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How It Used To Be
Nov. 6th, 2022 08:21 amYou used to be able to buy fireworks anywhere- at the newsagents, at the corner shop- loose or in boxes. These days I wouldn't know where to go look for them. I don't know how the change occurred- whether gradually or all at once- but I suppose there must have been legislation. Were we, the people, ever asked about any of this? If we were I don't remember.
When I was a kid the adults would buy a box of outdoor fireworks and a box of indoor fireworks. The outdoor fireworks included rockets- bloody dangerous when you think about it, Catherine Wheels (so named for one of my favourite saints} and things that sat on the ground and threw up glitter and globules of coloured light which went "bang". The indoor fireworks were like miniature science experiments. They fizzed and popped and extruded ash. We lit them on the hearth stone and considered it perfectly safe. This after all was an era in which people habitually lounged around in flammable arm chairs with cigarettes and pipes stuck in their silly mouths. This was also an era in which the entire adult generation had undergone the experience of shooting and bombing and being shot at and bombed.
Once or twice my father would splash out on something special- like an extra big Catherine Wheel or a rocket that cost as much as ten shillings. Whoosh!
I like fireworks.
But always with the proviso that someone else is paying for them.
Last night I positioned myself by an upstairs window- commanding a wide view of the town- and waited to be entertained- but nothing much happened. You could blame the weather- which was wet and windy- but if people had spent a fortune on explosives they'd have been letting them off willy-nilly, don't you think? The fact is that Guy Fawkes night is dying- with all the energy it used to channel being re-routed into Halloween.
Ah well....
When I was a kid the adults would buy a box of outdoor fireworks and a box of indoor fireworks. The outdoor fireworks included rockets- bloody dangerous when you think about it, Catherine Wheels (so named for one of my favourite saints} and things that sat on the ground and threw up glitter and globules of coloured light which went "bang". The indoor fireworks were like miniature science experiments. They fizzed and popped and extruded ash. We lit them on the hearth stone and considered it perfectly safe. This after all was an era in which people habitually lounged around in flammable arm chairs with cigarettes and pipes stuck in their silly mouths. This was also an era in which the entire adult generation had undergone the experience of shooting and bombing and being shot at and bombed.
Once or twice my father would splash out on something special- like an extra big Catherine Wheel or a rocket that cost as much as ten shillings. Whoosh!
I like fireworks.
But always with the proviso that someone else is paying for them.
Last night I positioned myself by an upstairs window- commanding a wide view of the town- and waited to be entertained- but nothing much happened. You could blame the weather- which was wet and windy- but if people had spent a fortune on explosives they'd have been letting them off willy-nilly, don't you think? The fact is that Guy Fawkes night is dying- with all the energy it used to channel being re-routed into Halloween.
Ah well....
