Bonnie!
There are very few things in life that are better as an adult than they were as children - but fireworks are one of them. When I was a kid, the best you could do was a few underpowered bangers from the local newsagents. These would have to be enhanced by techniques borrowed from Provos or mad uncles. An excellent way of improving the concussive force of a banger was to put it inside a tin can. To make it more spectacular you could cut it in half and pour all of the gunpowder onto a saucer. This led to learning not to use Mum's best china for this sort of thing and realising what the blue touch paper was for.
Bonfire night on the Fens though was excellent. The only way the fireworks could have been enhanced was stacking them in the middle of a truck full of fertiliser.
After a bonnie disappointment a few years ago, Fred had been storing his wood indoors in preparation for the big night. We open the door of the shed and I'm confronted by what appears to be the mythical pallet graveyard. The reason for those signs 'pallets wanted' is because people like Fred grab all available ones and chop them up for kindling. We throw together the basic structure of the bonnie and as I handle some of the older wood, tinder dry and crumbling under my fingers, I get an inkling that this lot is going to go up like, as we say in that part of the world, Christ on a bike.
The inner core is cardboard, soaked in turps, surrounded by a framework of wood and encased in tree branches and off cuts. Some of these I recognise from the 'bonnie-that-would-not-burn' of a few years ago. Obviously revenge, as well a tang of turps, is in the air.
The thing is about ten feet high by the time we finish and is topped off with two guys - we christen them Tony and George.
As darkness falls, Big Jim vanishes into the night. We then realise that the fireworks have also gone. Once we get outside we realise what has happened. The approach of previous years has been abandoned and Big Jim has been busy setting up rockets and jamming roman candles into handy mole hills in a display set to rival that of Dresden.
In previous years, you see, the box was held at one end of the garden and a firework was selected then run down to the other end of the garden, embedded and fired off. This meant two things - the person running away from the firework invariably looked like a great big girl running like a girl in a dress - and as it took a while and alcohol was being consumed, there were health and safety concerns about an inebriated pyrotechician leaning over a rocket trying to light it while it was already alight.
So…the bonnie is lit. We ooh, we ahh, we step back. The wind catches it. We give girlish screams and stand further back. I fear for my anorak. Fred fears for his shed and the treeline. The thing is going up at speed and the garden looks like a scene from the last reel of 'The Wicker Man'.
The bonnie takes about five minutes to turn half a ton of wood into a glowing pile of embers. His taper having gone out, Big Jim rescues four foot of glowing branch from the fire and, swinging it round his head to keep it glowing a dull red in a way that makes him look like some crazed, anoraked lord of the Sith, starts letting off fireworks.
Impressive. The roman candles shoot flame and the rockets are so good that I think we might bag a low flying F14 on the way back to Mildenhall. Top moment comes when a rocket sheds its tail and makes its way across the garden at about six feet off the ground. It's so terrifying that I nearly drop my beer.
Once we stop, the neighbours start. It's like a CNN report from Gulf war III, only louder and not all green and fuzzy. Unless, of course, you view it through the bottom of a bottle of Beck's.
Bonfire night on the Fens though was excellent. The only way the fireworks could have been enhanced was stacking them in the middle of a truck full of fertiliser.
After a bonnie disappointment a few years ago, Fred had been storing his wood indoors in preparation for the big night. We open the door of the shed and I'm confronted by what appears to be the mythical pallet graveyard. The reason for those signs 'pallets wanted' is because people like Fred grab all available ones and chop them up for kindling. We throw together the basic structure of the bonnie and as I handle some of the older wood, tinder dry and crumbling under my fingers, I get an inkling that this lot is going to go up like, as we say in that part of the world, Christ on a bike.
The inner core is cardboard, soaked in turps, surrounded by a framework of wood and encased in tree branches and off cuts. Some of these I recognise from the 'bonnie-that-would-not-burn' of a few years ago. Obviously revenge, as well a tang of turps, is in the air.
The thing is about ten feet high by the time we finish and is topped off with two guys - we christen them Tony and George.
As darkness falls, Big Jim vanishes into the night. We then realise that the fireworks have also gone. Once we get outside we realise what has happened. The approach of previous years has been abandoned and Big Jim has been busy setting up rockets and jamming roman candles into handy mole hills in a display set to rival that of Dresden.
In previous years, you see, the box was held at one end of the garden and a firework was selected then run down to the other end of the garden, embedded and fired off. This meant two things - the person running away from the firework invariably looked like a great big girl running like a girl in a dress - and as it took a while and alcohol was being consumed, there were health and safety concerns about an inebriated pyrotechician leaning over a rocket trying to light it while it was already alight.
So…the bonnie is lit. We ooh, we ahh, we step back. The wind catches it. We give girlish screams and stand further back. I fear for my anorak. Fred fears for his shed and the treeline. The thing is going up at speed and the garden looks like a scene from the last reel of 'The Wicker Man'.
The bonnie takes about five minutes to turn half a ton of wood into a glowing pile of embers. His taper having gone out, Big Jim rescues four foot of glowing branch from the fire and, swinging it round his head to keep it glowing a dull red in a way that makes him look like some crazed, anoraked lord of the Sith, starts letting off fireworks.
Impressive. The roman candles shoot flame and the rockets are so good that I think we might bag a low flying F14 on the way back to Mildenhall. Top moment comes when a rocket sheds its tail and makes its way across the garden at about six feet off the ground. It's so terrifying that I nearly drop my beer.
Once we stop, the neighbours start. It's like a CNN report from Gulf war III, only louder and not all green and fuzzy. Unless, of course, you view it through the bottom of a bottle of Beck's.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home