I have been trying to remember when it was that I lost my love of bonfire nights.
When we were children we used to look forward to bonfire night with same excited anticipation as Christmas.
My memories came flooding back when I was responding to a post on Halloween recently.
From the September holidays we would hoard our stores of wood and combustible junk thrown out by neighbours. We would scour the streets looking for anything that we could use to make a guy.
As the day drew nearer, we would organise raiding parties......we would plunder other kids stores of bonfire wood. Our wood was relatively safe until the bonfire was built....we stored it in our garage.
My brothers would enlist the help of my dad and their friends dads to build the bonfire. It was always built with a hollow centre.....and sometimes they would sit in the middle of the bonfire peering out.....just waiting for the gangs of kids that would steal what we had stolen.
My brothers and their friends did not like to think that anyone would have a bonfire as mighty as theirs. If they found a bigger bonfire and couldn't pinch the wood they would go back after dark and set it on fire......that was a real disaster. To have worked to get the wood and then for someone to set it alight before bonfire night was really demoralising.
Chairs, mattrasses, sofas cushions were always kept back until the bonfire was going.....well, you had to have something to sit on.
On bonfire night itself, we would pray that it would be dry. All the mothers of the street would make something good to eat. There would be parched peas, liberally sprinkled with vinegar of course...potato pie with beetroot and red cabbage, treacle toffee, home made ginger beer....all cloudy and supposed to be non alcoholic, but it made me dizzy.....sausages, toffee apples, parkin and ginger biscuits.....again home made......and always you would have put some potatoes into the base of the fire to eat later. The baked potatoes were always covered in wood ash and invariably raw in the middle.....but we ate then as if they were nectar from the gods. We would have been saving for weeks to buy fireworks.....sparklers were 12 for tenpence.....but these were considered for cissies and the very young children......there were pyramids, catherine wheels, Roman candles, Golden rain, flip flaps or Jumping Jacks and of course the penny bangers and sky rockets. It would take something like two hours to let all the fireworks off and then we would sit around the fire until the smoke made our eyes and our throats sore. Often our faces were mottled red like corned beef.... but our backs would be cold.....the nights did seem much colder then. We would go home tired, full of food and smelling of wood smoke. It all seemed so magical then.
I think maybe it changed when I worked on the surgical ward and I saw a couple of people very badly burned......one was by a pack of sparklers that he had in his back pocket...ignited by a spark from the fire. That young man had very severe burns to his bottom and to his hands.
Another boy was burned by going back to a firework to see why it hadn't gone off......it went off in his hands and his jumper was burned into his skin. I can still hear his cries as we tried to dress his injuries (even though we had given him some pretty hefty doses of Pethidine).
Perhaps it is also down to money too.... these days I see the money going up in smoke and think of all the better ways it could be used to entertain adults and children alike.
Maybe fireworks are a little bit too close to bombs.....whatever it is, I don't like them anymore.......and I am hoping for torrential rain on bonfire night! OK, I'm a spoilsport.
When we were children we used to look forward to bonfire night with same excited anticipation as Christmas.
My memories came flooding back when I was responding to a post on Halloween recently.
From the September holidays we would hoard our stores of wood and combustible junk thrown out by neighbours. We would scour the streets looking for anything that we could use to make a guy.
As the day drew nearer, we would organise raiding parties......we would plunder other kids stores of bonfire wood. Our wood was relatively safe until the bonfire was built....we stored it in our garage.
My brothers would enlist the help of my dad and their friends dads to build the bonfire. It was always built with a hollow centre.....and sometimes they would sit in the middle of the bonfire peering out.....just waiting for the gangs of kids that would steal what we had stolen.
My brothers and their friends did not like to think that anyone would have a bonfire as mighty as theirs. If they found a bigger bonfire and couldn't pinch the wood they would go back after dark and set it on fire......that was a real disaster. To have worked to get the wood and then for someone to set it alight before bonfire night was really demoralising.
Chairs, mattrasses, sofas cushions were always kept back until the bonfire was going.....well, you had to have something to sit on.
On bonfire night itself, we would pray that it would be dry. All the mothers of the street would make something good to eat. There would be parched peas, liberally sprinkled with vinegar of course...potato pie with beetroot and red cabbage, treacle toffee, home made ginger beer....all cloudy and supposed to be non alcoholic, but it made me dizzy.....sausages, toffee apples, parkin and ginger biscuits.....again home made......and always you would have put some potatoes into the base of the fire to eat later. The baked potatoes were always covered in wood ash and invariably raw in the middle.....but we ate then as if they were nectar from the gods. We would have been saving for weeks to buy fireworks.....sparklers were 12 for tenpence.....but these were considered for cissies and the very young children......there were pyramids, catherine wheels, Roman candles, Golden rain, flip flaps or Jumping Jacks and of course the penny bangers and sky rockets. It would take something like two hours to let all the fireworks off and then we would sit around the fire until the smoke made our eyes and our throats sore. Often our faces were mottled red like corned beef.... but our backs would be cold.....the nights did seem much colder then. We would go home tired, full of food and smelling of wood smoke. It all seemed so magical then.
I think maybe it changed when I worked on the surgical ward and I saw a couple of people very badly burned......one was by a pack of sparklers that he had in his back pocket...ignited by a spark from the fire. That young man had very severe burns to his bottom and to his hands.
Another boy was burned by going back to a firework to see why it hadn't gone off......it went off in his hands and his jumper was burned into his skin. I can still hear his cries as we tried to dress his injuries (even though we had given him some pretty hefty doses of Pethidine).
Perhaps it is also down to money too.... these days I see the money going up in smoke and think of all the better ways it could be used to entertain adults and children alike.
Maybe fireworks are a little bit too close to bombs.....whatever it is, I don't like them anymore.......and I am hoping for torrential rain on bonfire night! OK, I'm a spoilsport.
