The 'something's gone wrong' alarm has gone off...

We've relocated from Barcelona back to the South of France. The Bastille Day celebrations are always fun, and at Homps they lined up a huge amount of fireworks across the canal du midi, and we all waited on the other side, glasses in hand, for the spectacular extravaganza...

Clearly they'd overlooked the 40ºC temperatures and the tinder dry scrubland on which they'd laid out piles of explosive incendiary devices. The regular whoosh of rockets and "ooooh!'s" from the crowd became a muttering of "merde!'s" as a small fire broke out. Then broke out a bit more...

After a time the local Sapeuer-Pompier arrived in his Landrover, but after spraying with some futility and a small hand extinguisher he withdrew and called out the big boys. It was of course about the time they turned up that the fireworks remembered where they were.

You can make out the boxes of fireworks just behind the Landie...

That thing that goes on at New Year, that they show on tv all around the world? Ok, that goes on seemingly forever, but what happened here was similar for a few seconds. Everything went whoosh, bang, zoom! It was fab, if perhaps not for the firemen in the middle of it.

Bastille Day, consider yourself celebrated. This is back blip 5 of lots. All of which are tagged #incredibacks19