5th of November remembered

This bonfire night I toned things down somewhat, keeping the danger levels in the red, rather than into the ultraviolet. I decided to take my push-bike to the party shop I traditionally buy my semi-legal fireworks at and so was restricted to what I could carry (quite a lot, as it turned out). So I plumped for a box of assorted mayhem as opposed to one big f**k off firework, not so much display as decommissioned.

Went round to friends house, placed fireworks at one end of garden and small children at other and, by and large, things went well.

Right up until a 32 shot special flipped on its side half way through firing.

Things went from good to Bagdad in a moment. This thing was about one-third the size of a shoebox and was firing off balls of light that made loud bangs when they exploded – it was like Black Hawk Down shot at Hogwarts. The missiles were coming towards us and, to put it mildly, it was exciting. Luckily they were skimming two inches above the lawn and hitting the wall the patio was raised up on, which we were all now cowering on, laughing manically if you were an adult, howling with terror if a child.

It was all soon over and slowly my pulse returned to normal, as did my hearing, which was a relief.

Frankly, although we had saved the best and biggest until last, the rest of the display was an anti-climax. There’s nothing like the thrill of mortal terror and threat of death by firework to make you really appreciate a good display.

Bonfire night explained...ish

'Bonfire night' is another term for 'Guy Fawkes night' or simply 5'th November'. It's a celebration of the failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament using gunpowder. Wikipedia has more, of course. Traditionally, children would make a 'guy' a few days before 5th November (the sort of thing you can buy at any middle eastern effigy shop) and exhibit him in the street asking for ‘penny for the guy’. The money would be used to buy fireworks and, on 5th November night, the fireworks would be let off and the guy would go on the bonfire.

Today, the Indian festival of light, divali, means that the asian community let off fireworks at the start of November and the bangs and flashes continue for the whole first week.

Also, every British kid knows a kid who knows a kid who went to sleep in the bonfire he and his gang had made on a patch of waste ground to guard it against premature lighting by rival gangs and, like, died, yea, because a rival gang lit it with him inside and he was trapped. No, rilly.

Such occurrences are rare these days, as gangs of kids building bonfires have been a)banned under EU law and b) kids are too busy on their Xbox to bother while c) their enthusiastic nostalgic dads can’t find any waste ground because it’s all been built on.

I was over at the House about this time last year and to my dismay saw that they had rebranded bonfire night as ‘5/11 – the plot to blow up parliament’. (The English use day/month notation rather than month/date). What tosh. It’s 5th November, as in ‘remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot…I see no reason why the 5th of November should ever be forgot.’

After last year’s firework extravaganza that left scorch marks on my lawn, I’ve scaled back on the pyrotechnics. No display fireworks, just normal ones. The trick is to rope them together you see. Under a bag of fertilizer. Warning: this means nasty chemical fertilizer. Using manure just results in the BBC weather forecast talking about ‘short, sharp showers of shit over the South East’ and having to put the window cleaner on double shifts.

My kind of marathon

Thanks to the magic of youhootube or whatever it’s called, I’ve spent about nine solid hours this weekend slumped on a sofa binging on ‘Black Books’. Marathon sessions of any programme are when you find out if they are really good; does the programme have the ability to silence that part of your brain that is telling you that you are Wasting Your Weekend, that you should Be Doing Something, even if it’s just opening the curtains, showering or getting out of your dressing gown.

Luckily, the part of my brain – the ‘perky section’ – that tells the rest of me that it should go for a walk and enjoy the majesty of the turning leaves and the brisk Autumn air has a hard enough time fighting my internal sloth without having to put up with external influences.

So sofa it was. I have to admit that things got a little tricky about a third of the way in, when my hangover abated long enough for me to realise I was hungry, but by putting together a running buffet on a plate, I was able to bring by starch, salt and fat levels up to optimum. I was then able to spend the next two hours fighting nausea but at least fighting nausea on a full stomach.

So it’s dark now and too late to Do Anything. Well, not quite dark, fireworks light the night all colours and bangs and pops make the place sound like downtown Bagdad on any night of the week. The air is no longer fresh but has the fresh tang of borderline legal Chinese gunpowder. Opening the curtains does reveal rockets and other skybourne fireworks, but also makes you wonder what you’re missing as you watch back gardens light up with what you hope is an impressive firework rather than, you know, somebody getting pissed and throwing paint thinner on the barbeque.

Tomorrow night is bonfire night, best enjoyed with a mug of soup stirred by a sausage – with a sparkler stuck in it. It’s also the first year when I think I shall try launching my rockets Pakistani style – in a BBC report recently celebrating Parkistani men (it’s always bloody men isn’t it) were seen gripping the stalks of rockets and then lighting them. Jesus, what savagery…can these third world idiots not afford a decent pair of gardening gloves – I bet not one of them even owns a decent set of pruning shears.