Thursday 6 November 2014

A few fireworks…

What a week for fireworks, well actually what a couple of weeks. Just when did Bonfire Night start in October and go on until mid-November? Bonfire night with all its gunpowder, treason and plot is on the 5th of November, otherwise what is the point of having it?

Bonfire nights in my boyhood were such anticipated affairs. Everyone would build a bonfire in their back garden, stuff a motley selection of old clothes tied together with string to make a Guy, and save pocket money for weeks for a few fireworks.

Sometimes I’d plonk my guy in an old pushchair and go penny-for-the-Guying it. It never occurred to me just how wrong it was to burn an effigy of a Catholic, even a Catholic terrorist, despite Blue Peter telling the story with sketchy drawings every year.

Such an exciting event; if I were to rate special days back then Bonfire Night was only just behind Christmas, in front of my birthday, and Easter limped along miles behind like a damp squib. Even Halloween, which was nothing like the trick-or-treatfest children enjoy today, beat Easter by a crooked mile.

Bonfire night was so exciting - the flames, the smell of burning tyres and wood, volcanoes, Catherine wheels, baked potatoes, and of course the sparklers. How I loved sparklers.

This year, and for the first time in many, we set off some fireworks in my mum-in- law’s back garden. They were very good, not overly large, but sparkly and banging and whizzing and splattering. I didn’t feel the same thrill and excitement I did as a boy though – except when it came to the sparklers.

Last night holding my sparkler in hand, a big grin on my face, I was a boy again standing in a council house back garden, watching a burning heretic go up in smoke, and eating a baked potato.

Yes, I still love sparklers it seems.

6 comments:

  1. Andrew Height
    I changed my mind Lucy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paul Whitehouse on FB
    My childhood enjoyment of fireworks was curtailed prematurely by the screening of a docco called "Remember, remember the fifth of November" in which the full horror of firework accidents was shown in graphic detail. From then on my parents banned any further home displays....for ever!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Andrew Height
      Yes, I remember that. Fireworks are dangerous, but what real man can resist them?

      Delete
    2. Paul Whitehouse on FB
      Scarred my mind but not my flesh

      Delete
    3. Are the tablets helping Paul?

      Delete
  3. Lucy Whitehead, Richard Shore, Jayne Butterworth and Liz Shore like this.

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