Remember remember
Ancient times - China. In the court of the Emporor the royal artificer is showing off his latest creation. He has just used a bronze barrel full of black powder and a shedload of ball-bearings to turn some test-peasents into a rather unpleasent stain on a nearby wall. He is explaining that this, combined with the reather nifty wall under construction to the East, will put the fear of God into any invader.
‘Oooh’, says the Emporor, ‘let’s have another, but let’s have a drink first and this time let’s let off two at once!’. So the scene is set for every fireworks party since.
There have, of course, been adaptions and refinements over the years. With the invention of silver foil came the delightful process of wrapping a spud and baking it in the embers of the bonfire. This tradition has died off in recent years because as gardens have got smaller, fences have crept nearer to the bonfire. Cresote and flame do not mix. Soup and sausages are staple fare at fireworks parties now, soup because it keeps you warm and sausages because - well, any excuse.
Surrupticiously stirring yout soup with your sausage is a great fireworks night tradition, as is crapping yourself in fear when that cut-price monster you brought back from the cash and carry unexpectedly detonates, while still in a box of fireworks.
The next advancement in firework party fun was the arrival of Guy Fawkes. Recent rebranding exercises have seen Government try to call the 5th of November ‘5/11’. In an attempt to convince us that piling several hundred barrels of gunpowder into the basement of the Houses of Parliament with the intention of lighting the blue touch paper was less a bloody good idea and more an act of terrorism. Naturally, GF is now seen as a national hero, especially by the makers of fireworks and sausages.
In years past one could find out which of your neighbours was an ex-solider simply by letting off a banger or two and watching carefully for any signs of trauma, such as their running screaming into the coal bunker or, if they have no coal bunker, attempting to dig a shelter in their back garden using a spoon as a trenching tool. These days having a squaddie as a neighbour is a much more dangerous business, and letting off a fusilade of fireworks and screaming ‘in the name of Allah’ may provoke terrified, traumatised screams from a nearby house but also, given the amount of contraband weapons our boys are bring back with them from warmer climes, will be a followed by the chatter of automatic weapons fire as your neighbour sprays the garden with fire from his AK47, simply buying time until he can take out the barbeque with his looted RPG.
Finally it’s good to see that China are back in the fireworks game, now with added irony. They produce something with a name like ‘golden shower’ which is, for want of a better term, chaos in a cardboard tube.
That was the backdrop to last weekend’s fireworks party, which I’m just about able to think about now without shaking and weeing myself just a little bit. I knew there was going to be trouble when I saw a couple of my guests for that evening come out of the party shop nearby actually dragging a sack of fireworks. Inside was the sort of rocket that normally has three blokes strapped to the top of it and a firework that was titled ‘lovely sparkle’ but we came to refer to as the ‘dustbin of destruction’. I notched up background worry to real apprehension and went in to buy a couple of packets of something restrained.
Luckily, the rest of the guests had decided that as it was not their house, shed or neighbours that were in danger, they could push the boat out. One came with a selection he had picked up ‘at a newsagents’ including one ‘half price, I think he wanted to get rid of it’. This, we discovered, was because the fuse was about two seconds long.
I decided that sobriety was no state to be in and speed drank a couple of beers before letting off the first salvo of the night.
It all went off rather well. There was oohing and aahing, children cried and adults said ‘christ that was close!’ a few times. We discovered why you should not use display fireworks in a small garden as we were all doused with ash and soot but, best of all, despite firing off nearly a dozen rockets, we didn’t find one tube or stick fallen back to earth in our garden the next day - how odd is that?
‘Oooh’, says the Emporor, ‘let’s have another, but let’s have a drink first and this time let’s let off two at once!’. So the scene is set for every fireworks party since.
There have, of course, been adaptions and refinements over the years. With the invention of silver foil came the delightful process of wrapping a spud and baking it in the embers of the bonfire. This tradition has died off in recent years because as gardens have got smaller, fences have crept nearer to the bonfire. Cresote and flame do not mix. Soup and sausages are staple fare at fireworks parties now, soup because it keeps you warm and sausages because - well, any excuse.
Surrupticiously stirring yout soup with your sausage is a great fireworks night tradition, as is crapping yourself in fear when that cut-price monster you brought back from the cash and carry unexpectedly detonates, while still in a box of fireworks.
The next advancement in firework party fun was the arrival of Guy Fawkes. Recent rebranding exercises have seen Government try to call the 5th of November ‘5/11’. In an attempt to convince us that piling several hundred barrels of gunpowder into the basement of the Houses of Parliament with the intention of lighting the blue touch paper was less a bloody good idea and more an act of terrorism. Naturally, GF is now seen as a national hero, especially by the makers of fireworks and sausages.
In years past one could find out which of your neighbours was an ex-solider simply by letting off a banger or two and watching carefully for any signs of trauma, such as their running screaming into the coal bunker or, if they have no coal bunker, attempting to dig a shelter in their back garden using a spoon as a trenching tool. These days having a squaddie as a neighbour is a much more dangerous business, and letting off a fusilade of fireworks and screaming ‘in the name of Allah’ may provoke terrified, traumatised screams from a nearby house but also, given the amount of contraband weapons our boys are bring back with them from warmer climes, will be a followed by the chatter of automatic weapons fire as your neighbour sprays the garden with fire from his AK47, simply buying time until he can take out the barbeque with his looted RPG.
Finally it’s good to see that China are back in the fireworks game, now with added irony. They produce something with a name like ‘golden shower’ which is, for want of a better term, chaos in a cardboard tube.
That was the backdrop to last weekend’s fireworks party, which I’m just about able to think about now without shaking and weeing myself just a little bit. I knew there was going to be trouble when I saw a couple of my guests for that evening come out of the party shop nearby actually dragging a sack of fireworks. Inside was the sort of rocket that normally has three blokes strapped to the top of it and a firework that was titled ‘lovely sparkle’ but we came to refer to as the ‘dustbin of destruction’. I notched up background worry to real apprehension and went in to buy a couple of packets of something restrained.
Luckily, the rest of the guests had decided that as it was not their house, shed or neighbours that were in danger, they could push the boat out. One came with a selection he had picked up ‘at a newsagents’ including one ‘half price, I think he wanted to get rid of it’. This, we discovered, was because the fuse was about two seconds long.
I decided that sobriety was no state to be in and speed drank a couple of beers before letting off the first salvo of the night.
It all went off rather well. There was oohing and aahing, children cried and adults said ‘christ that was close!’ a few times. We discovered why you should not use display fireworks in a small garden as we were all doused with ash and soot but, best of all, despite firing off nearly a dozen rockets, we didn’t find one tube or stick fallen back to earth in our garden the next day - how odd is that?
1 Comments:
Right after my dad passed away, I had to get out of town for New Years so my grandmother gave me $100 for the drive. I spent the entire $100 on illegal fireworks that were for sale from a trailer parked in the grass in front of Walmart. They were the best fireworks I've ever lit myself.
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