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Bonfire Night when you was a kid, what did you do?
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I remember when I was a kid and along with the neighbouring kids we used to build a big bonfire on a croft behind my house which was about 20 foot high with the wood we had collected or stolen for months.
We always had a guy Fawkes in a pram/chair near the shops to collect money for bangers or rip-raps weeks before and, most people used to give a few penny's. You never see this anymore.
We had toffee apples, black treacle and used to cook jacket potatoes on the bonfire with old wire coat hangers or sticks, and let off our own fireworks without parents being there.
I don't ever remember anybody getting hurt but, we wouldn't have noticed anyway because everybody was so excited.
The morning after we used to go back to the bonfire before school and look for fireworks that hadn't gone off..... great days!
We always had a guy Fawkes in a pram/chair near the shops to collect money for bangers or rip-raps weeks before and, most people used to give a few penny's. You never see this anymore.
We had toffee apples, black treacle and used to cook jacket potatoes on the bonfire with old wire coat hangers or sticks, and let off our own fireworks without parents being there.
I don't ever remember anybody getting hurt but, we wouldn't have noticed anyway because everybody was so excited.
The morning after we used to go back to the bonfire before school and look for fireworks that hadn't gone off..... great days!
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Nov 5th, my birthday. Invite friends round for tea and birthday cake then they would all leave to go to the bonfire but I never went as I was and still am scared stiff of fireworks and bonfires.So I would look at the bonfire on the croft at the back of our house and would cry because I wanted to be there with all my friends.
My mother would have done her nut if I'd been out asking for a penny for the guy! That had nothing to do with child protection issues; she simply regarded it as something only done by 'common' children, and we were (in my mother's eyes anyway) far too posh for that, even though we lived on a council estate!
Bonfire night was something I always looked forward to but it always seemed to go too quickly, the fireworks were never as good as they were meant to be and I was usually shivering in the cold. (I loved the sparklers though!).
I don't remember ever having any special food.
Later, in my teens, my friends and I did a lot of experimenting with bangers. For example did you know that they'll still explode underwater if you light them first? We had great fun damning streams and then blowing up the damns with lots of bangers. (Perhaps I'd better keep quiet about the nitroglycerine which we made some considerably bigger explosions with when we were in the 6th form!)
Bonfire night was something I always looked forward to but it always seemed to go too quickly, the fireworks were never as good as they were meant to be and I was usually shivering in the cold. (I loved the sparklers though!).
I don't remember ever having any special food.
Later, in my teens, my friends and I did a lot of experimenting with bangers. For example did you know that they'll still explode underwater if you light them first? We had great fun damning streams and then blowing up the damns with lots of bangers. (Perhaps I'd better keep quiet about the nitroglycerine which we made some considerably bigger explosions with when we were in the 6th form!)
About the same time as you trt, health and safety hadn't become such a big issue. Our headmaster told us we could take fireworks to school but only on a specified day, no doubt thinking the teachers could supervise us. They had forgotten the ingenuity of several hundred schoolboys. We made parachutes out of our handkerchiefs and tied bangers to them. These were tossed in the air and designed to explode at head height amongst the teachers. They beat a hasty retreat to the staff room and we got on with re enacting the war. The strange thing nobody got hurt and it became an annual event, ah happy days.
I loved the "pretty" fireworks called Golden Rain, Snow storm, Mount Vesuvius, Roman Candles but hated the Jump Jacks (squibs) and the penny bangers which my Dad used to put under a metal dustbin lid to sound louder! My favourites were the hand held sparklers where my brother and I used to write our names in the air with the sparkles, Catherine wheels attached to the wall or shed (which dad had to keep knocking round while lit as they refused to turn, to give the full effect - tut tut health and safety I hear you say! Sky rockets stood in glass milk bottles which soared high over our back yard never to be seen again so we missed the explosion of coloured stars! As my birthday is on Nov 7th my Mum & Dad always saved half the box of fireworks (cost about 5 shillings and made by Brocks or Standard) to have after my birthday party. We used to press our noses to the window (not allowed outside in the yard while Dad was lighting the fireworks with long tapers) and our dog stayed by our side being comforted....... Ah, those were the days (in the 1950s) What memories!
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