not the old glow in the dark that bothers him though. The recent Northern Lights extravaganza left him cold, mainly because it is silent, and everyone went nuts over that - so why can’t fireworks STFU too? Are the colossal BANGS! like canned laughter on a sitcom, prompting the audience to “ooh” and “ahh” in the right places?

Put it this way, we’ve hammered the pieces on Spotify’s Soothing Classical Music playlist so much that the last week may have skewed the imminent 2024 Wrapped, with highest new entries from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata No.14 “Moonlight” In C-Sharp Minor, Nocturne en Mi Bemol Majeur by Frederic Chopin and Claude Debussy’s Reverie L.68 edging Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb, My Bloody Valentine’s To Here Knows When and 808 State’s In Yer Face out of the end-of-year countdown for the first time since records began.

Honestly, I fail to see what purpose fireworks actually serve, apart from scaring the living s*** out of Britain’s highly-strung pets. If you want to stand in a muddy field watching someone to effectively set fire to thousands of pounds, then that’s your kink I suppose. But there’s no need to drag our cats and dogs into it, is there?

Anyway, rant over. Elsewhere this week, everything seems to be shipshape on Daughter #2’s Good Ship Lollipop, the job she’s got in the kids’ club on one of the world’s biggest cruise liners which sails from New York City to the Bahamas and back every week.

Only now it doesn’t, as once it gets too chilly it shifts its base south to Miami and pootles from there to Puerto Rico and back once a week, doing its level best to follow the sunshine.

This has given Daughter #2 and the vast majority of her shipmates three uninterrupted days and nights of passenger-free hardcore partying at sea as it sails from New York down to Florida. I can’t begin to imagine what goes on when the crew collectively ties one on for 72 hours - what goes on tour stays on tour and all that - but let’s hope they don’t have to pay duty on themselves when it docks.

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