Friday 8 June 2012

Fireworks, ladders and firemen

As part of the Queen's Jubilee celebrations, St Albans (a town in the South East) was one of over 4000 locations lighting a beacon. We were drafted in for a bit of accompanying firework-y goodness.

The beacon was mounted on the roof of the town hall and our job was to provide a three minute display after the firemen had lit it.

Everything was very straight forward. Apart from the need to climb a ladder to get all of the gear onto the roof. This was quite a chore, especially as I'm not very good at using one hand on a ladder and carrying in the other hand.

Once everything was up, we got rigged and ready:


St Albans itself was rammed - a giant street-party-come-concert ran from about 11am until the lighting of the beacon at 10:15pm:

The firemen lit the beacon and retreated to a safe distance:
Yup, that small light above the Town Hall is the beacon being lit.
Photo courtesy of stephengg on Flickr

And then the show happened:
Photos courtesy of stephengg on Flickr



There was cheering, then the crowd trundled off home and we had a mercifully quick derig and clear up.

2 comments:

Elle said...

Awesome, so excited about this as I was wondering, while I was watching the Queen light the beacon, and the ensuing fireworks show at the concert venue, if you were somehow involved! I hadn't realized there were beacons all over the country!

RainStorm said...

@Elle - if only our show was as big as the one the Queen had! Glad you enjoyed the jubilee celebrations too :)