This has always been a silly time of the year. When we were kids, this was the time when we'd have access to fireworks. Penny bangers appeared in october and we would buy as many as we could afford. Tuppence bangers were better but of course you didn't get as many, so we would wander the streets armed fully with pockets filled with explosives. They were of course relatively harmless and would frequently explode in your hand if you were not careful; it was painful but I still have all my fingers and I don't remember anyone getting hurt. They were materials for experimentation and we'd explore their potential to the full. They were quite small and slender, no more than three or four inches long including the blue touch paper and a short fuse. That was the unreliable part, a fuse burning could take two or three seconds but sometimes they would burn almost instantly and so throwing them at each other was risky in so many ways. We would insert them into plastic airfoil models that we had grown tired of, causing our Messerschmidts and spitfires to shatter and burn and we'd wrap them in clay so they would sink in the river hoping to kill poor unexacting fish. The results were always a disappointment. One day we discovered that soft parcel string would smoulder for ages and therefore made a great time fuse. We'd put timed bangers under people's door knockers and then run away to watch from a distance.
There was always a village bonfire night. It wasn't well organised and families would just take their own boxes of fireworks to the recreation ground where the communal bonfire had been constructed. It was an opportunity for people to get rid of their rubbish and that pile seemed to grow and grow through october until by november it seemed enormous. Quite often it didn't make it as far as the fifth because some idiot would ignite it just for fun and so we'd have to build a new one. The fireworks were generally pretty tame and lasted a very short time and as the fire diminished everyone went home. WE'd all dash down in the morning to find the heap still smouldering and we'd get it going again, piling all the unburned debris at the perimeter on top. Then we'd look around for failed fireworks and throw them not the fire too. Our pleasures were very simple in those days.
We now have the continuum of craziness that begins in October with Halloween and runs through until christmas with a media driven spending spree, parting the people from their money with a fluency that is frightening. Even the film industry chooses this time to release the huge blockbuster movies.
November the fifth is now about huge commercial displays and the consumption of mountains of processed food and the sales of chines manufactured rubbish designed to attract the eyes of children who seem to be given anything and everything that they want. The parties and displays are not limited to the gift either, they seem to begin as soon s Halloween is done and continue for many days afterwards.
I still love fireworks however and wallow in the smells and sounds that take me back to times when austerity was the norm.
There was always a village bonfire night. It wasn't well organised and families would just take their own boxes of fireworks to the recreation ground where the communal bonfire had been constructed. It was an opportunity for people to get rid of their rubbish and that pile seemed to grow and grow through october until by november it seemed enormous. Quite often it didn't make it as far as the fifth because some idiot would ignite it just for fun and so we'd have to build a new one. The fireworks were generally pretty tame and lasted a very short time and as the fire diminished everyone went home. WE'd all dash down in the morning to find the heap still smouldering and we'd get it going again, piling all the unburned debris at the perimeter on top. Then we'd look around for failed fireworks and throw them not the fire too. Our pleasures were very simple in those days.
We now have the continuum of craziness that begins in October with Halloween and runs through until christmas with a media driven spending spree, parting the people from their money with a fluency that is frightening. Even the film industry chooses this time to release the huge blockbuster movies.
November the fifth is now about huge commercial displays and the consumption of mountains of processed food and the sales of chines manufactured rubbish designed to attract the eyes of children who seem to be given anything and everything that they want. The parties and displays are not limited to the gift either, they seem to begin as soon s Halloween is done and continue for many days afterwards.
I still love fireworks however and wallow in the smells and sounds that take me back to times when austerity was the norm.
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